It is enlightening to contrast this ethereal international outlook with Carter's very practical role in what was unquestionably his greatest foreign policy success: the 1978 Camp David treaty. Justifiably proud of bringing Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the bargaining table for their historic agreement, Carter describes Camp David in far more detail than any other event or issue in the book. And not surprisingly, his account is by far its most captivating and dramatic section.
Carter entitles his lengthy Camp David chapter "Thirteen Days," a name that recalls Robert F. Kennedy '48's identically named and equally breathtaking account of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Day by day, he describes his meetings with Begin and Sadat on the grounds of the presidential retreat: the initial hope, the long period of pessimism, Begin's intransigence, Sadat's frustrated attempt to leave midway through the talks, and the final whirlwind day of settlement.
Although the President's role here was one of referee, it is clear that he was an avid spectator as well. He tells of how Begin and Sadat squared off on the third day of talks:
(Sadat) leaned forward in his chair, pointed his finger at Begin, and exclaimed. "Premier Begin, you want land" Sadat reminded as that the disputed phrase was extracted directly from United Nations Resolution 242, which all of us agreed to be the foundation of our peace efforts. He was fervent in condemning "the Israeli settlements on my land."
All restraint was now gone Their faces were flushed, and the niceties of diplomatic language and protocol were stopped away. They had almost forgotten I was there, and there was nothing to distract me from recording this fascinating debate.
Begin had touched a raw nerve, and I thought Sadat would explode. He pounded the table, shouting that land was not negotiable especially land in the Sinai Golan Heights.
He quotes from his diary an entry just after the historic pact had been struck.
The most emotional time of all was after the agreement was reached I read in the news that Israeli teachers who were out on strike, having heard about the Camp David agreement, voted unanimously to go back to work.
The irony here is rich. The President's immensely practical efforts on the Mideast front had secured an agreement that generated great worldwide hope--yet his reliance on the same hope on the domestic front secured him little in the way of practical results.
WHAT CARTER OMITS from Keeping Faith is as revealing as what he stresses. He pays shockingly little attention to the economy, although the conventional wisdom holds that its travails were principally responsible for his 1980 electoral swamping. Instead, he only alludes to inflation and unemployment here and there, never saying much that's new. Yet this gap is, in a sense, appropriate: one always sensed during the Carter years that economic policy was made on the run, and not carefully thought through.
Carter is also unexpectedly silent on the 1980 campaign, devoting to it one short chapter. Here, one senses that his honesty ebbs. According to Crisis, Hamilton Jordan's account of the last year of the Carter Administration, the President was obsessed with re-election, and deeply bitter throughout at his Democratic challenger, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.). His machinations during the primary race against Kennedy--pumping huge federal grants into states with upcoming primaries--are well-known, yet Cart-here opts for the literary parallel of his 1980 "Rose Garden strategy": he simply refuses to enter the fray at all.
For a political candidate who stresses faith, openness and accountability, such a tactic is questionable; from an author who pledges an accurate depiction of his presidential years, the omission is inexcusable. Yet he is ready to take a dig at Ronald Reagan for the Republican President-elect's behavior during a transition meeting between the men:
Again, he did not comment of ask any questions. Some of the information was quite complex, and I did not see how he could possibly retain all of it merely by listening. I asked him if he wanted a pad so that he could take some notes, but he responded that he could remember what I was saying.
Oddly enough, Carter's treatment of the Iranian hostage crisis, though substantial, is not as complete or as interesting as Jordan's. One can only speculate that, here too, the episode proved so embarrassing and politically fatal that he prefers to forget about it. Instead, he devotes a small chapter to defending Office of Management and Budget head Bert Lance, a personal friend whom he describes as "a good country banker." Lance had been forced to resign his post because of financial improprieties--one wonders why Carter feels compelled to devote so much space to clearing a friend's name.
ON THE WHOLE, Keeping Faith is an honest account of the Carter Presidency. If Carter gives short shrift to some of his weak points, he also shoulders some blame for America's disarray during his Presidency. And he does succeed in reminding us that his administration was not entirely devoid of accomplishments. In addition to Camp David, the former president deserves credit for tangible changes in U.S. affairs, at home and abroad; the Panama Canal Treaty, normalization of relations with China, the energy windfall profits tax, and civil service reform are only the most striking.
Jimmy Carter never did learn how to go about achieving the lofty goals he set for the nation and the world. Even the inevitable tide of revisionist history will almost certainly fail to carry his record beyond mediocrity: Yet his enunciation of populism and a renewed faith in American ideals succeeded in leaving a lasting impression on a nation that was just recovering from Watergate when he assumed its helm.
Carter, to his credit, aimed high. For all his political failures, he did succeed in reinforcing in the American psyche a sense of idealism that may otherwise have been lost. Thanks to his efforts, world-wide human rights are harder to forget about nowadays. In a time when America is being led astray by a politically say atavism, Keeping Faith serves as a reminder that, just may be, his predecessor the bumbling idealist wasn't to bad after all.