The Lasting Legacy of Rosalynn Carter Transcript

Global humanitarian, mental health advocate, and champion for equal rights, these are some of the ways that former First Lady Rosalynn Carter is being remembered tonight. She passed away yesterday at the age of 96. Mrs. Carter died surrounded by family in her hometown of Plains, Georgia. That’s the small southern city that became a household name after her husband, Jimmy Carter, was elected president back in 1977. Former President Carter released a statement following his wife’s passing, which reads, “Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished. She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

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As we focus on Mrs. Carter’s legacy and many contributions, we turn to our own Judy Woodruff, who covered the Carter White House and knew Mrs. Carter well, and journalist and historian, Jonathan Alter, whose biography of President Carter is His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life. Thank you both for being here. Judy, your connection to the Carters goes back to 1970, is that right? When Jimmy Carter was then running for Governor of Georgia. And Mrs. Carter often spoke about her passion for politics and campaigning. Was that a passion she had back then or one that she developed?

It definitely was not one she had back then. I did not cover his race for the Georgia Senate in 1962 or his first race for governor in 1966, when she wrote about having just being wracked with fear when she would have to go out and make a speech in his behalf. But by the time I covered that campaign, and again, it was my first year as a reporter, I was learning the ropes very much myself, she was getting more comfortable, and by the time she was out in the arena and making speeches for him, it became something that she did very well. She knew her stuff. When people would ask detailed questions about issues, she would be able to answer it. Whether it was agriculture policy or economics, she would try to answer. And if she didn’t know something, she would say, “I’ll get back to you on that.”

And Jonathan, on that point, I know you say that Mrs. Carter’s political instincts actually surpassed those of her husband. In what ways?

Well, I think even Jimmy Carter acknowledged that she was just shrewder in the way she read people and political situations, and she was always trying to steer him out of political trouble with mixed levels of success. She urged him to delay certain controversial decisions he made as president until a second term. And when he said, “I don’t want to do the politically expedient thing. I’ll do that in a second term,” she would say, “Well, there might not be a second term,” and there wasn’t.

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But I think what is not recognized among a lot of people who assume that their accomplishments were only in the post-presidency is that they got major things done together when he was president on mental health, on ending or curtailing discrimination by age, and she got rid of a lot of mandatory retirement provisions that were in the federal code.

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And one that stands out for me that she accomplished that almost nobody remembers is that, when she was First Lady, she and Betty Bumpers, the wife of Senator Dale Bumpers, they convinced 33 state legislatures to require vaccination before children could enter school. This had a huge impact on the public health of the United States, and yet it’s almost a footnote. So what I’m hoping is that her death will kick off a new appreciation of her in the first rank of American first ladies.

And Judy, the statement that President Carter released after his wife’s passing, that she was an equal partner in everything he ever accomplished, how did that partnership affect President Carter’s political worldview and his policies?

Well, it was one that started early. I think she was a teenager when she met him. She was 19 when they married. As you say, they were a duo, they were partners in every sense of the word. He checked everything with her. There were no big decisions that were made, any decisions for that matter. It doesn’t mean he always went along with her, though. As you just heard from Jonathan, she would advise him to do something that she thought was in his better political interest and he didn’t always follow it. But it was later on, it was Bill and Hillary Clinton who … there was the saying, you get two for the price of one, or whatever the saying was. That was truly the case with the Carters. She was equally invested and working hard every day, all day long during his presidency.

Jonathan, you wrote an op-ed in today’s New York Times in which you write this, “Perhaps in death, Mrs. Carter’s role as this country’s premier champion of mental health will finally be properly appreciated. It’s only one of the many unheralded accomplishments of a formidable and gracious woman who belongs in the first rank of influential first ladies.” Tell us more about that.

So just on mental health, you may recall reading or experiencing that Ted Kennedy ran against Jimmy Carter in 1980 for the Democratic nomination. It was very harmful to Carter’s efforts to beat Ronald Reagan, which he did not do. But after that point, Rosalynn Carter worked with Ted Kennedy to get the first major piece of mental health legislation through the Congress in 1980. Now, Ronald Reagan, to her anger, repealed a lot of that and many of the provisions were not actually implemented until Obamacare, but she did more than anyone to end the stigma that applied to mental illness in this country. And she also, in the post-presidency, championed caregivers. That wasn’t even a concept in the ’60s and ’70s. Rosalynn Carter helped put that on the map as an idea, that people care for friends and relatives in this country in great numbers.

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So she combined this toughness and this strength with tremendous grace. And I interviewed more than 250 people from my book, including every member of the Carter family, and I didn’t get a single person who said anything critical about Rosalynn Carter. Some of them had some critical things to say about Jimmy Carter, but she was such a formidable, impressive, kind, and just wonderful person in almost every dimension that I hope her memory of her contributions will inspire people in the years ahead.

Judy, you interviewed the Carters when they marked 75 years of marriage, and you asked them both, when they think about this country’s future, are they more fearful or more hopeful? And here’s how Mrs. Carter answered that question.

I think we have to have hope. Sometimes it’s hard, with the issues and the things on news all the time, to try to figure out what really to believe, but in the end, I think everything will be okay.

Her ability to find hope in places where others may not, it really speaks to her abiding faith, her profound decency, and a certain grace. How do you see it?

And compassion, and again, what you’ve just heard from Jon Alter about the issues, the causes that she adopted, and she embraced them in the White House, but she continued to embrace them. She didn’t just give up. They’ve been out of the White House for 43 years. It’s hard to imagine that. And they’ve been active ever since, up until the point when, because of their age, they weren’t able to do that.

(08:12)
I would just add that there very much was a toughness to her, a steeliness. People throw around the term steel magnolia. She would do her homework and she would come to a conclusion about what needed to be done, so often driven by compassion for people who weren’t getting their due. She worked on women’s issues, as Jon said, she worked certainly on mental illness, on caregiving. This became a passion of hers. And I think what she said about hope, you’re right, she believed that, and you heard it there, you have to have that positive attitude or else you’re not going to get through. There are always going to be obstacles facing you. You have to keep moving forward.

Hers was a remarkable, consequential life. Jonathan Alter and Judy Woodruff, thank you both so much.

Thank you.