Robert Strauss Interview (page: 6 / 7) Presidential Medal of Freedom	Print Interview

Jimmy Carter must have looked like an unlikely presidential candidate when he began the race, but he made it. What did you do to make that happen?

Robert Strauss: I didn't do anything. I'd like to take credit for it. Jimmy Carter did that himself with a couple of people who really helped him. One was Hamilton Jordan and the other was Jody Powell primarily, although he had an older friend, Charles Kirbo, who was a great help, and Bert Lance, another friend of his from Georgia. I was chairman of the campaign, but keep in mind I was Chairman of the Democratic Party when he got the nomination. Before he got the nomination, I was neutral, I wasn't for him. I had to be neutral, and I think the Carter people sort of resented my neutrality once they got there.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Jimmy Carter and I didn't have that close a relationship until I guess in New York, we had the convention, and people wondered why I went to New York. I knew exactly why I took the party there. It was a place we had to win, and Madison Square Garden, even though it was too small, was the right place to be. So I called those shots right, and at the Convention, the Carter people -- the President and Mrs. Carter and their people, of course, he wasn't president then -- found out that they didn't know how to run a national convention and that I did, and we didn't make any mistakes, fortunately, like the Democrats usually do. I didn't let them fall apart in the middle of the damned convention and tear each other up. I controlled the floor, where the leftists or the rightists, depending, couldn't get their hands on the mikes, and we kept it moderate, and we elected a president. Then Jimmy Carter and I became, as I went into his administration, closer and closer, and I guess by the end of it, he called on me for everything. And I again -- part of the story I told today about how I grew in stature in his administration -- went in with no particular stature and came out as probably the fellow he turned to more than any other for tough jobs.

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

How did you become trade negotiator during the Carter administration?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Robert Strauss: I told President Carter's people and him that I didn't want to go into his administration. I had been out seven years as Treasurer and Chairman of the Democratic Party, and after he had been in a couple of months, Hamilton Jordan called and said, "The President wants to talk to you and wants you to come over here. He's going to ask you to take the trade job." And I had looked at it with some favor. A reporter, writer Joe Kraft, a very able man, had convinced me that maybe I ought to consider that job if it wasn't filled, because it suited me. It was international, and it had no bureaucracy. You could steer it and move it and turn it and twist it, and you couldn't do it in these other departments. That's one of the things he knew; I didn't want to get involved in any bureaucracy. And Carter didn't want me to have one of his more important portfolios anyway, even if I had wanted it, so I wouldn't have been Secretary of Treasury or Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense. As a matter of fact, the present Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, recommended to Carter that he make me Secretary of Defense. I don't think that recommendation meant much to Carter and it certainly didn't to me, but I appreciated it.

Carter was in some ways a fluke, because Jimmy Carter didn't like politics. Never did and still doesn't. But he is a marvelous man and a wonderful man, and I feel very close to him.

What happened the second time he ran?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Robert Strauss: Carter insisted on doing things in the first term that he shouldn't do. For example, we never should have tried to pass the Panama Canal bill the first term. That's a second term thing, because you take a lot of scars on that. We leaned on everybody terribly hard to get those votes and get that done and did it by one vote, and we pushed people and pushed them in ways they didn't want to be and made them vote for it, the Democrats. Carter felt strongly that he had committed to do it and he was going to do it, and even though Hamilton and Jody and I also encouraged him to let that sit for the second term. But he did things like that, and Jimmy Carter didn't want to do the political things that he needed to do. He wanted to do substantive things that are worthwhile, the same way he is right now. He has never changed and is never going to. I have given up trying to change him. I talk to him with some regularity and am very close to him and very proud of it.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

Do you think he was too substantive to win reelection?

Robert Strauss: I think that had something to do with it, and he also was not political enough.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I would talk to him about how he ought to have Senator Russell Long upstairs and "Talk to him about your economic program, and he'll get your tax bill out, and he can do this and that ..." but Carter didn't like to do that. But he would call frequently at 6:15 in the morning, and he always had the same question: "Are you drunk or sober?" And I'd say, "Well, I've just come in about half an hour ago, Mr. President, but I've had a cold shower and I am reasonably sober. What's on your mind?" And he'd laugh and say, "Well, on my mind is I want you to drop by here." So I'd go over there, get there at 7:00, and he'd be in his little office off the Oval Office, been working for an hour or two, and he'd have that little handwriting of his, and he'd have some issue he wanted to discuss. He was very substantive, but it was terribly difficult to get him to do the political things.

Rosalynnn was very good at political things. She grew into it. I saw her at first as a wife with a little housedress on, but she became a very sophisticated, worthwhile First Lady. They are substantive people. They have no room for small talk. But...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Carter did have a sense of humor. He always liked for me to introduce him. I found out there was a sense of humor there, because he didn't know how to warm a crowd up, and people, of course, did make these pompous introductions. And when I would introduce him, I would say, "The next speaker is the President of the United States. Now, I'm no fool. I know that you're not supposed to dress as well as the man you're introducing, particularly if it is the distinguished President. And I'll tell you, I have tried to dress worse than this President, but there's no way in the world I could dress worse than he does." And the crowd would roar, and he would laugh, and he'd get up and speak, or I would say, "Now, when the next speaker gets up, please don't look at his ankles, because they'll be showing -- because his pants are too short for him -- but I can't get him to buy a new pair of pants." And the crowd would roar. That kind of humor as well as putting some serious things in there. But he liked that, and people would say, "God, how can you say that about the President?" and I would say, "Well, it just takes guts." The truth of the matter is, Carter liked it. He would say to his people when he was going into town to speak, "Tell the Mayor to speak and then let Strauss introduce me," because I would use that humor.

I was the warm-up act.

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