Interview: J. Carter Brown
Director Emeritus
National Gallery of Art

What was your life like when you were growing up in the '30s and '40s?

J. Carter Brown: Well, I had a fabulous opportunity of having two parents who each was very interested in the arts, my mother particularly in music. She'd been a music critic before marriage. She played in the Johns Hopkins Orchestra -- the violin. My father took up the cello, and we had chamber music during my childhood, and on. I mean they were passionate about making music. They also had record collections. My father collected orchestral works, and my mother collected opera, and when they merged their two collections there was hardly a single overlap. My father was very visual, and he was into collecting drawings. He was into architecture, he had a drafting board in his study all his life, into the history of architecture. He'd been a patron of architecture, both a gothic chapel at St. George's, on which he worked very closely with Ralph Adams Cram, and then later a very pioneering building. In 1936 he hired Richard Neutra, a revolutionary modernist, to build the first modern house of any size and importance in the East. And so, I grew up in the summers in that house, and it had a big effect on me. But, one absorbed through the pores a sense of the arts from this wonderful atmosphere. And, there was travel, and they could take us to museums, and they really knew what they were looking at. So, it was a pretty exciting way to grow up.

What kinds of things did you like to do when you were a boy?

J. Carter Brown: Well, I was a passionate sailor. I just loved everything about "messing about in boats." I loved racing, because it's such an intellectual challenge as well as a physical challenge. You have to know about nature and weather and the physics of it, and a psychological challenge, because it's what your opponent is thinking and what you think he or she's going to do. So that was a great passion.

I'd been very lucky to be sent off to school -- a lot of people don't think it's so lucky -- boarding school at nine. I went to the Arizona Desert School in Tucson where we all had our own horses. We learned camping, we played polo, we had the most wonderful life because it was so beautiful. We'd get up and do chores at dawn, and we'd see these incredible Arizona sunrises. The tough part was that because they didn't have air-conditioning and it gets so hot, the season -- the academic year -- was squeezed, so you didn't start till mid-October, and you got out early May, which meant there was only room for one vacation in the middle of the year, which meant we were there at Christmas. When you're nine years old and you're away from home at Christmas; it's a little bit of a strain. But, I think that's maturing, and I loved being in the outdoors and being in that gorgeous natural environment. I mean the desert is as beautiful as anything that exists. I go back. I was there just a few weeks ago out of nostalgia. I just love it.

Where in Arizona is this school?

J. Carter Brown: It was in the foothills of the Catalina Mountains near Tucson. It doesn't exist any more. It burned down, and I had a Proustian experience at one point, by renting a horse and going out to see if I could find any archeological remains. Finally I did. I found some tile that didn't burn in the fire, and I could get it fixed back in my memory as to exactly where I was between nine and twelve.

Then I went to school in Massachusetts. They couldn't believe that any school way out there could prepare you, but I only lasted two weeks in the grade they put me in, and they bumped me up. I was there for five years there. That was pretty challenging, because one got a darned good education. But I had trouble with my knee. I had to give up football. I became manager of the football team. It gave me time to practice the piano, and I learned I was never going to be a pianist. It was an exciting time from every point of view except socially.

What went wrong socially? What kind of kid were you?

J. Carter Brown: Oh, I was hopeless. I was very unathletic, and when I was in school I was two years younger than everybody in my class, so I got beaten up all the time, and I got laughed at for being interested in studying and doing stupid things like that. And, it's been so rewarding. I'm going to my 50th anniversary of my high school, and so rewarding that now they feel... I'm the guy that sort of "made it" in the class, having been the Class Joke. Never completely "joke," because I was president of the Dramatic Society, and I did manage to graduate first in my class, but that wasn't the value system of that particular group of boys. They had an undefeated football season. They were really good at athletics, and the atmosphere at school was pretty anti-intellectual in those days.

It sounds like you fulfilled the dream of every unpopular kid who studies hard.

J. Carter Brown: Well, let's hope it pays off in the long run.

Looking back on those early years, were there any books you read that were especially important to you?

J. Carter Brown: When I was 14 or 15, we had a wonderful history teacher at school, and I remember Arnold Toynbee made a tremendous impression. I remember that sense of "Enough, Too Little and Too Much," these great generalizations about why some civilizations made it instead of others, where it was too hot or too cold. Great concepts that were pretty challenging.

However, there was no art history taught there, but I did run across a book of Flemish painting, and I sort of turned the pages and really fell in love with that. Then I had a fabulous opportunity which was to take a gap year in England because my parents said, "You're pretty young to go to college. Why don't you just do something else?" That opened me up to the wonderful opportunities to spend a year at Stowe House in Buckingham, England.

Stowe School - it was the perfect place to go because it was fairly recent compared to some of those hide-bound English schools. So to come in at the top, it was okay not having been through the whole system. And, it was set in the most gorgeous country house in Britain. I mean there was the South Front by the Brothers Adam, the original, by Vanbrugh and these great architects, and one of the fabulous parks that Capability Brown designed, making a revolution in landscape architecture. And this whole concept of these houses as vessels of civilization really gets to you. You absorb it through the pores. And, I had a wonderful experience being out of my own country and understanding you've got to be answering all the questions everybody says. Anything that happens in America, you're responsible. And, I think it's the most broadening thing you can do. My daughter has just had a fabulous time by having a year in France as a junior in high school, and it's changed her life; she's completely opened up, and I highly recommend to people to get time out of their own country. It just makes all the difference.

Then I came back to the United Sates and...

Harvard offered me to skip freshman year, and I thought that wasn't the point. And so, then when I was in a closer range to my classmates, I was a happy camper. God! I found that it wasn't so oddball to like music and poetry and visual arts, and there were kindred spirits there. I was in dramatics, I was president of the Harvard Glee Club -- which was the nearest thing to a professional organization -- as an undergraduate. We sang as the chosen chorus in those days of the Boston Symphony. We toured. We sang in Carnegie Hall, we recorded with RCA and won the Grand Prize for our Berlioz, sang all the great literature -- the Bach B minor, and the Passions, and Beethoven. I mean it was a fabulous opportunity. Three rehearsals a week, 50 concerts a year, and then the final summer a European tour, which was the first time since right after World War I that they'd done it. So, we were embraced with open arms by the Europeans, and we sang for the Pope in St. Peter's, and in Royal Albert Hall, and the Music Festival in Holland, and then Berlin over the radio. That was very rewarding to be there with a purpose, not just rubbernecking. We really felt needed and doing something for America and for Harvard, and also for ourselves.

I take it you were a good student in college, too.

J. Carter Brown: I managed to get a summa from Harvard. That was kind of exciting to be up there on that stage with eight other people representing the whole class, and there wasn't grade creep in those days. But again so much is luck. I got a wonderful teacher who put me onto a text -- there's only one copy in the world, which is in the Treasure Room of the National Library in Paris -- of a poet who had been overlooked by generations of French who got into classicism. This guy was a shaggy, baroque poet, rather like the British at the time. So it was fun to do an undergraduate thesis that really was breaking new ground in scholarship. That was very rewarding.

Was there any doubt in your mind about what you were going to do with your life?

J. Carter Brown: I didn't know what channel I would follow to carry out this idea of cultural administration. But, it was very simple. I didn't have enough talent to do any one thing superbly well. I couldn't draw. I wasn't that musical, although I've sung all my life in choruses. I wasn't that good an actor. I didn't do math, and didn't do the visual expression that it would take to be an architect, although I loved architecture. And, I wasn't going to be a poet. And, I wanted to achieve, so I figured the solution is to combine something so you can get a niche that other people haven't got. So, I would go into the arts from an academic point of view, and I'd combine that with a business school degree. And then, I could market myself as a kind of cultural administrator, a kind of midwife for culture, and someone to arc the connection between an audience and the work of art, or of the arts. And so, that was a career objective that I carved out for myself as a kid.

I was driving from the station in Washington, home to Georgetown. My father was working in the government, and I think I must have been 12 years old. I remember it was raining. We passed the National Gallery, and it was -- that wonderful pink marble in the rain it gets very rich rose, and... I remember looking up and saying to my parents, "That's the kind of job I would like to have some day." Now, little did I know that I would actually be Director of that museum. But I felt that institutions had the stability to bring the arts to people, and perhaps art museums were the most stable because theater companies come and go, and there's a lot of risk in the various performing arts and it's sort of ephemeral. But, there's something wonderfully permanent about those collections in art museums, and then you can use that as a base to bring in other art forms.

We had performing arts at the National Gallery. We have our own orchestra, one of the only museums that does have free concerts every week. We would bring dance groups in to relate to our Munch show or whatever. And then we had outreach. Our education system went out and reached, in my day, 80 million people a year. So out of this institution one had a kind of base, and that seemed to make sense.

How many graduate students from Harvard Business School in those days were thinking of going into the arts

J. Carter Brown: In my day, I was the only one. I made my application on the basis that I wanted to go into cultural administration and in the nonprofit world. They took me in spite of that. Maybe they thought they could convert me. But, since then I understand that up to 20 percent of the business school class at Harvard are interested in the not-for-profit sector. So there's been a tremendous sea-change. They accept women too, and that's helped. They didn't in my day. And they don't let you do what I did, which was come -- bang! -- off from Harvard. You have to have worked.

I would have gotten more out of the business school if I had worked before I went there. But I had a lot more education than I had in mind in the history of art.

I did not major in history of art as an undergraduate, and that was on purpose, on the advice of a hero of mine, the former Director of the Metropolitan Museum, Francis Henry Taylor, who was just one of the most charismatic people. And, I went to see him and ask his advice about preparing for a museum career. So he said, "Well first of all, don't major in fine arts." I said, "What?" He said, "You'll be doing that for the rest of your life. You'll have to go to graduate school, you'll be deep into it. Get a broad cultural background, so that what you do after that all has meaning." And so, I majored in history and literature, which Harvard offered to a small percentage of the class, and which was a wonderful field. And, I took some art history courses, but very little. I really got my art history aboard later.

What do you think your experiences overseas as a young man did for you?

J. Carter Brown: Oh, it changed my life. Being in a position where you don't take anything for granted any more, you have to understand what it is to be an American.

Europe, you know, every few feet there is some extraordinary visual or cultural experience. My mentor, Francis Taylor, said, "You've got to go to Europe and wash your eyeballs in the stuff." And it's true. He had this great phrase, he said, "A museum is a gymnasium for the eye. The stuff," he said, "that's in America has been filtered through dealers. It's only what's movable, what's fashionable at the time. In Europe you get things that are painted on the walls and they're not going to move, and you've really got to expose yourself to that." And now, of course, we have this global outlook that's important, because there's Asia to see. No one will understand a Japanese garden until you've walked through one, and you hear the crunch underfoot, and you smell it, and you experience it over time. Now, there's no photograph or any movie that can give you that experience.

In any field there are many smart and talented people who do not succeed. Why do you think you succeeded?

J. Carter Brown: I was immensely lucky. I was at the right place at the right time, and I just had fortune smiling. That doesn't happen to everyone.

Timing is really everything. When I got to be Director, I got into the files, and I saw that if I had gone through with my plan to get my doctorate and wouldn't have been available to be hired as a lowly assistant to the Director at the Gallery at that time, and then groomed to be Director very quickly, my then-boss had had another person all lined up. The "ifs" of history, these are the roads not taken. If I had just said, "No, I'm sorry, I'm not available for a year," that would have been the end of a National Gallery opportunity. So, it is useful to be where the lightning is coming down at a given moment. And, I credit a lot of what's called "success," to just serendipity.

Weren't you also well-prepared?

J. Carter Brown: I was immensely prepared. I was eleven years in studying after getting out of high school. I had a year in Europe studying with Bernard Berenson, and traveling, and learning German, and going to the Louvre Museum school, and later the Hague Art History Bureau. And, I had both the business school and this very rigorous master's at NYU Institute of Fine Arts, with this Germanic thoroughness, two-and-a-half years with a full-blown thesis, comprehensive exams in the whole history of art, and two language exams. And so, yes - and I'd had this fabulous opportunity growing up of exposure - but I'm interested in the inscription that is carved, apparently, over the lintel, the entrance of the institute founded by Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin: "Fortune smiles on those prepared to receive it." And, you know, the Bermuda Race in yacht racing, my father called it "the great Atlantic lottery," because where the Gulf Stream is, and what the weather is, is so fraught with accidental eventualities. And yet, when we were doing it, Carlton Mitchell won it three years in a row. And so, you know, there must be more to it than just luck.

You have suffered some disappointments and setbacks too. How do you deal with that?

J. Carter Brown: It's tough. You lick your wounds, and you pick up and go on.

Talking of ocean racing, one of the best lessons I learned was the concept of the rhumb line, R-H-U-M-B. You lay down a course from Newport to Bermuda, and that's your rhumb line. And then for some reason, you get blown off course. And, a lot of people make the mistake of saying, "Oh, we've got to get back to the rhumb line." There's a new rhumb line. It's from where you are to where you're going. And, it's so important to be able to pick up and forget all that and say, "Okay, play it where it lays." This is the new situation.

Who else inspired you and motivated you as you were starting out? Teachers? Family?

J. Carter Brown: A succession of teachers, obviously. I think most of all my father is my hero. Just an extraordinary human being, with a great range, and a great gentleness. My mother was pretty spectacular too. But professionally, people like Kenneth Clarke -- Lord Clarke, as he became -- who did that Civilisation television series. When we showed that at the National Gallery, we caused a stampede. I mean there were traffic jams down Constitution Avenue. As soon as we got through the 13-part series we had to show it over again.

We gave the National Gallery Medal to Lord Clarke, and the day he came we recognized that we couldn't go through with the original plan of just having him appear on stage. So many people had showed up in the morning in the middle of the week that they went the whole length of the West Building inside the National Gallery. So I brought him in at the far end. As people recognized that he was coming in, they began standing up so there was this wave and this clatter of the seats scraping against the marble. By the time he got to the stage he was in tears. He writes about it in his autobiography. He said he was terrified. But it shows that people do get interested in culture if it's presented to them right.

Did you bring with you to the National Gallery a philosophy or an idea of how to present art and culture to the public?

J. Carter Brown: I feel it's important to keep the viewer in mind and not just be a top-down elitist and say, "Well here it is, and if you don't understand it, that's your problem." It also can be made fun. In exhibitions I brought my passion for theater in a little bit, because normally, a permanent collection does not occupy the dimension of time, and I think it shouldn't. I think that people can go in at any place and see anything at any moment. But an art exhibition which is only there for a while gives one an opportunity to offer the viewer an experience that is linear over time, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I had a lot of fun with the exhibitions at the National Gallery, working with this wonderfully talented team of designers and curators, and producing a kind of show out of it that would leave people changed. That was a lot of fun.

It was also a lot of work, because you had to get people to lend. But that could be fun too. There's a lot of travel involved, and a lot of jaw-boning, and a lot of disappointments. Doris Duke had a pillow which said, "The answer is maybe, and that's final." That was the story of our life borrowing art objects. They just would never commit one way or another. It was The Perils of Pauline over and over again. But it made the adrenaline flow.

You really reinvented the idea of what an art gallery or cultural institution can be. Did you meet resistance along the way?

J. Carter Brown: There is a kind of conservatism in the museum world or used to be.

In France the word for "curator" and for "conservative" is the same word. And, people like to do things the way they always were done. That's where my Harvard Business School training came in. One of the first things I did when I became Director was get rid of the desk that my predecessor had, which was this huge big desk with a high-back chair. And this little rickety chair by the side, for anyone who came to see him would come and sit straight up, sort of like a serf handling his cap. And, I got rid of all that. I got the (I.M.) Pei office to design a totally modernist interior, even when we were still in the West Building, and substituted a round table with five equal chairs that were swivel chairs. What it telegraphed was that we were all there equally to solve the problem, whatever it was, which was somewhere in the middle of the table. And, everybody could contribute and everybody, by the end of it, should buy in. And, this was just a very different management style, but it seemed to work.

How do you deal with resistance, with criticism, of controversy?

J. Carter Brown: Well, I have a lot at the moment.

I've gone on, stayed on under my other hat as Chairman of the Fine Arts Commission. And boy, did we get it at the time of the Vietnam Memorial! I mean, I had Ross Perot in my office pounding the table! I knew that he'd sent in operatives to Iran. I didn't know what was going to happen to me. He wanted it his way. And, there was great brouhaha about that. Now, we have brouhaha about the World War II memorial. And, as of just a couple of days ago, that's all been ripped open again, and we've got to go to through more of these hearings where a small dissident group has ginned up a lot of complaint. And basically, it's a resistance to change. There's a nostalgia about the way things were, everybody thinks they were always that way. They forget that the Mall is a 20th century concept, and the Jefferson Memorial also had people lying down in front of bulldozers. But, it was built in 1941, and we have added and changed the Mall continuously, and this is only going to enhance the great design of the vista between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. And yet people just want to keep everything the way it is. And fine, sometimes it's better the way it is. But, we feel that this little Fine Arts Commission -- which are chosen to have some kind of credentials in the visual world -- has a lot of experience in visualizing what something's going to be. And, we think it's going to be okay.

How do you deal with a Ross Perot banging on your desk?

J. Carter Brown: I think you have to develop a thick skin at a certain point.

I get these screaming editorials by people I admire saying how benighted the design is, and you just have to soldier on. I say, "Okay, everybody's entitled to an opinion."

Have you had any regrets about directions you didn't take, or opportunities you might have missed?

J. Carter Brown: One regret I had was that I'd always been intrigued about the opportunity to direct a play. I'd been in a whole bunch of plays, but I'd never directed one. I made a decision early on at Harvard that drama took too much time, it was open-ended. I could do the Glee Club, and there was a schedule, and I could plan it and do my studies, too. Then I helped found a theater group that was doing central staging. The first play was Richard II. It was one of my favorites, and they asked me to direct it.

The week before, I had been elected President of the Glee Club, and I felt I couldn't do both. I've often looked back and thought, if I had directed that -- because I had all kinds of ideas of how to do it -- ...and it had been a success, and I'd gotten turned on, that could have been a life-changing experience. I could have gone into that field. And so, the road not taken. What Churchill called "the ifs of history." It's always gnawed at me. It would have been interesting to do.

Are there other things you haven't done that you'd like to do?

J. Carter Brown: Lots, but I'm not sure that I'm capable. Directing a play is one thing. I did get a chance to direct a movie. Actually my boss at that time was so worried that I was really into that he was afraid I was going to change careers.

The Gallery got some money to do a film on its American collection, and they hired somebody to do a script, and the director didn't like the script. So I went around to the filmmaker and said, "If, anonymously, I do a script, you submit it and it flies, then I get to be the writer, right?" So he said, "Great!" So, my boss calls me in and said, "Hey, this is a big improvement. Who wrote that?" Well, I had to confess. So, once I'd written it then it was ridiculous not to direct it, and I had a ball. And, we shot it in 35 (mm). We got Burgess Meredith to narrate it. Here I was in Hollywood, driving in a convertible with these big polygonal ICC cases behind, and sunglasses, and I thought, "Oh boy!" And so, my boss pulled me back and said, "No more movies! We're going to keep you in the museum profession."

Have you suffered any serious disappointments while working at the National Gallery?

J. Carter Brown: Oh, lots. You get somebody that would be just perfect as chief curator. He's a major professor at a university, and he comes down, house hunts, it's all locked up. Then at the very last minute he says, "You know, I really can't do this. I love teaching too much. I can't leave my students." It's just a blow in the pit of your stomach. You go all the way, and then start all over again. It takes a little picking yourself up off the floor and starting again after that kind of rejection.

During the course of this extraordinary career, did you ever suffer self-doubt? Fear of failure?

J. Carter Brown: Funnily enough, not. I don't know why, that doesn't seem to be in my chemistry.

I'm just a sunny personality that has this idea that everything's going to come out all right. When I was diagnosed with cancer just this last year, I figured, "Okay, well that's what apparently is in the deck that I've been dealt, and we'll just do the best we can." Don't let it put you into a slough of despond. One thing I really fear is living too long and becoming one of these vegetables and a burden to everybody and to yourself. And so, I've had such a rich life, such fabulous opportunities, that I feel, "Okay, take it as it comes."

How do you explain to someone, a young person perhaps, who has no idea what you do, why you do it, why it's important to you?

J. Carter Brown: I feel so strongly that if we possibly can, we should be doing something for our fellow humans while we're here in this short span. Because I have had the opportunity to find, personally, how immensely rewarding it is to plug into the riches of our cultural heritage and to all of the arts, I want to share that with people, and not just sybaritically bottle it up and enjoy it myself. I feel a kind of evangelical impulse to say, "Hey! Look what you're missing! You can get so much more out of your life if you just give a little bit of yourself to understand and tune into this fabulous material."

How important is it for all of us to have a connection with culture in our lives, a connection with art?

J. Carter Brown: I have a very biased view of the relative importance of culture and things like just making money. I was very disappointed when I had dinner with an undergraduate at Harvard a couple weeks ago who said that over 50 percent of his class, he thinks, are just absolutely tunnel-visioned about how they can max out their income. And, I just feel that is a kind of corrosive aspect of American society that is doing us in. It's the result of the consumerism that is driven by this massive assault of advertising, by the "gold rush" mentality of the dot-com era, get-rich-quick stock options and so forth, which I think it's fortunate for this country that some of the bloom has gone off that peach. But, it distorts the values. It makes people aggressive and competitive, and they have no time for their families, for really mining the riches that are out there that could enrich their lives. And so, I hope that our education system can begin to deflect more attention to exposing the young to the arts, and to culture, and to their heritage, so that then we develop a demand side to culture that will make the whole thing happen. They will become the electorate, they will become the patrons by virtue of being the consumers of art. If some of them also are producers, that's great, but that's a very small minority. And if we can get the value system of the society turned toward that direction, we will have a much happier nation.

This is not a happy nation these days. Bob Hughes's Culture of Complaint is right on the target. Everybody wants to be a victim, or complains about being a victim. Fractionation into these "identity politics" sub-groups has lost sight of the e pluribus unum idealism of our Founding Fathers. That's why I feel so strongly about this World War II memorial. That was our finest hour. This country pulled together and took care of one of the greatest evils that has ever beset this planet. And it was so exciting. I was alive then, and, you know, from farms to factories to the front lines, everybody was focused on one thing. Now we're spoiled. Younger people have all of this affluence, and they get into drug culture, they get feeling that the world owes them. I think it's too bad. I think that we can do better.

During your tenure at the National Gallery, you dramatically increased the collection, the facilities, the programming, the attendance. Can too much success be a problem?

J. Carter Brown: The so-called "success problem" is basically that you lose your privacy. People want to snip stuff off your lapels, and you feel it's undeserved, and it gets in the way. So there are trade-offs. However, as compared to the alternative, I'm not knocking it.

What gives you your greatest sense of satisfaction?

J. Carter Brown: A peak experience from the arts. Being in a concert hall, or in front of a great painting, or a work of architecture and getting that buzz and that shiver down your spine.

Retrospectively, I guess my greatest sense of satisfaction is the East Building of the National Gallery. Again: luck and timing. I was there when we had this extraordinary donor in Paul Mellon, and helped choose an extraordinary architect, I.M. Pei, with whom I worked for 10 years on this project. And to have it voted by the rank and file of the American Institute of Architects as one of the ten best American buildings of all time is rather satisfying and, people have voted with their feet. They come in there, you watch them as they enter the building, and you watch that jaw drop, and they put their finger on the name of the architect that's carved in the wall. We can't now get the oils out, we just leave it. And, people are enriched by what goes on there, and by the experience of being there. So, that does give one a certain sense of satisfaction of being a small part. I was one of a whole number of people who made that happen, but luckily I was part of it.

Regardless of the field, what do you think are the personal characteristics that are important for achievement? For succeeding?

J. Carter Brown: The Academy of Achievement has about the best list I've ever seen, from vision and perseverance to integrity. It's hard to think of anything else. A lot of it is hard work. There are trade-offs. You have to put in the hours, but a lot of it is being sensitive to other people. There are more ways of skinning a cat than rubbing its fur the wrong way. There's no point breaking a lot of crockery unnecessarily.

What do you know now about achievement that you didn't know when you started out?

J. Carter Brown: I am deeply aware of the dimension of luck. It's so important to be prepared to receive it, but it is a major factor. There's no question.

If a young person comes to you for advice, what do you say to them?

J. Carter Brown: I think everybody has a bent, and the key is to follow that bent. So much human wastage comes from people who are doing things with their lives that they really aren't happy with. And, to recognize that it doesn't have to be a financial success to be living the most productive and rewarding kind of life. If that is your bent, go to it. It must be great fun to be a tycoon, but not everybody has that gift. And, I see so many people struggling away in law firms or brokerage houses and not really happy, waiting for the weekend when they can get out and tinker, or do what they really want to do. So, do what you really want to do. That's why God put you on this earth.

Mr. Brown, what has the American Dream meant to you?

J. Carter Brown: I am so proud of being an American. I happen to have had a lot of forebears who also took advantage of the American Dream, starting in the 1630s, and were able to take advantage of the system and make very rewarding business decisions. But, to me it has to do with a freedom for self-realization, and that we don't have to be coerced. We have this extraordinary affluent society, fabulous resources, and one should feel that America can offer opportunity to people who really put in, and not simply take.

We're so glad you found the time to do this. Thank you.

Well good. I'm delighted.