Former Ambassador to the European Union and Chief White House Domestic Policy Adviser Stuart Eizenstat wants his new book to catalyze a reassessment of the Carter administration, as he believes that President Jimmy Carter’s presidency was underappreciated. Eizenstat outlined his claims during his presentation in Rapaporte Treasure Hall on Thursday. 

Eizenstat, a former member of Brandeis’ Board of Trustees, said that Carter’s political hero was President Harry Truman, and that while both presidents left office highly unpopular, unlike Carter, Truman has since been remembered for having greater accomplishments than failures.

“I’m hopeful that this book will have a similar impact on a reassessment of the Carter administration, not just Jimmy Carter as an esteemed former president but as a consequential former president as well,” said Eizenstat. 

“Almost 70 percent of all our legislation was passed by Congress. The president honored the institutions, the president respected the independence of the judiciary, of the FBI, of the Justice Department, and of the important role that the press plays in our democracy even when it was brutally negative toward him,” Eizenstat.

Eizenstat said that he attributes the “wrap” of the Carter presidency with what he calls, “the four ‘I’s:’” inflation, Iran, inexperience by the president and his “Georgia Mafia,” and interparty warfare.

“All of those are very real,” said Eizenstat. “But they have obscured an enormous array of accomplishments at home and abroad that have had lasting impacts, more obvious today than they were then. I wanted to write this book while there are still living eyewitnesses to give a complete and accurate assessment of the 39th presidency: the mistakes and failures, including my own but also his successes.”

Eizenstat said that Carter convinced Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to attempt, after many failures, to negotiate with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, which eventually led to the Camp David Accords, the “greatest personal presidential diplomacy in American history,” according to Eizenstat.

Eizenstat gave several examples of many unpopular actions taken by Carter, including the Panama Canal Treaty, which 80 percent of the public was not in favor of, according to Eizenstat.

Eizenstat also said that while their administration had inherited high rates of inflation from President Richard Nixon and President Gerrald Ford’s administration, inflation had increased to double digits during Carter’s administration, and Eizenstat did everything he could to lower it. He eventually made the decision to appoint Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, since Volcker said that he was going to choke inflation and that it would tighten the money supply and raise unemployment and interest rates, according to Eizenstat. 

“Not once did Carter point the finger at Paul Volcker. We took the medicine,” said Eizenstat. “There is not one economist, not one successor of Paul Volcker, who won’t say that the reason you and I enjoy low inflation is because of Paul Volcker and because Carter let him do his job. And it worked—inflation dropped like a rock under Volcker after Reagan’s first year, too late to help us in our reelection. That was symbolic of so much of what we did. The seeds were planted and the fruit only became obvious years later.”

At the end of the Carter presidency, Eizenstat conjured a downturn in fortune brought on by the Iran Hostage Crisis. He recalled the Iran Hostage Crisis’ impact on the administration. He questioned the decisions made by President Carter in this high-stakes chapter of Carter’s term in the White House. 

“This is one instance where I wish he had followed my advice because I recommended, along with [Former National Security Advisor] Brzezinski, immediate military action,” said Eizenstat. “A sandstorm occurs when one of the helicopters tries to take off, it blinds the pilot, the motorblade hits the C130 filled with fuel, it bursts into flames eight servicemen are killed, and it ended up engulfing not only them, but our presidency.”

Gary Samore, Senior Executive Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, said the reason he thinks that Carter lost reelection was because people saw him as a “weak and inept president.”

“The Carter administration is remembered for the problems that accompanied it more than the accomplishments,” said Samore. “Some of it wasn’t his fault. I deeply believe if the rescue mission had been successful, he would have been reelected. I think it was that accident that doomed his presidency.”

Eizenstat’s tenure in White House politics goes back to Carter’s presidency in 1977. Eizenstat also served as the United States Ambassador to the European Union from 1993 to 1996 and as the United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001.

When a member of the audience asked Eizenstat about Carter’s visit to Brandeis Jan. 23, 2007 in which Carter apologized for what he called an “improper and stupid” sentence in his book, “Palestine: Peace and Apartheid,” Eizenstat said that he actually wrote speaking points for Carter’s Brandeis speech. The speech was succeeded by a followup conversation by Alan M. Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor who had criticized the book but later praised Carter’s speech at Brandeis.

“You heard the Brandeis Jimmy Carter today, and he was terrific. I support almost everything he said. But if you listen to the Al Jazeera Jimmy Carter, you’ll hear a very different perspective,” Dershowitz said in a later interview with The New York Times. 

“I guess I was the Brandeis Jimmy Carter,” Eizenstat joked.