"We Enjoyed Living in This House"

By Robert Ajemian

The Carters leave the White House with regret and head home

As Jimmy Carter and his wife packed their personal belongings into cardboard boxes last week and prepared to leave the White House, their minds were on both the history-rich home they were departing from and the return to their native south Georgia. On one of their final days in the White House, over breakfast in the family dining room, they talked with TIME Washington Bureau Chief Robert Ajemian about the drastic change in their lives. Ajemian's report:

Jimmy Carter stood in the second-floor hallway waiting for his wife to join him for breakfast. It was eight o'clock, and, in his dark blue suit and polished brown shoes, he was ready for another long day of farewells to supporters. Carter had already been to the Oval Office for an hour of work. Now, back upstairs, he looked down the wide corridor and said in a soft voice: "We've enjoyed living in this house. It will be hard to leave it." Rosalynn Carter, wearing a white wool suit, came out of a nearby bedroom. At the table, the President said a short prayer and then began talking of his own future, speaking slowly as he examined his feelings, the answers less swift and rehearsed than usual. "For the first time in my life," he said, "I don't have any specific goals to work toward. I've never had to face that before."

As the steward served fried eggs, the President was asked how he would cope with the sudden change from wielding enormous power one day to having it disappear the next. "I don't know," he said, an answer that seldom passes from Carter's lips. His preoccupations have always been outside himself; he is not a man who publicly agonizes over his psyche. "Right now," he said, "I think I can accept the change without too much damage to myself.

"I've never had time for leisure," he continued. "I've always had a schedule, a purpose. I've always been an ambitious and driving person." He looked across the table at his wife. "Rosalynn and I haven't had a vacation since our honeymoon." Then he said they will spend the next two weeks at Caneel Bay in the Virgin Islands.

Carter's wounds do not show; he is too disciplined for that. His manner is cheerful, and he has managed a smooth, gracious transition for his successor. Carter's personal papers filled 20 vans, which last week headed toward Georgia. His daily diaries, which he kept without break for four years, are complete, and he hopes in the next 30 days to land a book contract that will bring him a needed chunk of money.

Carter will miss the daily contact with his band of Georgia loyalists, and last week he invited four of them to the White House for a seven-course dinner cooked by a Chinese chef. There were warm embraces when the meal ended. Another evening, Carter became so nostalgic that he broke out a bottle of vodka that had been given to him by Leonid Brezhnev in Vienna in 1979 and reminisced with some of his cronies about the early political years and the lost campaign. The Carters invited Vice President Walter Mondale and his wife to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom on their final night in the White House.

Carter told his senior aides that he was worried about Rosalynn's mood. The single most important thing to him, Carter declared, was her happiness. "I'm O.K.," he said, "but she's still vulnerable." A couple of nights later, Carter introduced her extravagantly to hundreds of campaign workers who had gathered at the White House from around the country. "Here is a woman," the President said, "who has graced this mansion more than any other person who has lived here."

Now, at the breakfast table, Rosalynn listened carefully as her husband described what would be his daily schedule in Plains. She had been unenthusiastic in the past about going home. Her friends say that she will not last there, that eventually she will insist on moving to a place more stimulating. She talked of her plans to write a book and of her daughter Amy, who is being uprooted from a school she likes. The only friend Amy has kept up with in Plains is Billy Carter's daughter Mandy. "But she said she's looking forward to going back where people think like she does," said Rosalynn, her voice husky from a sore throat.

The breakfast conversation turned to Ronald Reagan, and Carter was cautious about what he said. He has let his closest aides know he is afraid that Reagan will not engage himself enough in foreign policy. Their meeting in the Oval Office after the election unsettled Carter: he got little feedback from Reagan on a long checklist of international subjects and not a single question about Iran and the hostages. When Rosalynn observed that Reagan was gradually changing his positions, Carter, carefully buttering his toast, edged toward some franker views. "I predict he won't follow his campaign talk," he said, referring to Reagan's promises about abolishing the Departments of Energy and Education, making large tax cuts and other issues. Said Carter: "When you get here, it's a lot tougher to do." The previous evening, Carter had delivered a short, graceful farewell speech on TV that touched on the three issues he believes are of paramount importance: nuclear arms control, the planet's diminishing resources, and human rights. He hopes to force the issues on Reagan.

Over his second cup of coffee, Carter was asked whether he had any regrets about allowing National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to become too public a personality. The President defended Brzezinski and soon got quite worked up about the subject. Leaning forward in his chair, he declared that a President should be able to obtain whatever foreign policy advice he chooses. He noted that many of his foreign policy accomplishments sprang from Brzezinski's ideas. Carter recalled that when Cyrus Vance first went to China, there was no progress. "When Brzezinski went over," Carter said, "things began to move."

Still, Carter conceded, it would have been better if Brzezinski had played a less public role. "It was probably not the best thing for Zbig to speak up so much," he said. "If there was a mistake, it was my own because I could have stopped that whenever I wanted."

The President was asked to appraise the world leaders he had dealt with. He described China's Deng Xiaoping as a breath of fresh air, a man who, in Carter's mind, could be trusted to keep his word. "He was not afraid to talk about his country's weaknesses," said Carter, "something the Soviets would never dare do." Valery Giscard d'Estaing was the most powerful of all the Western leaders he had worked with because of the wide authority granted to the President by French law. Britain's Margaret Thatcher was a woman of strong opinions, forceful and dependable. He did not talk about Germany's Helmut Schmidt, but aides have always said that the President considered Schmidt a devious man, effusive in person but duplicitous behind Carter's back. In Carter's view, Egypt's Anwar Sadat loomed above all the world leaders. "I trust him like my wife," he said looking at Rosalynn. It is no secret that Carter found Israel's Menachem Begin impossible to deal with.

Carter will sorely miss the intellectual stimulation of the White House and intends to invite people from around the country to visit him in Georgia. He has already started to prepare a list of names. He hopes to spend a couple of days a week in Atlanta, where an office is being prepared for him in the Federal Building.

For now, though, the Carters are headed back to Plains. "I'll still wake up early, around 6 or so," says Jimmy Carter, "and read all the papers." He spoke with enthusiasm, as though he were determined to make the return to his roots work out. He will spend a good deal of the time on a book about his presidency and do some hunting and fishing, watch after his farm and timberlands, and stroll the fields. "It will be a tremendous wrench for him," said one of his closest friends. "He has always been a forward-looking man. He will have to fight against dwelling in the past."

Now the steward moved in to clear the table. A telephone call came for the President. He took it by the window, turning the chair around so that he could gaze out on the lawn as he listened. His caring for the White House was palpable. The ambitious, driven man clearly regretted leaving the place. And his regret somehow gave credence to an astonishing conversation that he had with one of his senior aides shortly after the election. The President asked if it were possible to install a loyalist as head of the Democratic National Committee so that Carter could maintain some measure of control. As the man listened in disbelief, the President told him--in unmistakable terms--that he might want to be a candidate for the job again. qed

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