The Daily Stoic - What Jimmy Carter Can Teach Us About Justice | Ryan Holiday Speaks at the Naval Academy

Episode Date: August 11, 2024

Back in April, Ryan went to the United States Naval Academy and spoke to over 1,000 Sophomore Cadets about Stoicism, the virtue of Justice, and the legacy of USNA alum and former President, Jimmy Carter. This was part of the Stutt Ethics Lecture Series at the Naval Academy, made possible by a gift from William C. Stutt and his wife Carolyn. 🎙️ Listen to the Q&A portion | Apple Podcasts, Spotify, & Wondery📕 Learn more about Jimmy Carter's life and legacy in Right Thing, Right Now | https://store.dailystoic.com/✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing right now on Audible. You can sign up right now for a free 30 day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You'll get Right Thing right now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend.

We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Back in April, I was at the Naval Academy. I flew there, I was supposed to do this talk to about 1200 sophomores there at the Naval Academy. And I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about at the Naval Academy.

I've been doing this series on the Cardinal Virtues. I did a courage talk back in 21, I think, and then in 22 I started doing discipline back when they were in their plebe summer. The gauntlet that they go through, they've matured and grown up so fast. I was like, what do I want to talk about? I don't want to do the same stuff. And so I decided to challenge myself. I'd just been in New Orleans and I told this story at Barnes and Noble, but I'd actually gotten turned on to the greatness of Jimmy Carter. I had this barber there

and he was raving about Jimmy Carter one day. And I just didn't know why anyone would think he was a great president or a great man. I just didn't know anything. And so I'd gone down this rabbit hole reading about him. That's where I learned that he went to the Naval Academy. I learned about his history with Hyman Rickover, which I talk a lot about in the Justice book

and in the Discipline book. So anyways, I just talk a lot about in the justice book and in the discipline book. So anyways, I just decided, hey, you know what? I'm gonna challenge myself. I'm gonna do a talk I haven't really done before. And I'm just gonna talk about what Jimmy Carter can teach these graduates about Stoicism, about life, and about this virtue of justice. And as I think you'll see in the talk, it's a lot.

This is part of the Stutt Ethics Lecture Series, which is made possible by a gift from William C. Stutt and his wife Carolyn. It was in Mahon Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy, which is right next to what I think is now Carter Hall, which is only recently there. Part of the naming recommission, I had someone from that naming commission on, we talked about his amazing book, Robert E. Lee and Me. Well they they renamed a hall that had been named after a Confederate admiral or whatever. They named it after Jimmy Carter which is so cool. It was an honor for me to give this talk and I'm so glad to bring you this episode.

Appreciate it. It's good to be back here with all of you. I was getting my haircut in New Orleans several years ago, and as I was sitting in this old-timey barber shop, I looked around and I noticed that the barber was the only one there. There were a bunch of chairs, but he was the only one there. And so I asked him, I said, hey, how come you're the only one in here? And he said, you know, I used to have a number of barbers that worked for me, but they kept speaking badly

of our president. And so I fired him. And maybe I forgot I was in the middle of the Deep South, but I said, oh, really? What president? And before I could regret my question, he said the name I probably would have expected least out of any president he could have named.

He said they kept speaking badly of Jimmy Carter. And I thought two things. I thought two things. One, I thought has this guy been holding on to a grudge and working by himself for 40 years? And then I thought he thinks Jimmy Carter is a great president. And I don't know why that struck me as odd. Maybe it's what I heard growing up.

Maybe it's what I'd read. But it struck me as a solvable problem. I realized I didn't know very much about Jimmy Carter. And so I decided I would read about him. Let me go forward here. And so I decided I would read everything that I could about him. And I think we're stuck. There we go. I decided I would read everything that I could about him. And I think we're stuck.

There we go, I decided I would read everything that I could about him. And what's true about George Washington, one historian said, is true about Jimmy Carter. And that's the more that you read about him, the more that you study him, the more you learn about him, the more you like him. And so that's what I wanted to talk about tonight, just a few feet, of course, from Carter Hall.

I wanted to talk about a great man, a great graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, class of 47. And what we can learn about him, because specifically, you know, we tend to think about someone like Jimmy Carter and we would go, was he a great president? Now that's a politically charged question. That's not really what I want to get into, but I think the more interesting question is, was he a great man?

And that's what I want to focus on tonight, specifically because I've been in the middle of this series of books on the cardinal virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. And Jimmy Carter embodies each and every one of these virtues, but most of all, he embodies the virtue of justice. Courage is pretty straightforward.

Discipline, we know, is required to succeed at anything. Justice seems harder to define. It's more, of course, as I said, politically charged. It's a little more controversial. But maybe that says something about where we are as a society as well, right? When you hear this word justice, you think the legal system, you think courts, you think politics,

maybe you think social justice. We don't think about it as a person with integrity, a person with a sense of honor, a person who lives by a code. Cicero would say that justice is the virtue that brings polish to all the other virtues. It's the way in which a person truly earns the title, a good or a great man.

Carter embodies that in each and every way. As I've been doing this virtue series, we first talked about courage and we talked about discipline. And tonight I wanna talk specifically about that idea of justice. Justice being, I think, the North Star of the other virtues. Because if courage is not in pursuit of justice,

if that discipline is not aimed towards being an effective conduit for justice, if wisdom is not teaching us right and wrong, justice, then what good is it? And so justice is the virtue that I'm thinking about, that I wanted to talk about. And the great Hyman Rickover, Admiral Rickover, class of 22.

As he would hang up the phone, as he would conclude meetings, as he would answer questions, subordinates would come to him, what should I do, do you think I should do this or that, and he liked to say, do what is right, right? This is what we mean by the virtue of justice. He would say that life is not meaningless to a person who doesn't do things that are wrong simply because they are wrong, not whether they're legal, not whether they could get away with them. He said this kind of a moral code gives a person a focus, something to build a life around.

And this is the virtue of justice that interests me that we want to talk about. And we're talking about doing the right thing. We don't mean later, we mean now, right? Doing the right thing and doing the right thing. We don't mean later. We mean now right doing the right thing and doing it right now And if we go back in Jimmy Carter's life, he's born in Plains, Georgia in 1924 He's born a hundred years ago. It's amazing. He's born Before the invention of penicillin. He's born before They bring sound to the movies. He remembers the most important day of his life not being his inauguration for president,

but the day they flipped the electricity on. And so it's a remarkable life spanning an incredible amount of change, an incredible amount of progress. And yet all his life, he thought back to something that his elementary school teacher Miss Coleman said she said that we must adjust to changing times and still hold true to unchanging principles. I think that's a beautiful idea that's what these four virtues are first laid down by the Stoics almost 2,500 years ago. So she teaches in this idea that times are gonna change we're always growing and

changing and adapting, but there's some things that don't change, some things that we commit to that become a part of us, that become that moral code that we live and learn by. Jimmy Carter, as a young man, hears a parable of the talents. I'm sure some of you might be familiar with this story. A talent is an amount of money. A master has three servants.

He gives one five talents, he gives another two talents, and he gives a third one talent. The one with five talents invests it in the market, doubles it, the one with two talents finds a way to put it in a bank, slowly earns interest, eventually doubles, and the third is scared of the responsibility of managing this bit of money while their master is away. So they simply bury it in the ground.

They bury it in the ground and when the master comes back they're proud to give him his initial bit of capital. The master is upset. He loves the other two, he's upset with the third. The parable of the talents, it's an accidental pun, talent being an amount of money, but it is actually a parable about talent, about our natural gifts, about what we do with our lives. Carter would say that what he took from this story

was that we should use to the fullest degree whatever talents and opportunities we've been given, preferably for the benefit of others, right? Each of us is unique, totally unique set of DNA that's never existed before and will never exist again. What do we do with it? What do we make of it? What good do we bring into the world through it? And I think it's this idea actually that brings Carter to the Naval Academy, class of 47. It's this idea of making the most of his life, doing something, being of value, being of service, maximizing that potential that he has.

But he would remember fondly or not so fondly every morning waking up here and being told, forced to repeat this little Naval Academy motto, it's another week in which to excel, another week in which to excel. And so it's this idea that we always have this opportunity to be great, to become what we're capable of being if we put in the work, if we have the discipline, if we have the courage. One of his classmates in the class of 47 was Albert Rusher, and Albert Rusher's roommate here committed suicide. He was devastated, he was afraid to be alone, and he would remember all of his life

that Jimmy Carter, who was his classmate, invited him to come live in his dorm room. They lived three to a room because he wanted the company. He remembered this sort of act of kindness. And I think throughout Carter's life, this is what you see, these acts of kindness, these acts of grace, these acts of support, this overflow of goodness, and it's a wonderful story.

He's also two years younger than West Brown, class of 49. And you can imagine as I think the fifth black man accepted to the Naval Academy, he would be the first to graduate, but the fifth to be accepted. He was subjected to horrendous hazing, horrendous bullying. There was a sustained campaign to drive him out of the Academy.

You can imagine a young boy like Jimmy Carter, a young man like Jimmy Carter, raised in the segregated South, might've participated in this or turned a blind eye to it, but actually they were teammates on the cross-country team. They ran together. Carter would say, later, I ran with you and you were better, a nod to the battles that Brown had at a whole other level than Carter did. But Brown would remember a particular day,

he's walking through the halls, he's being subjected to this horrendous hazing and bullying and abuse, and out of nowhere, young Jimmy Carter comes and throws his arm around him and whispers in his ear not to let them get him down and not to let him drive him out. Now, Carter would be subjected to all sorts of abuse himself for this. He was called a traitor to his race. He was called a goddamn you

know what lover and if he doesn't let it get to him, he's a supporter, he's a friend, he's what today we would call an ally. And Brown would graduate in in 49 as the first black man to graduate from the Academy. Your field house is named after him to this day and Carter would remember another incident like this after he enters the submarine service in 1949 1950 he's on K1 which would eventually become the USS Barracuda and they pull in to the port in Nassau, in the Bahamas, and the governor general invites the crew

to a ball in the honor of the submariners. But he intimates that only the white officers would be allowed in, only the white crew would be allowed in. And so Carter writes about this in his memoir. He says that the captain calls all the men together and asks them how they would like to respond. And the troops, the service having then been integrated by order of President Truman, and he would say,

after multiple curses and curse words were censored from the message, we unanimously declined to participate. The decision of the crew of the K-1 was an indication of how equal racial treatment had been accepted and relished. I was very proud of my ship." He would reflect later when he tried to tell this story back home that people didn't respond to it the same way.

They didn't see it as a triumph. And so one of the things he took here, one of the things he was exposed to here, was a wider consciousness, a larger network. He was exposed to people was a wider consciousness, a larger network, was exposed to people that he didn't know. And this made Carter grow, it made him change, it opened something up in him that we would see flower in his career as a politician. graduates in 46, the class of 47 graduates early. And let me see here.

He famously interviews with Admiral Rickover. And as they go through the multi-hour interview, they talk about books, they talk about history, they talk about physics, they talk about mechanics. Finally, Rickover looks at him and he says, how did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy? And Carter's quite proud, he says, 59th, sir. And as he goes on to talk about his academic accomplishments,

Rickover stops him short and he says, but did you always do your best? And this question gives Carter pause. He wants to say yes, but he stops for a second and he begins to think about the times that he didn't try his best, that he could have done more, that he could have learned more, he could have asked more questions, he could have tried harder as an athlete, could have tried harder in PT. He thinks about all the things that he didn't do, all the ways that maybe he didn't live up to that

idea in the parable of the talents. And so he decides to answer honestly. He says, no sir, I didn't always do my best. And Rick over asked him a question that would change his life. He says, why not? And then he gets up and signals that the meeting is over. And it's this question, why didn't I do my best? Why hadn't I always done my best, would haunt Carter for the rest of his life. He would even name, when he ran for president,

he would name his campaign biography after it, a nod to why not the best? Why don't we have the best? Why aren't we our best? Why don't we have the best? Why aren't we our best? Why don't we do our best? And I think, again, when we think about justice, it's not solely what we do for others, but first what we do for ourselves

so we can be a better service to others. And Carter runs for governor in 1970. It's home state of Georgia after he's left the Navy. And it's a typical campaign for a Southern politician at that time. He gets elected. And so you can imagine his constituents, you can imagine the surprise of the media, of his donors, when the first words of his inaugural address, state of Georgia, are I say to you quite frankly that the time

for racial discrimination is over. And it goes over about as you would expect. And yet Carter understands that it's the right thing to do. He understands that the governor serves just one term in Georgia at that time. And now that he's been elected, he intends not to shirk from this responsibility, right? To do what's right and to do it right now.

Of course, again, he's called a traitor. He's called all sorts of things. But he does it because it was the right thing to do. And one of the most interesting stories, I think, of Carter's time as the governor is the state of Georgia at that time has a work release program, and he meets a woman named Mary Prince, or Mary Prince Fitzpatrick, as she was then known, who is detailed to work the grounds of the state house. And he and his wife Rosalind get to know her.

They hear the details of her case. She's been convicted of murder. And they find that, in fact, she was wrongfully convicted. She was railroaded into confessing and taking a plea deal. And so they ask that she be assigned to be the nanny to their daughter. And then they win her a pardon.

And then they bring her with them to the White House. And then when he leaves the presidency, he buys her a house in Plains, Georgia. And they remain friends for as long as the two of them live. I think it's a beautiful story. Again, it's the story of a man growing, a man changing, a man reaching past the limitations of where he was born and the time he was from. I think also though the story of his wife, his

marriage to Rosalynn is a beautiful story. They meet while he's on leave from the Naval Academy, they marry a month after he graduates, and they become partners in business and life and politics for a decently long time, actually an incredibly long time. Their marriage has its ups and downs as all marriages do. He would wake her up each morning in the White House and say, just think another day in which to excel, usually at 5.30 in the morning, and she would say, just think, another day in which to excel, usually at 5.30 in the morning, and she would say, but I don't want to excel, not at this hour.

She died last year after 77 years of marriage, the longest marriage in the history of American presidencies. In fact, 77 years is longer than half of all presidents have actually lived. It's an incredible marriage, an incredible partnership, an incredible love story. One that I think Carter doesn't get enough credit for, I think we have to judge presidents and their marriages on a curve. The unfortunate story of great men and women of history is that their marriages are not usually love stories. There's not a ton of loyalty between them, unfortunately. One campaign reporter

would say that of all the presidents he covered in the 20th century, Jimmy Carter was probably the only one that he could say with absolute certainty was always faithful to his wife. Carter would give an interview to Playboy Magazine as he ran for president. Some of the older people in the room might actually remember this. It was one of the big gaffes of his presidency.

It's funny what counts as a gaffe then versus now. What Carter admits to in this interview is not infidelity, but it gives you a glimpse, I think, into what an incredibly high standard he holds himself to. He confesses to the press for looking at women with lust and committing adultery in his heart. Not in fact, but in his heart. He's talking

biblically here about having lust in one's heart. And he's not saying it in the way that I think people think. I thought it was actually quite beautiful when you actually go and read the interview. What you see he's doing is trying to say that he's not better than anyone else, that he struggles like everyone else. He says that a guy who's loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness. He was trying to think about how hard it is to be other people. He was trying to be forgiving and give grace to other people who have made mistakes, trying not to judge, trying simply to think of his own battles and where he can do better and where he can get, where he can

hold himself to a higher standard, which I think is an important part of justice. Justice like discipline is a thing that starts at home. It's a thing we hold ourselves to, not other people to. It's not a weapon we wield against other people. And it's not an easy road. And it means being hard on yourself. That's the sense you get as you study Jimmy Carter, is that no one was harder on Jimmy Carter

than Jimmy Carter. It means being stricter than you could get away with. Again, there's a difference between something that's legal, something that is survivable, and something that's right or wrong. And we get this sense that he holds himself to a standard. This is what virtue is about, a standard higher than what most people hold themselves to, a standard that's higher than what you're allowed to do.

This is of course your motto here, the idea of honor and courage and commitment. I think this is reflected too in the unprecedented decision he makes when he wins the White House. Jimmy Carter ran a small peanut farm in Plains, Georgia. And when he assumes the presidency, so every decision he makes is going to be above board and he's not tempted to enrich himself during the presidency, he puts this peanut farm in a blind trust, as if the president of the United States

is making a lot of peanut-related decisions on a regular basis. And this decision, like many right and fair and honorable decisions, is in some cases laughed at, like we're just doing it, and in other cases, the costs of it are obscured. When he leaves office, this peanut farm is a million dollars in debt.

So his thanks for his ethics and honor and commitment is that he pays for it. He pays for it with money that he doesn't have. Again, your motto, that we serve others selflessly and we live with integrity. Not what we could get away with, not what other, our predecessors or our successors do. Again, this all feels very quaint in retrospect, the president putting his peanut farm in a blind trust, but if other presidents had followed this example we would trust the institution

more. When Carter is finally elected president, he convenes his staff at 4.35 p.m., literally the first meeting on his books, is with future Senator Max Cleland, who loses two legs and an arm in Vietnam. He asks Max first if you would like to serve as the head of the VA, and then he asked him his opinion on pardoning all the draft dodgers and evaders from Vietnam. Now, Cleland is actually in support of this, but he tells Carter, hey, I think a number of politicians are gonna be opposed for it.

He says, I think this might be the kind of thing you wait for your second term for. And Carter thought it was integral to heal the nation's wounds to move forward, to move on. He thought it was the right thing to do. Cleland agreed. And so the first proclamation of his presidency is this. He tells Cleland, I don't care if all 100 senators

are against me. It's the right thing to do. And he announces it. And some argue that Carter's presidency is over before it even begins. This hard but right decision, this controversial decision, being the person that heals the wounds, that makes the first steps towards reconciliation

usually is rewarded by pissing both sides off, which Carter promptly does. It was a costly decision, but again, one that he felt was right. Future Senator Bob Carey would say that it was the bravest decision he's ever seen a president make, and this is a Medal of Honor recipient. It's a hard but right decision, necessary for the country, bad for Jimmy Carter and his career, bad for his poll numbers,

but he thought it was the right thing to do. Justice is that though, it's making hard decisions, it's making unpopular decisions, it's pissing both sides off. ["The Last Post"] Are you listening to this podcast in your car? Or on your commute to work? Maybe you're dropping your kids off at school. I'm Dan Snow, and on my podcast Dan Snow's History Hit, I transport you to somewhere a

little more exciting. With in-depth series and storytelling, I unravel the mysteries of the Inker at Machu Picchu, follow the footsteps of Howard Carter to Tutankhamun's tomb, and hunt down Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica. For historical adventure and escapism, check out Dan Snow's history hit, Wherever You Get Your Podcasts. Carter takes the presidency,

and one of the first things he does is decide to orient America's foreign policy in a different direction. The 60s and 70s, to say nothing of the 40s and 50s, had been what you might define as real politic, political realism. There is the sense of having to do business with bad people. There's a sense with having to make compromises. There are assassinations. There are coup attempts. There are all sorts of relatively sketchy things

that did not age well, as any student of American history would know. And Carter decides that this isn't the direction that America should be going in, that human rights must triumph. There's this stoic idea, stoicism seems like a philosophy of selfishness because it is so focused on the self, but in fact ancient stoic would talk about our circles of concern. He would say yes, of course we're

self-interested, but beyond our immediate circle is our family, our friends, our countrymen, immediate circle is our family, our friends, our countrymen, people who look like us, animals, that there are these concentric rings. And he said the work of philosophy is pulling these rings inward to do the mad crazy thing of caring about other people in places you've never been, who you will never meet. Right, and this is what Carter

orients his foreign policy around. One of the first decisions he makes is appointing a woman named Pat Diernan to be Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and that her focus is precisely on that. She's to answer to no constituency, to no allies, but to call out evil and abuses where she sees it. Carter empowers this because it's important, and he would say in a famous speech at Notre Dame

about human rights and American foreign policy that we've adopted these flawed and erroneous principles that we've often taken on the characteristics or the values of our adversaries. He talked about fighting fire with fire, which of course is insane. You fight fire with water. And he says that this approach has failed,

Vietnam being an example of that. And he says, but through that failure, we have found our way back to our own principles and we've regained a lost confidence. And he says that we talk about human freedom and human rights today and that it's incumbent that our country focus on them again from a foreign policy perspective.

He says no other country besides America's is well qualified to set an example. Of course we have our own shortcomings, we have our own flaws, we have our own history to reckon with, but we should strive constantly and with courage, right, the virtues are with but we should strive constantly and with courage, right? The virtues are related. We should strive constantly and with courage to make sure that we are legitimately proud of what we have and what we do. He says our policy is based on a historical vision of America's role.

A larger view of global change rooted in moral values which never change. Again, Julia Coleman, his elementary school teacher, our policy is reinforced by our material wealth and our military power. And he says, our policy, our foreign policy should be deserved to serve mankind. And I think this is a beautifully refreshing statement, he says, and it's a policy that I hope will make you proud to be American. So Carter is bringing these timeless values to the room where it happens to the decisions that matter

that make the biggest impact. And it's not just theoretical, he's not just giving fancy speeches. One of the books that Carter reads on his way to the presidency is David McCullough's fascinating and riveting book about the building of the Panama Canal, which was, of course, a feat of human ingenuity

and genius and perseverance and will. But Carter would also admit that it was a diplomatic cancer. How could we talk to the Soviets about interfering in other countries, how could we talk about decolonization? How could we talk about doing the right thing when we ourselves had seized a chunk of land in the middle of the continent and ran it as our own?

He would say that it's obvious that we cheated the Panamanians out of their canal, and as a matter of fact, none of them saw the treaty when it was signed. He didn't do it, none of us in this room did it, but that didn't mean it was right. And he thought it was time that we rectify that right, that wrong. This idea of wrestling with the past, of acknowledging the sins of our ancestors, not to whip ourselves, not to feel guilty, but to do better in the future, to do the right thing now.

And so he begins negotiations with Panama to return the canal. As you know, a treaty has to be ratified by two thirds of the Senate. And so Carter, again, is using his first term capital to push through an incredibly unpopular idea, an idea that the media, of of course has a field day with, but he does, he succeeds.

It takes every bit of determination and commitment and persuasion that he can muster. It's the right thing to do. It sends a message about our role in the world, sends a message to South America, sends a message about our role in the world, sends a message to South America, sends a message to our allies, and yet they say that it's only a principle if it costs you. Multiple senators of both parties lose their job

as a result of these votes, right? He pushes through this thing, but it's not without its cost. Doing the right thing is rarely without its cost. If it was easy, if everyone would celebrate you for it, of course it would have already been done, right? That's the trouble with doing the right thing. It's not just that it's tough. It's usually a tough sell because the easy right things have already been done. He gives a speech midway through

his term, again, the same thing. How can I tackle these tough issues? How can I do what I know is right? He gives his speech about America's dangerous dependence on foreign oil and the vulnerability that this gives us to our adversaries. He would say that, look, I've got, imagine a president going in to address the nation today and saying, I want to have an unpleasant talk with you.

That's not what the president does. The president only talks about the fun things, the nice things, right, the things that people are gonna celebrate. But no, Carter says I'm gonna have an unpleasant talk with you because it's necessary, because it's the right thing. He says we have to cut our dependence on foreign oil

by half. We have to cut our dependence on foreign oil by half. He calls this, or he calls for a moral equivalent of war. He says we have to marshal our resources, the same can-do spirit, the same come-togetherness, the same willpower, the same technological innovation and determination that we brought to World War I and World War II. We have to bring this to this energy crisis

that is bearing down on us. And he of course was completely right, not only is the president's job to have tough conversations, to make tough decisions, but he was right about this particular tough decision. It's not about putting things off. It's also about, in these tough situations, finding the opportunity to move

forward and to do new things, right? That's what the obstacle is the way means. It means you find the good inside a bad situation. You don't let the crisis go to waste. You use the seeds inside that crisis to grow something new and to change. He gives, seizes this as a chance to try to move the country forward technologically, to imagine, to chart a new future. And as he spoke in front of the solar panels that he installed on the roof of the White House in the 1970s, he gave America a warning, right? He says that in the year 2000, this solar panel behind me can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of the road not

taken, or can just be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people, right? We can face a crisis and move forward and grow from it, or we can turn away from it, we can stick our heads in the sand and we can deny it. It would have been wonderful if America had taken to this moral equivalent of war. In fact, the Wall Street Journal calls it the next day

his meow speech, moral equivalent of war, right? It's hard to convince people to do the right thing because the right thing costs them, right? It's uncomfortable, it's challenging, it requires us to do and look at something new. When Reagan wins shortly thereafter, one of the first decisions he makes as a president is to take the solar panels off the roof, almost out of spite. And they do end up in a museum, I'll show you in a second. Rickover though still in service would console Carter by saying that the public will ultimately understand and

he'll be seen as a far-seeing man, which of course we do now, who has attempted to protect the people of the United States. And of course just because something fails in the short term doesn't mean you're not starting a chain reaction that eventually will get people where you want them to go. That solar panel is in the Smithsonian now, was sold to a small college after Reagan ripped them off the White House. And then one of the panels is actually in a museum in China. China now makes something like 80% of all solar panels. We had a chance to do something different

to go on that adventure. It's a warning about the road not taken. The idea, I think, is that if you don't do the right thing, someone else will do the right thing. Someone else gets a chance to take the high road or the high ground. That's what he understood about the Panama Canal was that it wasn't just that it was the right thing to do, but by not

doing the right thing, by doing the wrong and selfish thing, or persisting in error, even one that we're not responsible for, what Carter's ultimately doing is under, or what the country is ultimately doing is acting hypocritically, undermining the value and the truth of what we say we believe in. He would say that, I hope history will show that I have never flinched in dealing with the issues that some of my predecessors have postponed. Again, that's what justice is, that's what virtue is,

that's what leadership is, making the hard decisions that your predecessors have kicked down the road, have skirted, or have wanted someone else to handle. Friends would say that if you want to get turned down for something inside the Carter White House, the best way to do it was to tell him that you thought he should wait till the second term.

Carter was morally opposed to this idea of political expediency or thinking in terms of his reelection prospects. So it does bring up a good question though. Should Carter have been more pragmatic? Is this a vice of his, a sort of self-righteousness or a blindness to the consequences of each decision, which ultimately put him in a position

to make fewer good right decisions down the road. I don't know, it's a tough one, right? One Democratic congressman who's also a Marine would say that if Jimmy Carter calls him a son of a bitch, he says, if that son of a bitch tells me to do the right thing one more time, I'm gonna kick his ass. That is one of the problems with wanting to do

the right thing and insisting on the right thing. Again, you tend to piss people off. You piss off both sides. It's hard to make friends. But he would do it because he thought it was right. He would tell Rosalind that he never wanted to do anything that hurt his country. It's a beautiful sentiment,

but she perhaps a bit more politically astute than him would say the thing you can do to hurt your country the most is not get reelected. And so there is this argument, when Carter announces in Georgia that the time for racial discrimination is over, it can't cost him politically because he can't run for reelection.

But presidents in America can serve two terms. And so the decision to not save things for the second end of the presidency, does it cost him? Does it cost him that reelection? I don't know, it's a tough question. I think it's worth asking, what does not having power help? What is being pure but bounced out?

Who does that help? What good can you do then? What good does being an outsider do? Can be on the outside and correct or you can be on the inside trying to work to improve and to change things. It is a timeless dilemma. He would even acknowledge this

when he ran for governor of Georgia. He would even acknowledge this when he ran for governor of Georgia. He would tell civil rights leaders, you're not gonna like my campaign, but you're gonna like my administration. And this distinction between what you need to do to get into the position of leadership and power, and then of course what you should do

when you have the reins is a tricky one, right? Because everyone says I'm gonna do it when I get into power, but first I have to make all these compromises, I have to swallow these things I'd rather not swallow, but then they don't actually do it, right? And I think that is what's interesting about Carter. When he had the power, he used it. I would actually argue that Carter's problem wasn't that he was too idealistic, that he did the power, he used it. I would actually argue that Carter's problem wasn't that he was too idealistic, that he did the right thing too often.

To me, the fatal flaw of Carter's administration wasn't the decision to pardon the draft auditors in Vietnam, it wasn't to do the hard right things too early. Carter thinking that the American presidency had become too imperial, that the president wasn't accessible enough, that the administrations had become too hierarchical makes the then unprecedented decision not to hire a chief of staff. He wanted all of his cabinet members to have equal access to him. He wanted fewer walls between him and the different parts of the White

House. And this was a beautiful idea in theory, right, the open door policy, but you could argue that the Carter administration does get overwhelmed and he struggles to cultivate the relationships, to whip votes properly, to have a good sense of what he could do and couldn't do. So Carter is accessible, but he also somewhat drowns in the minutia of the presidency.

Most famously, you had to ask Carter personally if you wanted to use the White House tennis court. That's not a good use of the president's time. And so his desire to not be hierarchical, to be more accessible, he thinks this is a virtue of leadership, but you could argue it's a flaw of leadership that makes it harder for him to get reelected. He ultimately appoints a chief of staff,

but it's too late in his term to finally turn things around. And so it is important, right? It's not just having the right heart or the right spirit. You have to have the competence, you have to have the power, you have to have the leverage, you have to have the power, you have to have the leverage, you have to have the team, you have to have the administration to be able to bring that into effect, right?

So it's not about being a saint. Saints are usually wonderful on paper, but what do they get done, right? A saint also have to be savvy. Gandhi famously said, I'm not a saint trying to be, I'm not a saint trying to be a politician. He said, I'm a politician trying to be a saint. Kennedy would say, a lot of parents want their kids to be president, but they don't want them to be a politician.

But you have to be both. You have to be both to be able to get things done. And I would argue that it's actually savvy to try to do the things you can do while you have the ability to do them. It's easy to say in retrospect, Carter should have done more things in his second term, a second term that he didn't win. What if he would have lost anyway? What if he had held off doing the right thing while he had

those four years of power, while he had an amenable Congress? What if he waited and then it didn't happen? You've got to do the good while you can. To do it when you have more power, we tell ourselves, right, we're going to do it when I have a better shot. We're going to do it when I get to the next rank, to the next level, when I'm more secure. But that's not a guarantee.

Carter would say it's impossible for me to delay something that needs to be done. This is probably the savviest and most pragmatic attitude that you can have to do it while it's in front of you, to do it now and not later. Because that's the problem. We never say we're never going to do it. We don't say I'm not going to do it.

We say I'm going to do it later. We're going to say I'm going to do it when I have a better chance. In meditations, Marx really says you could be good today. Instead, you choose tomorrow. It's actually more pragmatic, I would argue, to do good today while you have the chance. pragmatic, I would argue, to do good today while you have the chance.

So, this question about Carter as president, right? Is he a good president or not? Camp David accords, Egypt recognizes Israel, the first Arab peace treaty at such a level, he creates the Department of Energy, right? The Meow Speech aside, he creates the Department of Energy, right? The meow speech aside, he creates the Department of Energy. He deregulates a number of key American industries. He normalizes relations with China, the Panama Canal Treaty.

He makes the tough decisions to beat back inflation, even though the benefits of that policy are born, are received by his successor. But I think he summarizes his presidency here in three beautiful sentences. He says, we told the truth, we obeyed the law, we kept the peace. He does lose in a landslide.

He's the first single term president in many decades, and he has to go home. We don't know how long we have. You use the chair while you've got it. You steer the boat while you're in charge of it. You do the right thing while you can. And I think it's universally acknowledged that Carter is our best ex- president. He leaves Washington and he heads back to Plains, Georgia, where he spends the rest of his life. Hangs out as if he wasn't previously the most powerful man in the world.

He teaches Sunday school. He builds houses for the homeless, not just as a young man, not just for photo ops, but well into old age. You know that peanut farm? He turns his peanut farm into a solar farm that now powers the town of Plains, Georgia. The Carter Institute takes on a number of unsexy, but deeply meaningful international causes. He tackles the Guinea worm, gives out thousands of vaccinations all over the world,

tens of thousands, saves millions of lives. He would say, I'd like the last Guinea worm to die before I do. We don't know if that's gonna happen, but there's not many left of them on this planet. And that's the kind of work that he manages to do as an ex-president. He would say that he feels like he has one life to live. This is back to the parable of talents.

We have one life to live. You want to do the best you can with it. He says that's his major prayer, to live his life so that it will be meaningful. So was Jimmy Carter a great president? I'll leave that to you. I would encourage everyone to study the life of this fascinating and interesting man.

But I think the question of whether Jimmy Carter was a great man is a much easier one to answer. I think the answer is obvious. Plutarch in one of his essays would talk about this, Greek statesman, he would say that it's important that we remember that not only does an office bring distinction to a person, but a person can bring distinction to an office.

And I think what's so admirable about Jimmy Carter is precisely that. He brings distinction to the presidency, the most prestigious office in the world, he makes better by being in it, by bringing that commitment to human rights, that commitment to justice, that commitment to doing the right thing,

to serving selflessly, to serving with integrity. He brings honor to the office rather than the office bringing honor to him. And I think it's safe to say that Jimmy Carter did his very best, right? He did his best, which is all that you can really ask of a person, he did his best. He wasn't dealt the greatest hand as president,

maybe not even dealt the greatest hand in life, but he did his best. I don't think anyone could look at what talents he was handed as a young man and not say that he didn't turn them into the most that they could be turned into. And I think all his life he was haunted by that question from Admiral Rickover. Why didn't you do your best? And so as he weighed two courses of action, he asked himself, is this the right thing? And he said, am I doing my best? Am I giving it all that I

have? And I think there is something wonderful about having a hero or a mentor like Carter did with Admiral Rickover. The Stokes who talked about how we have to choose ourselves a Cato, someone to measure ourselves against. They said without a ruler you can't make crooked straight. So who your heroes are, who embody those virtues or those values? Can you ask yourself what they would do in the situation you're in? In meditations, Mark Sturlus would talk about how when we need encouragement, we should look at the virtues embodied by the people we admire most, the people around us.

And if you've ever read Meditations, that's what the first book is about. Almost a full 10% of the book is titled, Debts and Lessons, and it's Marcus Aurelius enumerating and articulating all the things he learned from the people who inspired him, who taught him, who embodied the virtues that he wanted to live by. He said, nothing is as encouraging as when the virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us when we're practically showered with them.

Says it's good to keep this in mind. So I think that's why the model of Rickover, that question of why not the best, why didn't you always do your best, I think that's why even as president of the United States, you can tell he's thinking about it. I think this is what his relationship with his wife was about.

I think it's a relationship that we can have with Jimmy Carter. It's been that exchange and that barbershop. I have been changed by the example and the story of Jimmy Carter. It's something I now think about. When we pick these models, we pick these people, some of whom we know, some of whom are still alive,

some of whom lived a very long time ago, and we try to model ourselves on them. We ask ourselves, what would they do? Again, he quotes this in his inauguration speech for president, that idea from his elementary school teacher, that all of us accommodate changing times but cling to eternal values. Courage,

discipline, justice, wisdom, those are those eternal values. Justice being the North Star most of all, Carter being a wonderful, beautiful, inspiring example of the very best that we can be. Thank you very much. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show.

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