Abstract
Less than two months after Carter was sworn into office, a sketch on the popular new NBC comedy program “Saturday Night” captured the growing public perception of Carter’s personality. Spoofing on the previous week’s first-ever presidential radio call-in show, which had enabled Americans to query—directly and on-air—Carter on any issue, the skit portrayed the president’s ability to respond intelligently to every caller’s problem in detail, no matter how insignificant. 1 Among other wisdom doled out, “Carter” helped a postal worker repair a mechanical sorting device and advised a panicky caller on an acid trip to drink a beer and listen to the Allman Brothers. 2
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Notes
William Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967, 3rd ed. ( Washington: Brookings, 2005 ), 138–73.
Harold Saunders, “U.S. Foreign Policy and Peace in the Middle East (November 12, 1975),” Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, eds., The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, 7th ed. (London: Penguin, 2008 ), 203–6.
Kai Bird, The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames ( New York: Crown, 2014 ), 83–162.
Janice Terry, “The Carter Administration and the Palestinians,” in U.S.Policy on Palestine from Wilson to Clinton, ed. Michael Suleiman (Normal, IL: Association of Arab-American University Graduates, 1995 ), 167. 21.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1983 ), 87.
Jody Powell, The Other Side of the Story (New York: William Morrow, 1984), 56. Jordan also alludes to a sense of urgency, “as though we had been elected for four months instead of four years and had to accomplish everything right away.” Hamilton Jordan, Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency ( New York: Berkley Books, 1982 ), 48.
Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s Foreign Policy ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983 ), 172.
Yitzhak Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs, 2nd ed. ( Berkeley: University of California, 1996 ), 292–300.
Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents ( New York: Times Books, 1995 ), 397–98.
Rashid Khalidi, Under Siege: P.L.O. Decisionmaking During the 1982 War ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1986 ), 7.
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© 2015 Daniel Strieff
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Strieff, D. (2015). The Limits of Candor (January–May 1977). In: Jimmy Carter and the Middle East. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137499479_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137499479_2
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