WASHINGTON, DC- by Andrew E. Manatos
As I attend the funeral today of President Jimmy Carter, under whom I served as an Assistant Secretary of Commerce, I am struck by what a unique and extraordinary man he was in many ways that are generally unknown. For example, he showed his humanitarian focus, which later in life became widely recognized, soon after his election. He had his State Department establish an Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. It created a hyper focus for America on these important topics.
President Carter’s Administration also accomplished major steps toward today’s admired goals of attacking waste, fraud, and abuse in our government. Prior to President Carter our country’s ability to redress mistreatment of citizens by our federal government’s was terrible. Typically, citizens’ complaints were referred to the office of the Secretary of the department who usually referred it to the Department’s General Counsel. The problem was that frequently the General Counsel was a long-term personal friend of the Secretary who appointed him or her to this prestigious position. President Carter replaced that age-old, “old boy’s” network with the establishment in each department of an “Inspector General.” Those appointed had a background in such investigations and were beholden to justice for the citizen instead of the Secretary.
Two long-forgotten acts of President Carter give insight into his deep concern about our African-American community. He moved each department to do whatever it could to help lift the African-American community. At the Department of Commerce for example, we set aside 10% of federal government building contract funds for minority contractors. President Carter also presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the highest religious leader to join Martin Luther King in his dangerous Selma, Alabama civil rights march. That leader was Greek Orthodox Archbishop of America, His Eminence Archbishop Iakovos.
President Carter showed to me personally his unusual humanity and the understanding when I submitted my resignation. Every week at the White House, in a room next to the Oval Office, I and the other Assistant Secretaries for legislation met, led by President Carter’s congressional right hand, Frank Moore, to learn what the President wanted us to lobby in the US Congress. In one of those meetings, I learned that the President’s target was to lift the US Arms Embargo on Turkey, imposed for Turkey’s illegal use of American arms for its invasion and occupation of Cyprus. I submitted my resignation to Frank. I explained that I could not work to end such an important and just embargo that I had spent years on Capitol Hill enacting. I had led that lobby effort out of the office of philhellene US Senator Tom Eagleton and worked with fellow Hellenes Paul Sarbanes and John Brademas in the House. Our embargo success over President Nixon and Henry Kissinger was the only time in modern history the US Congress overrode the White House on a major foreign policy issue. Generously, President Carter overlooked my insubordination and asked if I would stay if I was completely uninvolved with the effort to lift the Turkish Arms Embargo. I agreed
Soon after President Carter’s time in the White House, he became the first US President to stand up for the oppressed spiritual head of the second largest Christian Church in the world, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Orthodox Christianity, by visiting the Patriarchate. His presence at the Patriarchate resulted in the Government of Turkey allowing the repair of major damage to the Patriarchate. Following Carter’s example, sitting President Bill Clinton visited the Ecumenical Patriarchate as did sitting Vice President Joe Biden, twice.
Years later I noticed that President Carter had a lasting impact on those who worked for him. Nearly to a person everyone who worked for Carter spent a good deal of their lives thereafter devoted to improving America, as President Carter had worked so hard to do. For example, Stuart Eizenstat, the person who in his early 30’s led President Carter’s domestic policy, among other things successfully secured well over one billion dollars from outside of America for victims of WWII in the world Jewish community. Others in the administration similarly followed Carter’s example of trying to leave the world a better place
