President Carter: The White House Years by Stuart E. EizenstatMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Jimmy Carter's Chief Domestic Policy Advisor, Stuart Eizenstat, details the President's journey into politics and his four years in the White House. Eizenstat was with Carter every step of the way, through the energy crisis and the fight for a new energy policy, the crumbling economy, peace negotiations in the Middle East, cabinet shakeups, the Iran hostage crisis, and his downfall as a one-term president. Carter accomplished a lot during his tenure in the White House that has been mostly overlooked due to his, at times, own stubbornness to do things his way, his unflinching convictions, his fight for human rights over other matters of political importance, and his bad timing for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Carter did what no other president has done before or after, he negotiated peace in the Middle East. Since his time in the White House, he and Rosalyn have worked tirelessly for human rights in countries around the world. His accomplishments earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. So why did he end up being a one-term president? Eizenstat draws on countless pages of notes that he took through the 4 years he worked with Carter, as well as many interviews with the important players in Carter's career that takes the reader on an intimate tour of Carter's presidency.
If you are interested in politics and/or Jimmy Carter at all, this book will be a great resource on his time in the White House. Eizenstat is obviously a fan of Carter's, but he does not whitewash his time as Commander in Chief. He shows us the good and the bad, blemishes and all. What is missing and perhaps this is not the book for it, is the details of Jimmy Carter outside of the political realm. We get a few chapters at the beginning that covers Carter's rise into politics, including his time in the Navy. I don't feel that I got to know Carter, the man. This book is about his politics and the issues that the President dealt with while in office. The better sections, I thought, were the ones that covered the Camp David Accords, where Carter painstakingly worked for peace between Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat.
Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter are such wonderful humanitarians that have left quite a legacy during those four years. It would have been interesting to have seen what he could have accomplished had he been able to serve another four years.
View all my reviews
