My journalistic encounters with Jimmy Carter

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Jimmy Carter, who started out his road to the White House as “Jimmy Who?” in Iowa, popped up a few times during my 50-year jo urnalism career, the final time as an elder statesman and a personable, charming ex-president at Minnesota Public Radio’s St. Paul studios. But before that, the nation’s 39th president, who died Sunday at his home in Plains, Ga., at 100, accounted for one of the most exciting, but scary, moments I could imagine.

I was a young United Press International reporter in Des Moines in 1976 when the former Georgia governor campaigned all over the Hawkeye State. I would answer the bureau phone and hear press secretary Jody Powell calling to give a report on Carter’s campaign schedule.

I was in the bureau the night of the Iowa caucuses when Carter “won.” Well, he didn’t really win. He came in second to “uncommitted,” but the press needed a winner, so the title went to the Georgia peanut farmer. And from there, Carter became the Democratic nominee for president and beat President Gerald Ford that November.

In 1978, I was transferred to Illinois to open a UPI bureau in Champaign-Urbana. In 1979, the Carter family vacationed on a seven-day trip down the Mississippi River on the riverboat Delta Queen from St. Paul, with stops in Wabasha and other small river towns, to St. Louis. I was assigned to help cover the trip. On their way south, the Carters stopped in Davenport in the Quad Cities, where they had spent time during the 1976 campaign. From there, Carter was scheduled to cross the Mississippi to Moline, Ill., to visit John Deere headquarters to talk energy.

As the motorcade was getting ready to cross the bridge, UPI’s White House correspondent came up to me and asked whether I wanted to cover the trip to Moline. I said yes, and he handed me his credentials, which I put over my head. Today, the Secret Service would never tolerate such a security breach.

Now, I was terrified. What if someone shot at the presidential motorcade, and I had to report a major national story. I thought of Merriman Smith, the UPI correspondent who was in the Dallas motorcade when President John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. It was UPI legend how Smith dictated his bulletin to the Dallas bureau — “three shots fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade today in downtown Dallas” — and then held onto the phone so reporter Jack Bell couldn’t dictate his story to the rival Associated Press. In those days, there was only one car for the wire reporters. In 1979, there were two.

An aside to the Dallas story: When Smith filed his bulletin, it broke into a story from St. Paul on the T. Eugene Thompson murder trial. Only one story could move at a time and then only at 60 words a minute.

Back to the Carter trip. Thankfully, the president didn’t make any big news that day. My memory is seeing him ride some Deere farm vehicle for a photo op. But just for the experience, I took the opportunity to dictate a story to the Chicago bureau from the car, knowing that three of the nation’s top network correspondents were listening in.

Back at the University of Illinois campus, there was a political-science professor named Betty Glad. In 1980, she published a biography titled: “Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House.” Carter was running for re-election against former California Gov. Ronald Reagan. The book was advertised as “The only thorough and accurate account” of Carter’s presidency and earlier life. That sounded pretty impressive, so I got an interview with Prof. Glad and wrote a story about the Carter biography.

The author spent much of the book psychoanalyzing Carter’s personality and some of it wasn’t favorable — actually, downright negative. But she autographed her book for me.

I showed it to Carter, and he looked puzzled. He had never heard of the book. I was stunned. Was that even possible? But as any politician would do, he signed the book and gave me that big toothy Carter smile.