PRESIDENT JAMES E. "JIMMY" CARTER - ANNOTATED SPEECH UNSIGNED CIRCA 1976 - HFSID 286045

JIMMY CARTER
A revealing collection of documents from his 1976 presidential campaign - including a nine-page draft speech on Israel on Carter's presidential campaign stationery with 67 words of revisions and notes in Carter's hand - showing how a speech on Israel was drafted and revised.
Photocopied annotated speech unsigned, with blue ink revision, some in Carter's own hand. 9 pages, 8½x11, loose-leaf sheets, typed on Jimmy Carter Presidential Campaign stationery. Titled: "Speech on Middle East Policy". The photocopy already included revisions, to which someone, presumably Henry Owen of the Brookings Institution, has appended additional comment and crossed out some sentences and paragraphs in the interest of brevity. On page 7, Owen has penned additional suggestions from foreign policy expert Zbigniew Brzezinski, who would become President Carter's national security advisor. Carter has added margin notes of his own: On page 1, Carter has replaced the typed text, "stopping in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Haifa, visiting the Holy Places" with "visiting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Golan Heights and the West Bank". On page 4, Carter has written "Nitpicking?" beside a critique of a statement by Henry Kissinger, President Ford's Secretary of State, listing "the survival and security of Israel" among America's vital interests in the Middle East without specifying that it was more important than the supply of oil. He has also written "need?" next to a reference condemning Arab states for beginning the 1973 war on the holiest day of the Jewish religion. On page 5, Carter has written "too much 'commitment'" to the left of a sentence which uses that word five times in connection with support for Israel. On page 7, Carter has written notes next to a paragraph on United Nations Resolution 242: "But most of the territory occupied/1967 would have to be restored if there to be [illegible]". He added "2B) Thought mutual agreement would be difficult to obtain if such charges were to be sustained" and additional notes at bottom of page. Lightly toned, stained, soiled and creased. Otherwise in fine condition. Accompanied by: 1) Photocopied 2-page letter from Henry Owen, Director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program of The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., on Brookings Institution Stationery. May 26, 1976, Addressed to Governor Jimmy Carter, Plains, Georgia. The letter describes Owen's recent conversations with the two high-ranking Israeli diplomats, both of whom felt that candidate Carter's views on Middle East policy lacked clarity. They had expressed particular concern to Owen regarding: the Soviet role in Middle East peace negotiations, the question of a Palestinian state, the sufficiency of US military power in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the recognition of the state of Israel as a precondition to any peace agreement with Arab governments. Lightly toned. Paper clip impression in upper left corner. Otherwise in fine condition. 2) Unsigned Photocopied cover letter for the draft speech, also from Henry Owen and addressed to "Governor Jimmy Carter". May 28, 1976. Lightly toned. Paper clip impression in upper left corner. Otherwise in fine condition. 3) Unsigned typed memorandum to Governor Carter from advisors Stuart Eizenstat, Henry Owen and Zbig Brzezinski. May 28, 1976.  Subject: "Re: Owen-Brzezinski proposed Middle East Speech, also dated. It includes this paragraph: "Your foreign policy task force met at the beginning of this week in New York and felt that this speech should be given before the end of the primary season, because of the uncertaintly in the Jewish and diplomatic community on your Middle East position and because your April 1 address in New York on the Middle East got absolutely no coverage." Below the printed text are handwritten comments in several hands. These ink notes show that the proposed text was still under discussion, since they raise the question of whether to mention that the establishment of the State of Israel fulfilled Divine prophecy and whether the speech should add "any pro-Arab comment". Carter has added his own note in the upper right corner: "Pat [possibly pollster Pat Caddell] - Read to Charles Yost". (Yost, U.S. Representative to the United Nations in the Nixon administration (1969-1971) was at the time of this memo a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute.) One ink note (unknown hand) in lower right notes that the speech, the draft of which had gone to Plains, would be delivered to the Foreign Policy Association in New York City on June 23, 1976. (Carter did give the speech on that date.) Lightly toned and creased. Light dents and tears at right edge. Paper clip impression and rust stains in upper left corner. Otherwise in fine condition. A fascinating collection of papers showing how a major foreign policy statement by a candidate is drafted when the issue is of key concern to key domestic constituency and foreign audience. Carter, born in 1924 in Plains, Georgia, served as 39th U.S. President from 1977 to 1981. He was the only one-term Democratic president of the 20th century and the first Democrat not to be reelected since Grover Cleveland in 1888. Carter, the only U.S. president to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis (1946, at the age of 21), is also the only U.S. president to serve a full four-year term without making an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Carter is also the first Southerner to be elected president since the Reconstruction after the American Civil War. His presidency was marred by double-digit inflation; a rising prime rate that peaked at 21.5% in December 1980, the last month of his presidency; the 1979 oil crisis, sparked by the overthrow of the Shah of Iran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini; and the capture of American hostages by Khomeini-backed revolutionaries in Tehran. His younger brother William Anton "Billy" Carter didn't help his image. Billy was an alcoholic who used his image as the president's brother to promote "Billy Beer". However, Carter also had several notable foreign policy achievements, including the Camp David accords, which resulted in a peace treaty between enemy nations Egypt and Israel, and the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, or SALT II. Carter also began the flow of arms to Islamist rebels in Afghanistan, which had been invaded by the Soviet Union after the 1978 overthrow of a pro-Moscow government there, in 1979. He won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomatic efforts both during and after his presidency.