Jimmy Carter: "This Is My Place"

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Back at his house after the bicycle ride, Carter spoke of his concerns about the country. After the book is finished, he said, he intends to speak out more. Two weeks ago, he and Rosalynn left Plains for a vacation trip to Scandinavia, and on the way back he visited French President François Mitterrand. Carter has been strangely polite in his criticism of Reagan, despite the fact that the President, as Carter knows, holds him in contempt. For some months, Carter was denied even the minimal daily briefing reports that are provided to a hundred or so top officials in the Government. He endured it for a while and then asked his former press secretary, Jody Powell, to complain. After Powell threatened to go public with the slight, the briefing papers began arriving in Plains.

The ex-President sees his successor eventually edging toward. Carter-like policies on arms control and the Middle East. He sharply disagrees with Reagan's assertion that the Soviets have a definite margin of superiority in strategic weapons. "Reagan is flat wrong about that," he said, sounding like a man who knows the facts. "Even if it were true, which it isn't, it's an extremely unwise thing to say."

The Middle East remains a key interest of Carter's, and the subject will take up at least a quarter of his book. He has told friends that he believes Reagan could have utilized him as a negotiator because he is trusted by both sides. Carter has always feared an Islamic uprising in the West Bank, and the harsh occupation tactics of the Israelis trouble him. His book will be tough on Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the power of the Israeli lobby in this country. In the past, Carter has told intimates that he believes the Israelis do not want a second term for any U.S. President for fear that, free of electoral pressure, he might then turn on them.

Carter plans to work at fund raising for a library and public affairs institute associated with Emory University in Atlanta. This fall he will give some time to teaching at Emory. Looking pleased with himself, he unfolded the architect's drawings of the institute and stretched them open on his desk. The project stimulates his greatest personal hopes for the future; he spoke with real feeling of how he would hold seminars on such issues as human rights, the environment and arms reduction, and how he hoped to attract world leaders to his forums. For months, his wife remembered, he would talk excitedly about the institute before he fell asleep.

As his visitor prepared to leave, Jimmy Carter headed back to his word processor. The house was still silent and dark. He began rewriting a section of the book that describes his closest aides. Some who had read the draft had told him that it was much too soft on them. Engrossed in the work, he pushed himself well past his usual 10:30 bedtime. Day after day, he applied to the book the same drive and ruthless self-discipline he had brought to the presidency. Back home in Plains, he worked as if his very survival as a man depended on it. —By Robert Ajemian