Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday, is the first presidential candidate I remember publicly expressing an opinion about. As it turned out, Carter would also be the first (and only) president to publicly express an opinion about me.
During Carter's presidency he was criticized and satirized, but during his lifetime he was most acclaimed for his public service and his broad, Renaissance mind. Personally, I will always think of him as a man with a dry wit and a sharp tongue. If you've ever wondered why Carter was always smiling, it may be because he was a pretty funny guy.
My first interaction with the former president was in the spring of 1987. I was the editor-in-chief of Emory Spoke, the student-run humor magazine at Emory University in Georgia. We publish three issues a year, usually spending our budget on publishing the fall semester, a full-color parody of a “real” magazine: “Playspoke” one year, “Spokelights for Children” another.
Shortly before my tenure, a copy of “Peeple Spokely” from a previous editorial team found its way to the Time-Life corporate board. They quickly banned us from invading one of their titles again. It felt like hellfire, damnation, and personal legal ruin would rain down on any student foolish enough to violate his orders.
My choice was clear. That fall's issue would parody Time magazine.
“How will we avoid hell and damnation?” our editor-in-chief asked.
It came to me in an instant. “We'll put Carter on the cover. 'Man of the Year'! If they come for us, the publicity will kill them.”
Since Emory was home to the Carter Center and its presidential library, I relied on every connection I could to get an interview. Months after our pleas began, I was called into the office of the dean who had appeared on the cover of “Rolling Spoke” with a parking cone on his head. The reverence of our irreverence had paid off: we would be allowed 30 minutes with Carter and nothing was off limits.
I'll chalk it up to chutzpah and not innate Republican tendencies, but about a month later, on the day of the interview, when Carter walked into the room, I tossed him a T-shirt with the Spoke logo and said him to wear it for the cover photo. He bravely obeyed.
The interview was sublime: Carter talked about Domino's deliveries to the White House, Willie Nelson playing on the South Lawn, and installing a hi-fi system in the Oval Office so he could listen to his friends the Allman Brothers. He shared his biggest presidential regret: not sending a second helicopter to the failed hostage rescue in Iran.
We asked him what he wanted to say about President Reagan behind his back: “That he is incapable of telling the truth.” When we asked him what he would say to Reagan's face, he replied, “Same thing.” That made the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
In pressing for the interview, we had been clear about our satirical bent and had put Spoke's problems behind us. During the discussion we reaffirmed our origin as a humor magazine. “I haven't heard anything funny yet,” Carter deadpanned. We asked him about his patience with journalists, if he ever wanted to attack and hit a journalist. “Yes,” he said, “and this is one of those moments.”
After the issue was published, Carter sent me a letter that included the line: “I am glad that my humorous answers more than made up for the lack of that quality in your questions.”
I am still sometimes shocked when I remember that I once exchanged barbs with a former president. Other days, I am overwhelmed by the thought that a future Nobel Prize winner criticized me for something I thought I was good at.
Our paths crossed a few more times, and each time, what stood out was Carter's humor. At a formal dinner, he dared me to eat the floral garnish for dessert. Before I could move, he popped it into his mouth.
He could have planned that joke to use on anyone at the table. But I like to think it was personal, and other people who met Carter more than once have told me that they also felt a stunned humility that the one-time leader of the free world remembered them by name.
A few years later, I was working on my MBA, again at Emory, and Carter visited me as a distinguished lecturer.
He walked to the lectern and surveyed our power-suit-clad crowd. Then he turned to his assistant and said, “You didn't tell me Binney would be here.”
He looked at me with raised eyebrows and said politely, “Try to keep up.”
My classmates were baffled. Some in shock, others amazed. How had he pissed off a president?
He hadn't, of course. It was simply a perfect opportunity for a man with a clever sense of humor, a good memory and a microphone. A man who made meaningful connections with the people he met, whether on the world stage or on a college campus.
Robert J. Binney is a screenwriter in Seattle.
