MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Many remembrances of President Jimmy Carter, who died on Sunday at the age of 100, focus on his post-White-House humanitarian work. But the documentary "Carterland" looked almost exclusively at his time in office. Critic Bob Mondello watched it.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: The measured tones of Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter's running mate in 1976, lay out "Carterland's" operating principles right at the start.
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WALTER MONDALE: The story usually goes about President Carter - well, he's a nice guy and a good person, great ex-president, but he's a failed president who was never really able to rise to the challenges of his time. That's the story we've been told, but it's all wrong.
MONDELLO: An unabashed corrective to that common narrative is what follows - Carter's successes highlighted, his less successful moments explained.
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JONATHAN ALTER: Carter was really the last American president who asked for sacrifice.
JIMMY CARTER: This is a painful step, and I'll give it to you straight. Each of us will have to use less oil and pay more for it.
ALTER: That's a political loser. People don't really want to sacrifice.
MONDELLO: The filmmakers detail how he led by example, putting on sweaters rather than cranking up the heat and doing something newscaster Walter Cronkite had to explain to viewers in 1979 because it sounded like science fiction.
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WALTER CRONKITE: Using panels like the one on the top of the White House, direct solar energy will be tapped for heating and cooling in homes and industry.
CARTER: In the year 2000, the solar water heater behind me which is being dedicated today will still be here, supplying cheap, efficient energy.
MONDELLO: It was not. It and the solar panels were removed by Ronald Reagan as soon as he took office.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: What would life have been like if we'd continued to invest in a clean energy economy?
MONDELLO: The film charts Carter's initiatives in other areas - a reduction of Cold War tensions after a just-concluded war in Vietnam...
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CARTER: We're trying to reach out a hand of friendship to past enemies to heal differences.
MONDELLO: ...Legislation passed to make presidents accountable in reaction to Watergate...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: The Ethics in Government Act, which creates an Office of the Independent Counsel.
MONDELLO: ...Diversifying the federal judiciary...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: He put 40 women on the bench compared to the eight previous in all of American history.
MONDELLO: You will not hear in "Carterland" about Carter's lust-in-my-heart Playboy interview, nor more than glancing references to gas lines. And there's a bit of artful fudging around the Iran hostage crisis. Filmmakers Will and Jim Pattiz are unapologetic partisans. But they know how to tell a good story about, say, the political capital that Carter expended, pushing a renegotiated Panama Canal treaty through Congress, or about the days he spent personally walking peace proposals between the cabins of Israeli and Egyptian presidents who weren't speaking to each other.
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MENACHIM BEGIN: The Camp David conference should be renamed the Jimmy Carter conference.
(APPLAUSE)
MONDELLO: The filmmakers portray an honorable man doing what he thought was right - a legacy borne out by a post-presidency the film does not cover - a Nobel Peace Prize he got decades later for work on human rights, fair elections, Habitat for Humanity. Instead of going into any of that, they let civil rights leader Andrew Young, his ambassador to the United Nations, sum up the presidency itself.
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ANDREW YOUNG: I don't think we began to appreciate Martin Luther King until he passed away. I think the same thing will be true of Jimmy Carter. He will have to move on to the next life before we stop long enough to appreciate how great a president he truly was.
MONDELLO: I'm Bob Mondello.
KELLY: Bob Mondello reviewed "Carterland" a year ago, on President Carter's 99th birthday.
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