高山与平原——记美国前总统卡特

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20/08/2018
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作者：西岭来源：陌上美国

　　在美国南部乔治亚州，一个叫平原(Plains)的小镇，住着一位93岁的老人，名叫吉米•卡特，美国第39任总统。现在和他和夫人罗莎琳住在一栋价值16.7万美元的老房子里，过着平静俭朴的生活。这使他与他的继任者形成鲜明的对比。

　　卡特于1977年以黑马姿态击败寻求连任的共和党人福特而当选总统，登上了权力的高峰，任期至1981年结束。他在总统任内有成功也有失误。
　　他致力推进世界和平和人权、促成埃以和平，这些是有目共睹的。对华人而言，影响最大的是在他任内实现了中美关系正常化。中美关系正常化，当然不是某一人的功劳。这个努力，始于尼克松时期，后来由于美国内部的动荡和阻力，一度停滞不前。卡特上任后，以全面实现中美关系正常化为目标，也获得中国方面的积极回应和灵活处理。经过艰苦谈判，中国和美国终于在1979年1月1日建立外交关系，使得中国打开了对外开放的最大的一扇门，也使得几十万中国学生学者得以来到美国，进行求学或学术交流。饮水思源，可以说卡特功不可没。
　　经过一个动荡的任期后，卡特于1980年败于里根，离开白宫，他回到了他的故乡乔治亚州平原镇，那一年卡特才56岁。
　　这个小镇离亚特兰大150英里，人口只有500，周遭是一片花生和棉花农田，今天仍有40%的人生活在贫困线以下。卡特现在所住的房子是早年他自己建造的，目前估价不到17万美元。他平时生活非常节俭，经常自己制作酸奶，果酱也是他夫人用自家生长的樱桃做的。用餐以后，洗碗刷盘是卡特的份内工作。
　　即使那些出身平民甚至平寒的前总统，包括他的民主党后任克林顿和奥巴马，也在卸任后，通过演讲、咨询、出任大公司董事等机会上赚取了数千万美元。这些机会不仅很容易流向前总统，而且前任的政府高官，如基辛格、赖斯、希拉里等，也都赚得盆满钵满。但是卡特退休后决定不加入公司董事会或发表巨额演讲，因为他不想“把自己在白宫的经历作为致富的手段”。
　　用他自己的话说：“别人那样做也没有什么过错，但是我从来没有把致富作为我的目标”。
　　当他从华盛顿回到平原镇时，他的花生农场业务有100万美元的债务，被迫出售。卡特夫人罗莎琳说：“我们以为我们会失去一切”。卡特决定以写书的收入来维持生活。他写了33本书，主题包括他的生活和事业、他的信仰、中东和平、妇女权利、老龄化、钓鱼、木工，等等。他还与他的女儿艾米•卡特合作写了一本儿童书：“The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer”。

艾米•卡特和父亲吉米•卡特

卡特手持与女儿合作的儿童书

　　总统离任以后，按照联邦法律，仍由纳税人负担他们在退休金、办公、保安方面的费用。但是卡特由纳税人负担的费用是最低的。按GSA的数据，他每年的支出是45.6万美元，相比之下，老布什开支95万美元，而克林顿、小布什和奥巴马都在百万美元以上，这些费用都是由纳税人买单。
　　以办公室而论，奥巴马的办公室每年开支53.6万美元，克林顿51.8万，小布什49.7万，老布什28.6万，而卡特只有11.6万。他是怎样做到如此低的费用呢？举例来说，按道理他完全可以使他的办公室成为一个带卧室的套间，因为他每月有一个星期要从平原镇来到亚特兰大市的卡特中心办公，但他这一个星期宁愿睡在沙发上，后来才安装了一个墨菲床(可以竖起后靠在墙边的床)。卡特如此俭朴的生活和谦逊的风格，在川普年代更显得难能可贵。当今白宫主人的骄奢狂妄，与卡特相比简直就是对立的两极。
　　说到卡特离开白宫后的工作，不能不提到卡特中心。数十年来，卡特领导这个中心为人权事业、第三世界的卫生事业、朝鲜半岛的和平和世界各地的公平选举做了大量的工作，也资助不少学者在中心从事相关的研究工作。卡特为此获得2002年度的诺贝尔和平奖，登上人生的另一座高山。
　　值得一提的是，除了卡特本人在中心的办公室由纳税人支付其开支以外(即前文所提的11.6万美元)，其他费用均由中心自筹。90多岁高龄的卡特本人也经常乘坐民用航空客机，到美国和世界各地为心作宣传和筹款。除了卡特中心以外，卡特还是Habitat for Humanity的长期志愿者和领导者。他不仅仅在纸面上倡导和支持，每年他都身体力行，亲自参加一个Habitat的项目，为低收入者建造住房。他业余喜欢做木工和建筑方面的活计，这些技巧在Habitat的项目中都能派上用场。

　　很多人认为卡特离任后的成就超过了他在任时的成就, 他也是前任总统里最受爱戴的。
　　在业余时间，卡特还是他所在的教会的主日学(Sunday School)教师，他每两周授课一次，迄今为止已经讲了800堂课。常有听众从美国各地来听讲，甚至还有从外国来的。通常听讲的人要从星期六晚上开始排队。最近一位听讲者是来自弗吉尼亚州的小听众，名叫杰克孙•卡特•莱利，他只有3个月大。他父亲史蒂芬说：“我希望孩子们长大后都象卡特总统一样，有一颗服务大众的心。”他还说，自己和太太琼安娜把儿子取名卡特，就是因为卡特谦逊的为人。
　　“桃李不言，下自成蹊”，莱利一家像那些不远千里万里，前来卡特所在教会听他授课的人一样，是成千上万卡特的追随者中间的一员。卡特本人是位虔诚的南方浸信派基督徒，信仰(Faith)在他生活中占有极为重要的地位。他有三本书都以信仰(Faith)为主题("KeepingFaith", "Living Faith", "Faith: A Journey for All").
　　卡特对川普进入白宫后的所作所为一般不作评论，但最近他开始直言不讳。他认为川普是个“灾难”，尤其在人权和平等待人方面。他和罗莎琳都认为川普最大的问题是“说假话”，和“对真相的无知和不屑”。卡特说，他的父亲从小教导他必须说真话。他在海军服役时这个价值观得到进一步的加强。在他曾经就读的海军学院，说个很小的假话都会被开除，但是现在国家最高领导人却可以每天说谎而不受惩罚。
　　卡特认为最高法院对Citizen United的判决是美国政治的转折点，使得美国从民主政治走向寡头政治。但是他坚信美国人民基本的伦理价值和道德价值没有改变。总有一天美国人民“会在正确与错误、真相与谎言、高尚与卑鄙的较量中回到正轨上来”，“不过恐怕我是看不到那一天了”。
　　卡特数年前被诊断患了癌症，但是经过治疗，位于肝部和脑部的癌细胞都已消失。再过一个多月他就年满94岁了，罗莎琳也已91岁。正应了中国人的一句古话：仁者寿。这对老夫妇已经结褵72年。周末的晚上，他们时常会去朋友家用些简单的晚餐，然后两人手拉手地步行回家。

　　在阅尽了高山的风景以后，这位美国老人回到平原，那个孕育了他的地方，过着宠辱不惊的简朴而平淡的生活。
延伸阅读：文章参考的《华盛顿邮报》文章英文全文：
The Un-Celebrity President
　　The Washington Post
　　Aug. 17, 2018
　　By: Kevin Sullivan & Mary Jordan
　　Jimmy Carter shuns riches, lives modestly in his Georgia hometown
　　Jimmy Carter finishes his Saturday night dinner, salmon and broccoli casserole on a paper plate, flashes his famous toothy grin and calls playfully to his wife of 72 years, Rosalynn: "C’mon, kid."
　　She laughs and takes his hand, and they walk carefully through a neighbor’s kitchen filled with 1976 campaign buttons, photos of world leaders and a couple of unopened cans of Billy Beer, then out the back door, where three Secret Service agents wait.
　　They do this just about every weekend in this tiny town where they were born – he almost 94 years ago, she almost 91. Dinner at their friend Jill Stuckey’s house, with plastic Solo cups of ice water and one glass each of bargain-brand chardonnay, then the half-mile walk home to the ranch house they built in 1961.
　　On this south Georgia summer evening, still close to 90 degrees, they dab their faces with a little plastic bottle of No Natz to repel the swirling clouds of tiny bugs. Then they catch each other’s hands again and start walking, the former president in jeans and clunky black shoes, the former first lady using a walking stick for the first time.
　　The 39th president of the United States lives modestly, a sharp contrast to his successors, who have left the White House to embrace power of another kind: wealth.
　　Even those who didn’t start out rich, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have made tens of millions of dollars on the private-sector opportunities that flow so easily to ex-presidents.
　　When Carter left the White House after one tumultuous term, trounced by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, he returned to Plains, a speck of peanut and cotton farmland that to this day has a nearly 40 percent poverty rate.
　　The Democratic former president decided not to join corporate boards or give speeches for big money because, he says, he didn’t want to "capitalize financially on being in the White House."
　　Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said that Gerald Ford, Carter’s predecessor and close friend, was the first to fully take advantage of those high-paid post-presidential opportunities, but that "Carter did the opposite."
　　Since Ford, other former presidents, and sometimes their spouses, routinely earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech.
　　"I don’t see anything wrong with it; I don’t blame other people for doing it," Carter says over dinner. "It just never had been my ambition to be rich."
　　’He doesn’t like big shots’
　　Carter was 56 when he returned to Plains from Washington. He says his peanut business, held in a blind trust during his presidency, was $1 million in debt, and he was forced to sell.
　　"We thought we were going to lose everything," says Rosalynn, sitting beside him.
　　Carter decided that his income would come from writing, and he has written 33 books, about his life and career, his faith, Middle East peace, women’s rights, aging, fishing, woodworking, even a children’s book written with his daughter, Amy Carter, called "The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer."
　　With book income and the $210,700 annual pension all former presidents receive, the Carters live comfortably. But his books have never fetched the massive sums commanded by more recent presidents.
　　Carter has been an ex-president for 37 years, longer than anyone else in history. His simple lifestyle is increasingly rare in this era of President Trump, a billionaire with gold-plated sinks in his private jet, Manhattan penthouse and Mar-a-Lago estate.
　　Carter is the only president in the modern era to return full-time to the house he lived in before he entered politics – a two-bedroom rancher assessed at $167,000, less than the value of the armored Secret Service vehicles parked outside.
　　Ex-presidents often fly on private jets, sometimes lent by wealthy friends, but the Carters fly commercial. Stuckey says that on a recent flight from Atlanta to Los Angeles, Carter walked up and down the aisle greeting other passengers and taking selfies.
　　"He doesn’t like big shots, and he doesn’t think he’s a big shot," said Gerald Rafshoon, who was Carter’s White House communications director.
　　Carter costs U.S. taxpayers less than any other ex-president, according to the General Services Administration, with a total bill for him in the current fiscal year of $456,000, covering pensions, an office, staff and other expenses. That’s less than half the $952,000 budgeted for George H.W. Bush; the three other living ex-presidents – Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama – cost taxpayers more than $1 million each per year.
　　Carter doesn’t even have federal retirement health benefits because he worked for the government for four years – less than the five years needed to qualify, according to the GSA. He says he receives health benefits through Emory University, where he has taught for 36 years.
　　The federal government pays for an office for each ex-president. Carter’s, in The Carter Center in Atlanta, is the least expensive, at $115,000 this year. The Carters could have built a more elaborate office with living quarters, but for years they slept on a pullout couch for a week each month. Recently, they had a Murphy bed installed.
　　Carter’s office costs a fraction of Obama’s, which is $536,000 a year. Clinton’s costs $518,000, George W. Bush’s is $497,000 and George H.W. Bush’s is $286,000, according to the GSA.
　　"I am a great admirer of Harry Truman. He’s my favorite president, and I really try to emulate him," says Carter, who writes his books in a converted garage in his house. "He set an example I thought was admirable."
　　But although Truman retired to his hometown of Independence, Mo., Beschloss said that even he took up residence in an elegant house previously owned by his prosperous in-laws.
　　As Carter spreads a thick layer of butter on a slice of white bread, he is asked whether he thinks, especially with a man who boasts of being a billionaire in the White House, any future ex-president will ever live the way Carter does.
　　"I hope so," he says. "But I don’t know."
　　’A good ‘ol Southern gentleman’
　　Plains is a tiny circle of Georgia farmland, a mile in diameter, with its center at the train depot that served as Carter’s 1976 campaign headquarters. About 700 people live here, 150 miles due south of Atlanta, in a place that is a living museum to Carter.
　　The general store, once owned by Carter’s Uncle Buddy, sells Carter memorabilia and scoops of peanut butter ice cream. Carter’s boyhood farm is preserved as it was in the 1930s, with no electricity or running water.
　　The Jimmy Carter National Historic Site is essentially the entire town, drawing nearly 70,000 visitors a year and $4 million into the county’s economy.
　　Carter has used his post-presidency to support human rights, global health programs and fair elections worldwide through his Carter Center, based in Atlanta. He has helped renovate 4,300 homes in 14 countries for Habitat for Humanity, and with his own hammer and tool belt, he will be working on homes for low-income people in Indiana later this month.
　　But it is Plains that defines him.
　　After dinner, the Carters step out of Stuckey’s driveway, with two Secret Service agents walking close behind.
　　Carter’s gait is a little unsteady these days, three years after a diagnosis of melanoma on his liver and brain. At a 2015 news conference to announce his illness, he seemed to be bidding a stoic farewell, saying he was "perfectly at ease with whatever comes."
　　But now, after radiation and chemotherapy, Carter says he is cancer-free.
　　In October, he will become the second president ever to reach 94; George H.W. Bush turned 94 in June. These days, Carter is sharp, funny and reflective.
　　The Carters walk every day – often down Church Street, the main drag through Plains, where they have been walking since the 1920s.
　　As they cross Walters Street, Carter sees a couple of teenagers on the sidewalk across the street.
　　"Hello," says the former president, with the same big smile that adorns peanut Christmas ornaments in the general store.
　　"Hey," says a girl in a jean skirt, greeting him with a cheerful wave.
　　The two 15-year-olds say people in Plains think of the Carters as neighbors and friends, just like anybody else.
　　"I grew up in church with him," says Maya Wynn. "He’s a nice guy, just like a regular person."
　　"He’s a good ‘ol Southern gentleman," says David Lane.
　　Click here to watch the video clip.
　　Carter says this place formed him, seeding his beliefs about racial equality. His farmhouse youth during the Great Depression made him unpretentious and frugal. His friends, maybe only half-joking, describe Carter as "tight as a tick."
　　That no-frills sensibility, endearing since he left Washington, didn’t work as well in the White House. Many people thought Carter scrubbed some of the luster off the presidency by carrying his own suitcases onto Air Force One and refusing to have "Hail to the Chief" played.
　　Stuart E. Eizenstat, a Carter aide and biographer, said Carter’s edict eliminating drivers for top staff members backfired. It meant that top officials were driving instead of reading and working for an hour or two every day.
　　"He didn’t feel suited to the grandeur," Eizenstat said. "Plains is really part of his DNA. He carried it into the White House, and he carried it out of the White House."
　　Carter’s presidency – from 1977 to 1981 – is often remembered for long lines at gas stations and the Iran hostage crisis.
　　"I may have overemphasized the plight of the hostages when I was in my final year," he says. "But I was so obsessed with them personally, and with their families, that I wanted to do anything to get them home safely, which I did."
　　He said he regrets not doing more to unify the Democratic Party.
　　When Carter looks back at his presidency, he says he is most proud of "keeping the peace and supporting human rights," the Camp David accords that brokered peace between Israel and Egypt, and his work to normalize relations with China. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
　　"I always told the truth," he says.
　　Carter has been notably quiet about President Trump. But on this night, two years into Trump’s term, he’s not holding back.
　　"I think he’s a disaster," Carter says. "In human rights and taking care of people and treating people equal."
　　"The worst is that he is not telling the truth, and that just hurts everything," Rosalynn says.
　　Carter says his father taught him that truthfulness matters. He said that was reinforced at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he said students are expelled for telling even the smallest lie.
　　"I think there’s been an attitude of ignorance toward the truth by President Trump," he says.
　　Carter says he thinks the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has "changed our political system from a democracy to an oligarchy. Money is now preeminent. I mean, it’s just gone to hell now."
　　He says he believes that the nation’s "ethical and moral values" are still intact and that Americans eventually will "return to what’s right and what’s wrong, and what’s decent and what’s indecent, and what’s truthful and what’s lies."
　　But, he says, "I doubt if it happens in my lifetime."
　　On Church Street, Carter points out the mayor’s house with his left hand while he holds Rosalynn’s with his right.
　　"My mother and father lived in that brick one," he says, gesturing toward a small house across the street. "We use it as an office now."
　　"That’s Dr. Logan’s over here."
　　Every house has a story. Generations of them. Cracked birdbaths and rocking chairs on somebody’s great-grandmother’s porch. Carter knows them all.
　　"Mr. Oscar Williams lived here; his family was my competitor in the warehouse business."
　　He points out the Plains United Methodist Church, where he spotted young Eleanor Rosalynn Smith one evening when he was home from the Naval Academy.
　　He asked her out. They went to a movie, and the next morning he told his mother he was going to marry Rosalynn.
　　"I didn’t know that for years," she says with a smile.
　　They are asked if there is anything they want but don’t have.
　　"I can’t think of anything," Carter says, turning to Rosalynn. "And you?"
　　"No, I’m happy," she says.
　　"We feel at home here," Carter says. "And the folks in town, when we need it, they take care of us."
　　’A heart of service’
　　Every other Sunday morning, Carter teaches Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church on the edge of town, and people line up the night before to get a seat.
　　This Sunday morning happens to be his 800th lesson since he left the White House.
　　He walks in wearing a blazer too big through the shoulders, a striped shirt and a turquoise bolo tie. He asks where people have come from, and from the pews they call out at least 20 states, Canada, Kenya, China and Denmark.
　　He tells the congregation that he’s planning a trip to Montana to go fishing with his friend Ted Turner, and that he’s going to ride in his son’s autogiro – a sort of mini-helicopter.
　　"I’m still fairly active," he says, and everyone laughs.
　　He talks about living a purposeful life, but also about finding enough time for rest and reflection. Then he and Rosalynn pose for photos with every person who wants one, including Steven and Joanna Raley, who came from Annandale, Va., with their 3-month-old son, Jackson Carter Raley.
　　"We want our children to grow up with a heart of service like President Carter," says Steven, who works on Navy submarines, as Carter once did.
　　"One of the reasons we named our son after President Carter is how humble he is," Joanna says.
　　Carter holds the baby and beams for the camera.
　　"I like the name," he says.
　　A modest life
　　When they reach their property, the Carters turn right off the sidewalk and cut across the wide lawn toward their house.
　　Carter stops to point out a tall magnolia that was transplanted from a sprout taken from a tree that Andrew Jackson planted on the White House lawn.
　　They walk past a pond, which Carter helped dig and where he now works on his fly-fishing technique. They point out a willow tree at the pond’s edge, on a gentle sloping lawn, where they will be buried in graves marked by simple stones.
　　They know their graves will draw tourists and boost the Plains economy.
　　Their one-story house sits behind a government-owned fence that once surrounded Richard Nixon’s house in Key Biscayne, Fla. The Carters already have deeded the property to the National Park Service, which will one day turn it into a museum.
　　Their house is dated, but homey and comfortable, with a rustic living room and a small kitchen. A cooler bearing the presidential seal sits on the floor in the kitchen – Carter says they use it for leftovers.
　　In a remodel not long ago, the couple knocked down a bedroom wall themselves. "By that time, we had worked with Habitat so much that it was just second-nature," Rosalynn says.
　　Rosalynn Carter practices tai chi and meditates in the mornings, while her husband writes in his study or swims in the pool. He also builds furniture and paints in the garage; the paint is still wet on a portrait of a cardinal that will be their Christmas card this year.
　　They watch Atlanta Braves games or "Law and Order." Carter just finished reading "The Innovators" by Walter Isaacson. They have no chef and they cook for themselves, often together. They make their own yogurt.
　　On this summer morning, Rosalynn mixes pancake batter and sprinkles in blueberries grown on their land.
　　Carter cooks them on the griddle.
　　Then he does the dishes.