Chapter XIV Why Not the Most?
Lippman, Theo Jr.
Theo Lippman, Jr. Chapter XIV. Why Not the Most? A special advance excerpt from President Carter's unwritten memoirs. AS mid-term approached, my political and popular support were dismally low....
...Neither could Rosalynn...
...He had gained 26 pounds in the last week of the campaign, on the advice of a secret memo from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...
...Of course, with my extraordinary resolve, I had till then limited myself to only one dessert a week...
...he began the campaign with a fast...
...I cried...
...I am a chocolate freak...
...By New Hampshire primary day, I was a rotund 250...
...In the first months after hiring him, my standing in the polls and with traditional Democratic interest groups fell...
...I hadn't made a public appearance since June...
...The way the polls are, I don't have to worry about my image anymore...
...To perk up my spirits, Rosalynn hired a new pastry chef for the White House, Albert Kumin of Windows on the World, a three-martini cafe in New York...
...On Christmas Eve, I felt I had to make a public showing...
...I insisted, and on Christmas Eve, from the new Prayer Room of the White House, I addressed the American people on the war in the Holy Land...
...Neither could Rafshoon...
...I edged out Teddy Kennedy, 52 percent to 48 percent...
...All the best brains in the administration worked to understand this development, to no avail...
...Yet I had accomplished so much...
...For me no American tradition is more hallowed than Christmas...
...I ate four helpings...
...I had that 17 pounds on him by March 1, and I am, of course, much shorter...
...Kumin's first night on the job, he prepared peanut brittle supreme, with chpcolate filling in the peanuts themselves...
...The week before the California primary, I was over the 270 mark and fattening...
...The networks naturally placed their cameras so that I was seen in the most unflattering poses...
...This memo later fell into our hands...
...She said the problem wasn't that I wasn't a good president- It was that the press was not reporting the truth to the people...
...With only Jerry Brown between me and renomination, I stepped up the pace...
...Kumin is a genius with chocolate, and Rosalynn knew what was then a well-kept secret...
...Kumin prepared his own specialty, chocolate velvet cake...
...When I ventured out again, to walk the streets of Plains for the first time in a year (I had stayed away because of the trial-see Chapter XII), I was warmly cheered by townsfolk, tourists, and family members alike...
...In one of his characteristic reverses, he announced that he had been secretly fat all along...
...But you weigh 235 pounds," said Rafshoon...
...Brown had taken the opposite approach at first...
...But as I gathered momentum, he found himself reduced to a minimum of organized support-marathon runners, Weight Watchers, and the Americans for Democratic Action, none of whom vote...
...Inside, I'm fat," he proclaimed...
...It wasn't fair!,/'What can we do," I asked Rosalynn at a Cabinet meeting, "besides pray...
...Let's go b.ack fat and sassy...
...But Kennedy had started too late...
...Schlesinger advised Kennedy that the American people's tribal memory of the good times before World War I-the last years of American innocence and irresponsibility-had been evoked by my fatness...
...So we hired an advertising man arid one of the best friends I ever had, Jerry Rafshoon...
...It was a touching tribute to the Carter family heritage...
...My " approval rating" was almost as low as Richard Nixon's and Harry Truman's had been...
...None of my clothes fit anymore...
...But the polls leveled off...
...It looks like we're headed back to Plains in 1981...
...I no longer could button my trousers...
...Too fat to campaign, but just fat enough to win...
...Instead of speechwriters, Chef Kumin and his staff traveled with me in Air Force One...
...His job was to get the true story of the Jimmy Carter presidency to the people...
...I ate the whole thing...
...By the fall of 1979 I weighed 200 pounds...
...He dropped out of the race in early May, kayoed, he later admitted, by my promise to "outweigh William Howard Taft" by Inauguration Day, and by my slogan, "Why Not the Most...
...I couldn't understand this...
...Rosalynn," I exclaimed, "let's have dessert every night...
...The second night Mr...
...He released a doctor's statement that his cholesterol level was over 300...
...You're a mess...
...I didn't need a Jerry Rafshoon to tell me that fat politicians were seldom successful...
...I pledge to you a government as fat as its people," I said on television from the convention the next month, when I was nominated by acclamation...
...We called Chef Kumin in from the kitchen and prayed together...
...We celebrated my California victory with triple helpings of chocolate mousse all around...
...But to everyone's surprise, the public response was positive...
...Meanwhile, the dessert regimen- tarts, tartlets, compotes, bombe--continued...
...My "approval rating" rose five points...
...It didn't work...
...It was gratifying, if mystifying...
...Chocolate ice cream with cinnamon, chocolate fruit tarts, chocolate pound cake...there was no end to Chef Kumin's imagination...
...I looked like William Howard Taft...
...Rafshoon was horrified...
...We need an image communicator," she explained...
...Teddy weighed in at 233...
...Sorbet, chocolate truffles, genbise cakes soaked in kirsch...
...I was saddened to note that he failed...
...The polls had me running behind Senator Edward Kennedy...
Vol. 12 • April 1979 • No. 4
