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....
...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...
...Rafshoon was horrified...
...Sorbet, chocolate truffles, genbise cakes soaked in kirsch...
...Let's go b.ack fat and sassy...
...It looks like we're headed back to Plains in 1981...
...Neither could Rafshoon...
...All the best brains in the administration worked to understand this development, to no avail...
...I was saddened to note that he failed...
...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...
...Inside, I'm fat," he proclaimed...
...he began the campaign with a fast...
...Instead of speechwriters, Chef Kumin and his staff traveled with me in Air Force One...
...I had that 17 pounds on him by March 1, and I am, of course, much shorter...
...In the first months after hiring him, my standing in the polls and with traditional Democratic interest groups fell...
...With only Jerry Brown between me and renomination, I stepped up the pace...
...I couldn't understand this...
...Chocolate ice cream with cinnamon, chocolate fruit tarts, chocolate pound cake...there was no end to Chef Kumin's imagination...
...I ate the whole thing...
...I edged out Teddy Kennedy, 52 percent to 48 percent...
...It was gratifying, if mystifying...
...Too fat to campaign, but just fat enough to win...
...We need an image communicator," she explained...
...This memo later fell into our hands...
...Of course, with my extraordinary resolve, I had till then limited myself to only one dessert a week...
...Brown had taken the opposite approach at first...
...So we hired an advertising man arid one of the best friends I ever had, Jerry Rafshoon...
...I ate four helpings...
...He had gained 26 pounds in the last week of the campaign, on the advice of a secret memo from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...
...We called Chef Kumin in from the kitchen and prayed together...
...It was a touching tribute to the Carter family heritage...
...The networks naturally placed their cameras so that I was seen in the most unflattering poses...
...Meanwhile, the dessert regimen- tarts, tartlets, compotes, bombe--continued...
...For me no American tradition is more hallowed than Christmas...
...He released a doctor's statement that his cholesterol level was over 300...
...I looked like William Howard Taft...
...Kumin's first night on the job, he prepared peanut brittle supreme, with chpcolate filling in the peanuts themselves...
...The polls had me running behind Senator Edward Kennedy...
...The week before the California primary, I was over the 270 mark and fattening...
...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...
...You're a mess...
...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...
...I didn't need a Jerry Rafshoon to tell me that fat politicians were seldom successful...
...By the fall of 1979 I weighed 200 pounds...
...None of my clothes fit anymore...
...My "approval rating" rose five points...
...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...
...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...
...His job was to get the true story of the Jimmy Carter presidency to the people...
...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...
...It didn't work...
...The way the polls are, I don't have to worry about my image anymore...
...Yet I had accomplished so much...
...By New Hampshire primary day, I was a rotund 250...
...My " approval rating" was almost as low as Richard Nixon's and Harry Truman's had been...
...Teddy weighed in at 233...
...I cried...
...Rosalynn," I exclaimed, "let's have dessert every night...
...I am a chocolate freak...
...On Christmas Eve, I felt I had to make a public showing...
...It wasn't fair!,/'What can we do," I asked Rosalynn at a Cabinet meeting, "besides pray...
...Neither could Rosalynn...
...We celebrated my California victory with triple helpings of chocolate mousse all around...
...I no longer could button my trousers...
...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...
...In one of his characteristic reverses, he announced that he had been secretly fat all along...
...But you weigh 235 pounds," said Rafshoon...
...I hadn't made a public appearance since June...
...But to everyone's surprise, the public response was positive...
...Kumin is a genius with chocolate, and Rosalynn knew what was then a well-kept secret...
...But the polls leveled off...
...But Kennedy had started too late...
...Kumin prepared his own specialty, chocolate velvet cake...
...The second night Mr...
Vol. 12 • April 1979 • No. 4
