Barry Jagoda recalls life at the Carter White House

 

Other items in today’s column include:
*Political bytes
*Recommended reading

By Donald H. Harrison

 

SAN DIEGO — Barry Jagoda, a retired communications director for UC San Diego, has had a storied media career. He was a producer at various times for CBS and NBC, coordinating coverage for such historic events as Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon; and the unfolding Watergate crisis and resignation of Richard M. Nixon. With his media savvy, he went on to become a special assistant to Jimmy Carter, initially on the campaign trail and later in the White House.  Many of the stars of his era in television media — Walter Cronkite, Ed Bradley, Dan Rather, for example — were on first-name basis with him.  As you might imagine, Jagoda has a lot of stories to tell.

Now, he’s brought out a memoir, Journeys with Jimmy Carter and other Adventures in Media, in which he starts off with his experiences in the White House, then flashes back to his life growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, and Houston, Texas, and eventually being accepted to the prestigious Columbia School of Journalism in New York City, where as an intern he began to make the network contacts that would propel his career.

Jagoda remains a fan of former President Jimmy Carter, who he believes was a president as “good and decent” as the American people.  He is contemptuous of our current President Donald J. Trump, in large measure because Trump has launched an all-out attack on the institution that Jagoda loves: the media.  When Jagoda hears expressions like “fake news,” he hears a negation of the ethics and principles that guided his own professional trajectory.  Now retired and no longer affiliated with a news organization — except for the contribution of occasional columns to Times of San Diego —  Jagoda has recently engaged in local politics, joining the 2018 successful grassroots effort to elect Mike Levin (D-California) as the 49th Congressional District successor to Republican Congressman Darrell Issa.  Throughout his book, he alludes to his displeasure with Donald Trump.  It’s a pretty safe bet that he’ll be voting for Democrat Joe Biden this November.

Given that he is a fellow Jew, I was interested to see what the memoir would reveal about Carter’s attitude towards the Jews.  Many of us remember the book that Carter wrote in 2006, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which by title alone, equated Israel’s policy toward Palestinians with the egregious system of racial separation that had shamed South Africa. Anyone looking at Arab members of the Knesset, the Israeli courts, and other important posts in Israeli government know that apartheid-like segregation is a myth. Jagoda didn’t address the issue directly, but his chapters on his experience in the Carter campaign and in the White House showed that, whatever Carter might have done in his post-presidency, he had placed many Jews in positions of power.

Those mentioned in Jagoda’s memoir included Carter’s principal policy advisor Stuart Eizenstat; Eizenstat’s deputy David Rubenstein;  advertising consultant Gerald Rafshoon; trade negotiator Robert Strauss, and Richard L. Cohen, a top foreign policy aide in the United States Information Agency, among others.  Jagoda also remarked upon such  guests invited to the Carter White House as the pianist Vladimir Horowitz and Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear submarine force, for whom Carter once worked as a young Navy officer.  Carter’s most famous contact with a Jewish foreign leader, of course, was with Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin, with whom he and Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat hammered out a peace accord at Camp David.

While one supposes that Jagoda has much deeper material in his memory bank, his memoir does not probe any subject in particularly extensive fashion; it seemed to rush over events and situations in order to mention as many people as possible with whom he had come into contact, including celebrities, relatives, work colleagues. and friends.  This was disappointing for anyone with a love of presidential history.  On the other hand, if you are involved in a campaign for public office, either as a candidate or an advisor, Jagoda offers a fairly comprehensive look at how to set up a media program to make certain that the Fourth Estate is paying attention to you.

One paragraph in Jagoda’s memoir that surprised me dealt with President Trump.  “Attempts by politicians to project and control their own image are not particularly new,” Jagoda wrote. “But what is fundamentally different, now in the age of Trump, is this president’s diabolical attempt to control the news so directly.  For the election of 2020, he will be continually foaming and tweeting, clamoring about “the swamp in Washington;” attacking members of Congress, encouraging anti-Semitism, racism, and white nationalism while hopeing the American electorate fails to see through the ruse.”

There are many reasons why one might disapprove of President Trump.  His seemingly xenophobic anti-Immigration policies such as building a wall and ending the DACA program; his tendency to bully people on his Twitter account; the way he has alienated numerous international allies; and his confusing and dangerous lack of leadership during the coronavirus pandemic all spring to mind.   But, anti-Semitism?  A lot of things may be said about Trump (and are!) but it takes more than a simple assertion to persuade me that Trump is anti-Semitic, given his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism; the role his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner  has played as a top White House advisor, and the close relationship Trump has developed with Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians, who, along with Christian evangelical allies, successfully urged him to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; close the Palestine Liberation Organization’s offices in Washington; reduce aid to Palestinians over their “pay to slay” policy for jailed terrorists, and various other policies favoring the Jerusalem government. Some of Trump’s backers indeed may be anti-Semites — as for example the white supremacists who marched with swastikas and Ku Klux Klan paraphernalia in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017–but given all the evidence to the contrary, it would be hard to sustain a charge of anti-Semitism against Trump himself..  Without specifying the basis on which he made the charge, Jagoda weakened his book.

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Political bytes

*San Diego City Council President Georgette Gomez, a candidate in the 53rd Congressional District to succeed retiring Congresswoman Susan Davis, announce she has been endorsed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.  Said Rodney Fowler, president of AFSCME Local 127: “Gomez has been a fighter that San Diego City workers could count on.  She has been a reliable ally, and we know that she will continue to be a leader in Congress, championing the causes of working families and delivering the results that San Diego needs.”  Gomez faces Sara Jacobs in November.

*As “Pride Month” draws to a close, Assemblyman Todd Gloria (D-San Diego) reflects: “Just a few decades ago it would have seemed impossible for an openly gay person of color like me to ever imagine being the leading candidate for Mayor of our great city. But my parents — a maid and a gardener — told me when I was a kid to leave something better than I found it, so I have worked hard to make our city better. Thanks to the unyielding advocacy of San Diegans, our city has grown more inclusive and accepting. I am so proud of our city and I am so excited to make history with you this fall as the first openly-LGBTQ elected Mayor of San Diego.”  Gloria faces San Diego City Councilwoman Barbara Bry in November.

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Recommended reading
*Moshe Dann in The Jerusalem Post argues that the “two-state solution” is simply another step towards eliminating Israel altogether.

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Donald H. Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com