Peter Field: All living U.S. Presidents pay respects to Jimmy Carter

Hundreds have packed into Washington's National Cathedral to mourn 39th US President Jimmy Carter who died last week aged 100. 

All five living US Presidents attended the service, before officials began transporting Carter's body to his home state and final resting place - Georgia. 

Canterbury University Associate Professor Peter Field says Carter signed the 1978 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. He says the Camp David Accords were significant for getting Israel officially recognised. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
And Jimmy Carter's state funeral has been underway in Washington,
d C. This morning after a week of tributes. The
one hundred year olds served between nineteen seventy seven and
nineteen eighty one. All four living former president's President Bill Clinton,
George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump have been
in attendance and joining me now is Associate Professor of
American History at the University of Canterbury. Peter Field, Peter

(00:39):
good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Good morning. I counted five ex presidents, but I'll probably
miscount it, so there you go. I'm sure anyway, good morning.
And firstly, my heart goes out to everyone in my
brother and me. His son lives in LA so we've
been getting moments by moment updates from him. So yeah,
that's a living tragedy, and so our heart goes out

(01:02):
to everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yes, angels, Indeed, pretty hard stuff to watch, isn't it.
Let's was the funeral itself. It's quite a fascinating watch,
quite unusual to have all those former presidents in one room.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yes, it is it is, and I was just trying
to think of who's next. I guess Bill Clinton looks
quite well. He's been in the hospital with the flu recently,
and so I guess he's the oldest. The others are
fairly robust, I guess. And okay, Joe Biden's the city president. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Wouldn't you have loved wouldn't you have loved to know
what Trump and Obama were talking about, because there was
quite an animated conversation going on. They were looking very collegial,
weren't they.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, it's a very small club, and in fact, they've
lost one one of them, so that that shrinks the
group by twenty percent or something. And Jimmy Carter's really interesting.
I think everybody likes to talk about his legacy post presidency,
but my brother and I were talking about this, and
you know, his presidency was very important. And it's interesting

(02:01):
because maybe Trump and Obama were talking about, hey, we
serve two terms, or Trump will have served and so
did Bush and so did Clinton, and Carter's was just
one term as you read out life, and yet a
presidency was very significant and important in American history.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well why was it so significant with just the one term.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Well, certainly you would remember a couple of things in
foreign policy, two of which were quite interesting. One is
returning Panama Canal to the Panamanians, which seemed to be
a very good and right moral thing to do, even
if it wasn't against some sort of narrow American interest.
By the way, that's been in the news. Lady Trump,
I think, yeah, we won't go there. And then secondly,

(02:43):
the Camp David Accords. You know, Carter was the last alive,
of course because on Marcedat was assassinated not long after
and the Nakam Bacon had died, and the Camp David
Accords were really the first major move for you know,
the Israeli state that you wish state to be recognized
by other or in this case one mid Eastern state Egypt.

(03:08):
So that's very significant and those are very important moves
that have impact right up to this day, and Jimmy
Carter deserves great credit. I truly think that for those
two moves.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Hey, thanks, thank you Peter for your insight on that.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
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