Jimmy Carter didn't just farm peanuts, he ate them for breakfast

Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer before he became president, ate peanut butter for breakfast. I know this because I was invited to an early morning press briefing during his visit to Shanghai in August 1981, together with a few other foreign correspondents, shortly after he was defeated and replaced as president by Ronald Reagan.

He had switched formal U.S. diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China on Taiwan to the People's Republic two years earlier, after negotiations with Deng Xiaoping, putting a U.S. Ambassador in Beijing for the first time since the fall of the Chinese Empire in 1912.  China’s Nationalist government had moved the capital to Nanjing, where it remained until 1949 when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan after his defeat by the communists.

We were invited to Carter’s suite in Shanghai’s historic Jinjiang Hotel. I noticed peanut butter on his breakfast table and asked him how he managed to get it. Such Western luxuries were not available in communist China at the time. He said he had brought it with him as he always had it for breakfast.  I wonder if that could be why he lived to be 100?

May Jimmy Carter rest in peace.  He was a good man much misunderestimated, as George W Bush might have put it.  He was such a breath of fresh air after Richard Nixon. He worked hard for peace in the Middle East, justifiably earning the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end this and other conflicts. The world needs more such good men.

Among other highlights of that fascinating Beijing posting was an interview with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi at the Diaoyutai State Guest House in 1982.  Kept waiting for three hours, together with an AP correspondent, I was eventually ushered into the presence. He was flanked by two young female bodyguards in military uniforms, with side arms, long hair and their heads surprisingly uncovered. Having got to the end of a short permitted list of questions, I asked whether he had anything else to say.  “Only that you have been most privileged to meet me here tonight,” he replied. ■