Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President by Helen Thomas

Author:Helen Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2002-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee got a laugh when he said that President Carter had originally planned to appoint Billy Carter head of the CIA, but Billy didn’t want to be head of anything he couldn’t spell.

The president did not arrive until after Baker’s turn at the podium, but was in time to hear some funny lines from Vice President Mondale, who, according to many, was hilarious. When he poked fun at Carter’s foreign policy, the president laughed as much as anyone.

“There are big changes in this administration’s foreign policy compared to the last,” said Mondale. “In the Ford administration they held daily foreign policy briefings—whereas we have a daily foreign policy.

“I go to Paris, I go to Rome, and he goes to Plains, Georgia, and Clinton, Massachusetts,” Mondale said. He also boasted about how he got better treatment than his boss. “On Inauguration Day I rode from the Capitol to the White House in a chauffeured limousine. The president had to walk. Whenever I take a trip, aides carry my luggage. The president carries his own.”

Carter made sure his face was like stone when it was his turn to speak, and he referred to Mondale as “the acting vice president of the United States.”

He told the audience he had heard all the cracks about his foreign policy being disastrous, but he thought there “should be some continuity from the last administration” to his. And on a serious note, he said, “In every instance that I have known of with confrontation with the government and the press, the press was always right. So keep it up.”

S. I. Hayakawa, the new Democratic senator from California that year, took a ribbing as well. A columnist dressed in a karate suit lead a choir in which the familiar Hallelujah Chorus by Handel was transformed into a “Hayakawa” chorus to herald his arrival.

Naturally, several in the audience turned to see how the real-life senator was taking it. He was taking it fine. He was asleep.

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