The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.
On Jimmy Carter’s second visit to Oslo in 1996, where I was President Clinton’s ambassador, the two of us were in the VIP room of the airport waiting for his departure time. It was just a separate room with bad lighting and a coffee vending machine. The Dalai Lama walked in. More on that later.
The years I served as ambassador, 1993 through 1997, the first Clinton administration, are chronicled in my new memoir, “Mission to Oslo: Dancing With the Queen, Dealmaking With the Russians, Shaping History” (Little Creek Press, 2024).
I had been the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, the longest-serving Democratic speaker in the history of the state, and had been a force in Wisconsin Democratic presidential primaries: a surrogate for Mondale in 1984, chair of the Dukakis campaign in 1988, and chair of the Clinton campaign in 1992.
My involvement with Carter started with the 1976 Wisconsin primary. It was down to Morris Udall or Jimmy Carter in the delegate hunt for the nomination. I was on the state campaign committee for Udall. One day on the campaign trail I shook hands with Gov. Carter. What a calm, pleasant man.
Carter won that primary and went on to win the nomination. Udall had been declared the winner by the Milwaukee Sentinel but when the farm counties’ votes came in past midnight Carter had won in a squeaker.
The first visit of President Carter to Norway during my tenure was May 17, 1994. I missed him as I was in the White House with Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland for her first meeting with President Clinton. We would go from there to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she would receive an honorary degree and give a commencement address.
Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn had come to Oslo to present a gift to the Norwegian people by the Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation of a public sculpture in recognition of the Oslo Accords: a deal brokered in secret by Norwegian officials setting a course for negotiation to a permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
When I met President Carter at the airport on his second visit to Oslo in May 1996, I gave him credit for my political career. I was elected in 1976 partly on the Carter coattails. (Flattery among seasoned politicians is natural, like knowing the right amount of pepper to put on fried eggs.)
We fell into a friendship that seemed like we had gone to high school together. I briefed him and he asked a lot of questions about Norwegian politics.
Jimmy Carter had simply written me a letter asking if it would be OK for him to come to Norway for a visit. And asked: Did I have a room for him? The ambassador’s residence in Oslo is a stunning three-floor villa sitting on its own city block. So yes, I had a room for him.
The guest room has a balcony. I would take each guest out on this balcony and explain what they should do if there happened to be a fire. The fire escape looked like an aluminum downspout, but when you pulled a large pin out it unfolded to a ladder that reached the ground. The engineering background of the president kicked in and he investigated this mechanism for some time. His garment bag, which he had carried, still lay on the bed.
The purpose of the president’s visits to Oslo was to report on what he was doing with the money the Norwegian government and its affiliated aid organization had given the Carter Center’s disease control programs in Africa, and to ask for more. Norway was a willing and consistent funder.
The two of us spent every waking moment together, crisscrossing Oslo in my black Chevrolet Impala — no armor, V8 engine, cloth seats. First stop was visiting Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and her influential, young international relations advisor Jonas Gahr Støre (currently Norway’s prime minister). Then we met in turn each of the party leaders in the Parliament, with extra time spent with Kjell Magne Bondevik, the leader of the Christian Democratic Party. Bondevik’s party was the main proponent of foreign humanitarian aid and he was a Lutheran minister. Bondevik was young, and influenced greatly by the student protests in America and France in the 1960s. Carter was with a soulmate, another politician who still taught Sunday school.
Carter was accused of coming to Oslo to lobby for the Nobel Peace Prize. I told him that the quest for the Nobel is part of the parlor game here; at dinner he would be seated next to Geir Lundestad, the director of the Nobel Institute, who doesn’t have a vote, but who keeps the list of potentials.
Geir was a noted historian of the Cold War and American foreign policy. Journalists need a quote; historians want a footnote. I said, “Geir will have many questions for you on your presidency. Give him something.”
My final point was to explain that the members of the Nobel Prize Committee represented the political parties in the Parliament. Each and every one was on the panel because of their political history. They were like small-town priests who rose to be among the cardinals choosing the next pope.
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his “decades of untiring efforts to find solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development,” the Nobel Prize website reads.
At their chance meeting at the airport in 1996, the Dalai Lama beamed and hugged the president. I noted to the Dalai Lama that we had had dinner together with the University of Wisconsin chancellor not too long before. The Dalai Lama asked Carter to facilitate a meeting with the Chinese. Carter said, “When things change.” In my cable to the State Department on this encounter, I interpreted this “change” to mean when Deng Xaioping died.
What Carter and I did NOT talk about was my mentor in politics, Gov. Patrick Lucey of Wisconsin, whom Carter had appointed ambassador to Mexico. Lucey resigned in order to campaign for Ted Kennedy in his run against Carter in the 1980 presidential primary. When that failed, Gov. Lucey ran as John Anderson’s vice presidential candidate. They took a lot of votes away from Carter and perhaps cost him re-election.
Carter and Lucey did eventually reconcile and I was there. During the Dukakis campaign in 1988 (I was chair of the campaign and Lucey the honorary chair), Lucey called me and said you are driving me to Milwaukee. Carter will be at an event and it is time we talked. (I stood just out of earshot. The conversation seemed pleasant enough.)
Carter had very fond memories of the 1976 Wisconsin Democratic primary. His win sealed the deal for the nomination. And he was revered in Norway as an example of the best of humankind.
But in Oslo it was Rosalynn who had the best take on things. At a lunch in their honor, hosted by my wife Barbara and the deputy chief of mission, son Karl, age 9, decided that wailing on his battery-powered toy guitar outside the dining room was what the party needed. Rosalynn said, “That is what makes these trips memorable.”
-Former U.S. Ambassador to Norway Tom Loftus’ memoir, “Mission to Oslo: Dancing With the Queen, Dealmaking With the Russians, Shaping History” (Little Creek Press, 2024, $25), is available at https://littlecreekpress.com, Amazon.com, and in Madison bookstores.
