In the Democratic cloakroom just off the Senate floor, Hubert Humphrey cracked, "Segretti did it. It had to be one of the dirty-trick guys.'' Los Angeles Times Cartoonist Paul Conrad lost not a second in sketching a lascivious Jimmy Carter fantasizing over the Statue of Liberty—undraped. A Californian just back from a trip winked at his wife and announced: "I've got that Jimmy Carter feeling."
The implausible linkage of Jimmy Carter to lechery stemmed from some afterthought views on sexual mores that the candidate expressed in a wide-ranging interview that will appear in the November Playboy. The result of five hours of interviews given over a three-month period to Writer Robert Scheer, the Playboy article quotes Carter on such substantive topics as U.S. intervention in foreign countries, multinational corporations and the Mayaguez incident. But none of these created a stir.*
What riveted the public, in the wink of an eye, was Carter's use of the words "screw" and "shack up" while making a candid, purposeless admission that like other humans, he harbors lustful thoughts. With that, the Democratic nominee opened himself to titillating ridicule, bluenose outrage and serious questions about his judgment: should a presidential candidate choose a public forum where he will share attention with busty "Miss November" and a blurb heralding "Much More Sex in Cinema"? The cover promotion for the Carter story: "Now, the Real Jimmy Carter on Politics, Religion, the Press and Sex in an Incredible Playboy Interview."
Incredible indeed. In discussing sex at all. Carter was attempting to assure Playboy's presumably hedonistic readers that his own preference for marital fidelity has not given him a holier-than-they attitude. "We are taught not to judge other people," Carter said of his Southern Baptist upbringing. Then, in a rambling response to a suggestion that he might be a "rigid, unbending President," Carter declared: "What Christ taught about most was pride, that one person should never think he was better than anybody else." That should have been sufficient, but Carter continued: "I try not to commit a deliberate sin. I recognize that I'm going to do it anyhow, because I'm human and I'm tempted. And Christ set almost impossible standards for us. Christ said, 'I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust in his heart has already committed adultery.*
"I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do—and I have done it —and God forgives me for it. But that doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock."
Carter followed this curious intermingling of pulpit and locker-room language with, "Christ says don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife." The comments came after the interview apparently had ended and Carter was standing at the doorway of his home, seemingly unable to shut either the door or his mouth.