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Even the President-elect's mother was surprised by the scope of his ambition. Miss Lillian recalls teasingly asking him one day in 1973, "Whatcha gonna do when you're not Governor?
"And he said, 'I'm going to run for President.'
"So I said, 'President of what?'
"And then," she says, "I realized he wasn't joking. That little curtain came down over his face, and he said, 'Momma, I'm going to run for the President of the U.S., and I'm going to win.' "
HIS STUBBORNNESS. The obvious danger of such self-confidence is that President Carter may be unwilling to listen to advice or compromise when thwarted, as he will inevitably be. As Governor, Carter condemned his state's legislature as "the worst in the history of the state" when it refused to pass a consumer-protection bill that he favored. Although there have been charges to the contrary, he was a good Governor—pushing through government reorganization, establishing zero-based budgeting and sensible environmental controls, improving the prisons, expanding mental health services, greatly increasing the state's budget surplus with no real rise in taxes. But his steady scrapping with the legislature hindered him from accomplishing even more. His stubborn streak also showed during the primaries, when he refused for two days to apologize for his notorious "ethnic purity" remark—and finally did so under intense pressure from black leaders.
"I am pretty rigid," Carter admits. "It's been very difficult for me to compromise when I believe in something deeply. I generally prefer to take it to the public, to fight it out to the last vote, and if I go down, I go down in flames."
HIS USE OF RELIGION. During the primaries, Scoop Jackson criticized the Baptist deacon for "wearing his religion on his sleeve." The attack was unfair. Despite jokes that he was taking his initials too seriously, Carter usually talked about his personal beliefs only when asked. But he did so with a candor and self-assurance that was unnerving to some, including Protestants, who were unfamiliar with the forthright traditions of Southern evangelicalism.
After losing the 1966 election for the governorship of Georgia, he reassessed his life and became a "born-again" Christian. "The presence of my belief in Christ is the most important thing in my life," says Carter. "I'm not ashamed of it." But he stresses that he feels no "special relationship" with God in politics: "I don't pray to God to let me win an election. I pray to ask God to let me do the right thing." There is no evidence that Carter has ever forced his religious views on anyone. In fact, he does