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John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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absolutely blind, and found that he could see me after work that afternoon, if I would come down to the office.

So down I went to his office, around 5:00 or whenever. And there we had a quite long chat. Carter, by this time, had become quite well known as a progressive young governor of Georgia -- which was itself something of an anomaly. There had been stories that he might be a possible presidential candidate in the next year's election but he never admitted that. Anyway, after a quite long and interesting talk with Carter in his office about his views and what he wanted to do, I was extremely impressed by him. And when I got back to New York, I urged Punch Sulzberger, the publisher, that it would be really worthwhile for us to have Carter either in to lunch or a meeting or something. I thought he was an interesting character. Ultimately, sometime later, Carter did appear in the Times office, not at lunch but at a meeting, to which Punch asked the various news executives as well as myself -- the people who would normally have been around the luncheon table.

We had quite a session with Carter, during which he admitted that yes, he was really a candidate for the presidential nomination, which had seemed to me, during our conversation in Atlanta, was very, very clear. But he had never, either publicly or, as far as I know, privately, admitted it up to this point. But he allowed as how, at this meeting at the Times. He said it was the first time he had actually admitted he was going to run, try to get the presidential nomination. Of course, he did, successfully. I was very enthusiastic about Carter. We supported him as strongly as we could in the '76 election. I'm not sure, frankly, that without my enthusiasm the publisher would have been -- He certainly wouldn't have been as enthusiastic as I was but, anyway, he went along. This, by the way, was the summer I was having a terrible problem in connection with the total disruption of





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