20
A Southern-born and bred conservative, Jimmy Carter was an anomaly when he earned the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976. A devout, “Born-again Christian” in his Southern Baptist beliefs, he was the epitome of the Washington outsider that he campaigned to be. Ultimately, that’s what got him elected in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, when mistrust of the federal government was rampant. “Enlightened when it came to race,” while at the same time offering a “commonsense approach to economics,” according to presidential historian Kenneth Davis, Carter was an acceptable crossover candidate at the perfect time, when honesty seemed to be valued more than anything else by American voters.1
During the campaign, Carter had artfully framed the Panama Canal as “a hot political issue, particularly with his Southern political base,” according to his political adviser turned biographer Stuart Eizenstat. Strategically, he turned Gerald Ford’s “good-faith negotiations” with Panama against him, “accusing his opponent of being prepared to cave on sovereignty,” and thus “outflanking him from the right.” At the same time, Adam Clymer, in his book on the Canal saga, emphasized Carter “never raised” the issue “on his own in the campaign,” giving credence to the idea it was merely fodder he could use against the incumbent until the race was over and he had actually replaced Ford in the White House. At that point, as Eizenstat testified, it came as a surprise that Carter “vaulted one of the most contentious, emotional foreign-policy issues of the era to the top of his priority list.” Clymer tried to make sense of this policy shift by the new chief executive, when he wrote:
For Carter’s [immediate] predecessors, Canal negotiations were driven by the sense they could enhance the security of the waterway. For Carter they were also, and more significantly, an opportunity to show a new face of American foreign policy, one that conveyed respect for human rights, small nations, and moral principle. [He] certainly had not planned to make Panama the first foreign issue he tackled. Launching [his] Mideast peace process had been his first foreign policy priority, but he said in a 2006 interview that Panama had been very important to him, too [by admitting] “I wanted to treat Panama fairly. I had studied the issue thoroughly and I was convinced that it was an unfair original agreement that was foisted upon the Panamanian people against their will. I was determined to go through with the Panama Canal [treaty] because I thought I could succeed, and I did not anticipate the antipathy and the concerted effort that was aroused against it. I underestimated the opposition.”2
Jimmy Carter, the little-known governor of Georgia, was a surprise presidential winner in 1976 over incumbent Gerald Ford when he skillfully used Ford’s negotiations with Panama against him before reversing course on the issue once he was in the White House. Carter also gained a huge campaign edge from Ford’s controversial pardon of his disgraced predecessor, Richard Nixon (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division—Reproduction Number LC-DIG-ppmsca-09782).
Long before Carter’s determination to move forward on the Canal in 1977, in fact, battle lines on the issue had been forming in Washington. In his autobiography, Laxalt, the Nevada senator and confidant that future President Reagan would rely on to keep his Republican primary manifesto versus Ford simmering after Carter was elected, remembered his earliest recollection of the Canal controversy when he was asked during his own Senate campaign in 1974 if he agreed with the plan “to give away the Canal.” Laxalt, who was running for the Senate after previously serving as Nevada’s governor, was caught totally unaware of the possibility and “filibustered vaguely,” to use his words, that it was not a very good idea. It was an admittedly unprepared answer to a question that was about to become a conservative, “hot-button issue”—truly Laxalt’s “wakeup call.”3
Once elected, he further learned (and wrote) that, indeed, Kissinger’s State Department was full of diplomats who believed the Panamanians had been treated unfairly “and that it was time to expiate our guilt and return the Canal to its rightful owners.” But with Republican Gerald Ford as president, he assured himself that no such “giveaway” could possibly be imminent, an assumption obviously proven false when Regan’s right-wing backers convinced him of the issue’s relevance during their ’76 campaign versus Ford. No such assumptions would be necessary with Carter, however, as “immediately after the election [as previously noted and confirmed by Laxalt], the Carter people entered into negotiations with the government of Panama’s Omar Torrijos to settle on treaty terms.”4
Ah yes, Omar Torrijos, who is commonly referred to as a Panamanian dictator by almost any source—a former commander of the Panamanian National Guard, who took over individual leadership of the country during a military coup d’état and served in that role from 1968 to 1981 and enacted a variety of social reforms without ever adopting the title of president. Admittedly inspired by the likes of Marshal Josip Tito, Yugoslavia’s independent leader during Soviet domination of the rest of Eastern Europe, and Egypt’s Abdel Nasser, the most popular Arab leader at a time of shrinking European influence in the Middle East (including nationalization of the Suez Canal), Torrijos was also notoriously linked to Cuba’s Fidel Castro and branded a pro-communist friend and ally of the Cuban strongman. As a result, Reagan accused him of censoring the Panamanian press, extinguishing civil liberties, and threatening sabotage or guerrilla attacks on the Canal Zone in order to leverage treaty talks.5
Regardless, Carter’s sudden reversal and follow-up on the Kissinger-Tack Agreement thrust Torrijos into the Latin American catbird seat, and by December of 1976, Eizenstat confirmed that “half a dozen presidents of other Latin American countries had signed a letter to the President-elect,” urging “the need for a new Panama Canal Treaty” to improve “inter-American relations.” And Carter, who had “always been devoted to Latin America,” and had “a strong sense of kinship with them would never do anything that was not conducive to improved relations [between] the United States” and its hemispheric neighbors. As a result, multiple sources acknowledge there is little doubt that immediately after the ’76 election, the Carter administration entered into renewed treaty negotiations with the Torrijos government.6
Accordingly, as yet another source, Laura Kalman, who authored a book titled Right Star Rising on the “new politics” between 1974 and 1980, reported: “By the summer of 1977, the President’s negotiators had actually prepared two treaties, which, [when] combined, embodied the principles of Kissinger-Tack.” The first was simply named the Panama Canal Treaty and established provisions for immediately increasing Panamanian participation in the operation of the Canal Zone through the end of the century, with the assertion that Panama would gain ultimate control in 2000. The second was labeled the Treaty Concerning Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal, and “spelled out” what Kalman called, “the obligation of [both] the United States and Panama to defend the Canal and any threat to its status as a neutral waterway,” as well as assuring U.S. ships priority in times of excess traffic.7
Likewise, Laxalt’s memoir confirmed that in September: “The announcement was made, the Panama Canal treaties had been signed, and the fat was in the fire,” so to speak. “Conservatives were shocked. They just did not believe that when push came to shove Carter would actually go along” … that “regardless of what had been said, if the Democrats did win, they would give away the Canal.”8
With Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos seated next to him and anxiously looking on, President Jimmy Carter hosted the 1977 treaty signing ceremony in Washington, during which the Panama Canal, America’s creation and prize possession since the days of “Teddy” Roosevelt, was officially turned over to the host country, Panama (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division—Reproduction Number LC-DIG-ppmsca-09785).
Torrijos had come to Washington along with 17 other Latin American heads of state for what would be an extravagant signing ceremony at the Pan American Union Building. Also present were former President Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Lyndon Johnson’s widow (LBJ having died in 1973), and Kissinger, U.S. architect of the original agreement. Speaking in the broadest of foreign policy terms at the time, President Carter said: “Fairness, not force, should be at the heart of our dealings with the nations of the world. In a world very different from ours today, an original treaty was signed which has become an obstacle to better relations with Latin America. The new treaties can open a new era of understanding and comprehension, friendship and mutual respect throughout not only this hemisphere, but the world.”9 In his book, Senator Laxalt would again concur, when he wrote: “Under the terms of the treaties, the U.S. would gradually relinquish control over the waterway until the year 2000, when Panama would complete the take-over. Until that time, the U.S. would operate the Canal as well as the 14 military bases located in the Canal Zone. If, after the year 2000, the Canal’s safety was [ever] endangered, the U.S. would be free to intervene with military force”—an important concession, but not one that came close to appeasing the most conservative Republicans.10
And it didn’t take long for representatives of conservative groups to begin contacting Reagan’s surrogate in the Senate. Laxalt acknowledged these groups viewed Carter, like Ford, as “soft” on the issue and formally asked him to lead Senate opposition to ratification. At the same time, those groups were prepared to begin a grass roots campaign to raise funds with which to initiate combative, direct mail opposition. Laxalt also set about organizing a Senate team to confront the issue, with Jim Allen of Alabama as its floor leader, strategist, and “superb parliamentarian,” to go along with Bob Dole of Kansas, Jake Garn of Utah, John Tower of Texas, Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Bill Scott of Virginia, California’s S. I. Hayakawa, and the previously mentioned Thurmond plus Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Utah’s Orin Hatch. It was literally a who’s who of Senate conservatives and a group made even more formidable by the fact it included five members of the powerful Armed Services Committee, lending, in Laxalt’s words, “important weight” to their opposition.11
The first order of business for this opposition force was what Laxalt termed a “reliable headcount” to determine where each of their Senate colleagues stood on the Canal issue. “Within days,” Laxalt had his somewhat reliable count, including 23 “hard votes” and five “possibles,” with the rest of their fellow senators “leaning heavily” in the other direction. To defeat ratification of the Carter-Torrijos treaties, at least 34 of the 100 senators would be needed to vote against them, so with only 23 “assureds,” much work loomed for the Laxalt-led team.12
Immediately, Laxalt and the others took to the airwaves, aggressively challenging the treaties on television and radio. Laxalt was paired against Carter’s chief negotiator, Ambassador Sol Linowitz, at the prestigious Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, where they debated their opposing positions. Going second, Laxalt confronted each of Linowitz’s pro-treaty arguments, while the Carter team indicated rejection of the treaties would serve as a direct slap to the newly elected president and could seriously diminish his administration before it had a chance to get started. Laxalt reminded the nation that while the president had the power to negotiate treaties, only the Senate had the power to approve them and should never be treated as merely a “rubber stamp” for the chief executive. And although accepted by the U.S. military in the persons of the Joint Chiefs, Laxalt and his conservative cohorts polled 245 Navy officers, establishing some opposition among 241 of them.13
Linowitz also contended that America had basically short-changed the Panamanians, a “poor Panama syndrome” that Laxalt attacked as utter nonsense based on the economic advantages American presence had brought to the Panamanian people; the infrastructure gained by American dollars and know-how; and by medical advances achieved during the Canal’s construction, including the eradication of yellow fever and control of malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases. In conclusion, Laxalt said “it was high time the U.S. stopped apologizing to poorer countries we had befriended or helped save.” And to further their arguments against the treaties, Laxalt and Dole were soon on their way to Panama for an inspection tour of the Canal Zone and their own personal visit with Torrijos. It was during that visit, in fact, that Torrijos candidly admitted his friendship with Castro, while also demonstrating his devotion to his people when he took the two senators for a stroll through the streets of Panama City. Nevertheless, just four years later Torrijos would be mysteriously killed in a helicopter accident that paved the way for a far more unsavory successor, Manuel Noriega, to eventually emerge as president (Noriega would later be forced out of power in a U.S. invasion in 1989).14
Upon his return stateside, Laxalt and his fellow conservatives also embarked on another initiative as the Canal issue intensified. They called it a “Truth Squad” and they prepared to take their campaign on an extensive aerial road trip to counter the Carter administration’s assertions about transferring the Canal and despite the rejection of any funding assistance by the Republican National Committee and its moderate chairman Bill Brock of Tennessee, a rejection that drew immediate condemnation from Reagan. Nevertheless, the Truth Squad raised the funds necessary to take to the air on a highly publicized five-day, seven-city tour designed to alert the American people to the supposed fatal flaws in the Panama Canal treaties. Travelling with the Laxalt team were several ex-military officials to help spread the word in Nashville, Atlanta, Miami, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Denver, and Portland. Included in their case was the fear the U.S. would eventually be turning over the Canal to a government friendly with both Cuba and Russia, and by March 1978, “the debate over the Panama Canal treaties was,” in Laxalt’s estimation, “the Number One political topic in the United States.” Undecided senators were, again in his words, “subjected to unbelievable pressure from both sides,” and White House invitations to review the treaties “were commonplace.”15
Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada was the Senate leader in the battle to stop two decades of negotiations over the Panama Canal during the mid 1970s. After waging this proxy war for his good friend Ronald Reagan, who instigated the Canal fight as a presidential candidate in 1976, he would remain a key congressional supporter of the future president (permission granted by the Paul Laxalt Group via Wikimedia Commons, U.S. Senate Photo).
Eizenstat, who was in the middle of it all from the administration’s standpoint, pointed out that Joint Chief of Staff General David Jones was warning that Senate rejection “was likely” to touch off violence and guerrilla warfare in Panama, probably “threatening the Canal even more than a change to local control.” At the same time, conservative activist and talk show host Pat Buchanan was sarcastically pointing out the U.S. had always grown through questionable land grabs like the Canal Zone—so, he said, “what was next … giving back New Mexico, Arizona, and California?” After all, they too had been extracted from another country. Should they be returned to Mexico, too, just to satisfy what Kalman re-quoted as the “Chablis-and-cheese set?” But it was the battle on Capitol Hill that was attracting the most interest. Meeting regularly in Laxalt’s office, the treaty opponents got their marching orders from conservative insurgents like Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation and reportedly originator of the term “Moral Majority.” Meanwhile, the White House established a war room under the leadership of Carter Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan to coordinate the campaign for ratification, beginning with lobbying efforts to keep senators neutral and open-minded until the administration had a chance to explain how the treaties would protect U.S. interests, as well as defend that idea in the court of public opinion.16
Polls were showing the American public was with Laxalt and the treaty opponents, as the battle cry of “don’t give up our Canal” echoed among Americans by as much as 78 percent. A feeling of “vanished mastery” was how one historian categorized the U.S. psyche after Vietnam and the possibility of a Canal giveaway being more of the same. And then there was the specter of Reagan, with his initial warnings about the Ford administration’s negotiations with Panama still looming as an ever-more pervasive voice of Republican aspiration. Already in February of 1977, Reagan had addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington and denounced negotiating with a dictator, and others, including Democrat Bob Sikes of Florida, had cautioned about Russian ambitions in Latin America. Meanwhile, Laxalt and company were bringing enormous pressure on avowed undecideds like Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma, Louisiana’s Russell Long, Arizona’s Dennis DeConcini, Sam Hayakawa of California, Kentucky’s Wendell Ford, and Ed Zorinsky of Nebraska. In writing about the Senate machinations of the Laxalt (and Reagan) team, Kalman called it a “milestone in the development of conservatism.”17
Meanwhile, the Carter administration was busy developing a campaign to increase public support for the Canal treaties. While key senators were being inundated with anti-treaty mail by the Laxalt-Reagan team, the bipartisan Committee of Americans for the Canal treaties was unveiled in Washington composed of military and diplomatic luminaries from past administrations, as well as corporate leaders anxious to avoid the threat of Latin American supply chain instability. At the same time, Carter took on a huge role, according to Adam Clymer. While personally telephoning, wiring, and/or meeting with all 100 senators, he took copious notes on their individual responses and/or reservations in order to better frame his message and combat the negative polling numbers his administration was facing with public opinion. In the days before the final, amended version of the treaties came up for a vote in the Senate, the President treated the issue like a political campaign while seeking momentum and a feeling of inevitability. There was the spectacle of Latin American leaders journeying to Washington in a show of hemispheric support; the achievement of clarity over the fact no limitations would be placed on American intervention in defense of the Canal; and the way Carter was able to prod Torrijos toward expanding democracy and human rights. At the time Carter said:
We made a tremendous effort to woo Congress. Many nights when I was tired and would like to have relaxed, we had a supper for maybe a hundred [congressmen] and I would spend two more hours in the East Room describing either domestic or foreign policy. We had them in groups ad nauseam, night after night, going through the same basic questions and why they ought to support the Panama Canal legislation.18
Like Laxalt and Dole, Republican Minority Leader Howard Baker was one of numerous senators Carter encouraged to make fact-finding trips to Panama. Baker finally made his in January 1978. Torrijos assured him he would be flexible and amenable to an amended treaty within reason. But the most difficult of the uncommitted senators to sway for different reasons, according to the Carter camp, were Hayakawa and Domenici, one a Republican and the other a Democrat (respectively). Hayakawa, a best-selling author, was willing to commit his vote in exchange for future foreign policy access and input, while Domenici wanted to specify in the treaties what would constitute the need for American force and not just in the Canal Zone, but Panama proper as well—a potential deal breaker since Carter and Torrijos had kept that part of the negotiations ambiguous, intentionally avoiding specifics. The President and his team had to remedy both, with Carter reading Hayakawa’s book, Language in Action, and praising its content as a means of stroking his ego to secure his vote, while Jordan would save the day by rushing to Panama to assure Torrijos that the inclusion of a Domenici amendment could (and would) be watered down by the later actions of Senate Leaders Baker and Robert Byrd, who were both committed to the administration.19
On March 16, 1978, all the behind the scenes cajoling by both sides finally came down to the actual Senate vote, which Laxalt spoke directly about in his autobiography, when he wrote:
The day of the vote could only be described as wild. The galleries filled to the ceiling early. Leader Robert Byrd insisted upon “order” in the galleries. He even ordered the well of the Senate cleared during the vote. Shortly before the vote was called, there was bad news for our side—my colleague from Nevada, Howard Cannon. All along we had assumed Cannon was with us because of overwhelming sentiment in Nevada against the treaties. Just before the vote, Senator Cannon, who was chairing the Senate at the time, signaled me to come to the chair. He asked, “How are you doing?” That should have been a tip-off. I told him it could go either way and that we were at a hard 32 count and looking for two more votes in a pool of six, [still] undecideds. “How are you counting me?” he asked [and I responded] “I’m counting you with us, of course!” To this he gravely remarked, “I wouldn’t if I were you.” My heart sank. Without Cannon, that left us looking for three votes instead of two, which was a huge difference. The time for debate was divided equally between the two sides [and] as floor leader it became my questionable honor to parcel out time to my colleagues and leave myself enough time to close with a summary of our position. I had figured I would need at least 30 minutes to close properly, but as time progressed, it was clear that I would be lucky to speak at all.
Sure enough, debate time ended and Laxalt’s chance for a stirring close was lost to history—certain though it was, nothing he could have said at that point would have probably changed a single vote.20
The vote itself was unusual as the senators cast their votes seated at their desks, which was rare. Usually, Senate votes were recorded with senators milling about in the well and many after the first call, but not this one—not the one on relinquishing America’s Panama Canal. As the roll call proceeded, the pool of remaining undecideds, including Belmon, Domenici, Hayakawa, and the others, one by one voted in favor of the treaties. “The final vote was 68–32,” two votes shy of what was needed to deny ratification. Laxalt’s conclusion: “The White House pressure on the undecideds [had been] too great. We had made it to the one-yard line but couldn’t push the ball over the goal line.”21
But, as everyone knows, close only counts in horseshoes and the political fallout at home for those who voted in favor of the treaties was intense to say the least. Both Baker and Bellmon, fellow Republicans, asked Laxalt to join them at appearances in their states for damage control, which he did. As for Cannon, four years later he would be defeated while Hayakawa soon decided against running for re-election with his vote in favor of the treaties the main reason. To the end of his political days, Laxalt felt opposition to relinquishing control of the Canal was vindicated by his belief Panama, Latin America, and the U.S. would have been better served if Senate ratification had failed.22
On the other hand, Carter would always label the win one of his proudest moments. It had come at the end of the longest Senate debate over foreign policy since then President Wilson and Senator Lodge had squared off over the League of Nations. Vice President Walter Mondale observed at the time that the administration had indeed achieved “a Pyrrhic victory,” but at a cost of good will and trust. And sure enough, in late 1989 then President George H.W. Bush was compelled to authorize “Operation Just Cause,” a month-long U.S. military invasion of Panama, ensuring protection of some 35,000 Americans still living and working in the Canal Zone and as a means of capturing and deposing Noriega.23
Nonetheless, following 13 years of negotiations, beginning under the administration of Lyndon Johnson, the United States and Panama concluded a treaty in September 1977 that provided for the transfer of the Panama Canal and return of the Canal Zone to Panama on December 31, 1999. As noted earlier, Torrijos would not live to see it (as the result of the mysterious accident in 1981), but Carter would be there at age 75, heading a 29-member U.S. delegation commissioned by then President Bill Clinton, who, along with Secretary of State Madeline Albright, was notably absent. According to a Baltimore Sun story at the time, Clinton rebuffed a personal appeal for him to attend from Panamanian President Mireya Morosco, fearing his presence or anyone else from his administration could be used against Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., who would be running for president in 2000. Obviously, even by the turn of the century, giving up the Panama Canal remained a very controversial political issue.24
1. Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About the American Presidents, 537, 541; William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 623–624.
2. Stuart Eizenstat, President Carter, 556–557; Adam Clymer, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch, 44, 45.
3. Paul Laxalt, Nevada’s Paul Laxalt: A Memoir, 222.
4. Ibid., 222–223.
5. Britney Schering, “A Brief History of Omar Torrijos,” theculturetrip.com, November 23, 2017; Adam Clymer, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch, 26, 34.
6. Adam Clymer, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch, 42; Stuart Eizenstat, President Carter, 557; Paul Laxalt, Nevada’s Paul Laxalt, 223.
7. Laura Kalman, Right Star Rising: A New Politics, 1974–1980, 266.
8. Paul Laxalt, Nevada’s Paul Laxalt, 223.
9. Stuart Eizenstat, President Carter, 563; Adam Clymer, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch, 50.
10. Paul Laxalt, Nevada’s Paul Laxalt, 223.
11. Ibid., 224–225.
12. Ibid., 225–227.
13. Ibid., 228–231.
14. Ibid., 229–231; John Perkins, The New Confessions of An Economic Hit-Man, 65–82, 166–168.
15. Paul Laxalt, Nevada’s Paul Laxalt, 232–234.
16. Stuart Eizenstat, President Carter, 565; Laura Kalman, Right Star Rising, 267.
17. Laura Kalman, Right Star Rising, 266, 268; Stuart Eizenstat, President Carter, 565; Paul Laxalt, Nevada’s Paul Laxalt, 234. Adam Clymer, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch, 45.
18. Adam Clymer, Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch, 48–49, 51; Stuart Eizenstat, President Carter, 565–567.
19. Stuart Eizenstat, President Carter, 567, 569, 570–571.
20. Paul Laxalt, Nevada’s Paul Laxalt, 234–236.
21. Ibid., 236.
22. Ibid., 237, 238.
23. Laura Kalman, Right Star Rising, 270; Andrew Glass, “United States Invades Panama, December 20, 1989,” politico.com, December 20, 2018; “Panama City: Documenting U.S. Invasion,” The Week, July 3, 2020.
24. William DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, 627; Andrew Glass, “Panama Takes Control of The Canal, December 31, 1999,” politico.com, December 30, 2016; Jonathan Weisman, “Clinton Decides Not to Attend Transfer of Panama Canal: White House Is Wary, Fearing Political Fallout Could Land on Gore,” Baltimore Sun, November 30, 1999.