Always the Best.
JIMMY CARTER · U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY
THE INTERVIEW
A submariner who became president.
President Jimmy Carter is the only President of the United States to have served on a submarine. When he applied for the nuclear submarine program, the future President was interviewed by Admiral Rickover.
FATHER OF THE NUCLEAR NAVY
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover.
Rickover was a Polish-born Jewish immigrant and the father of the nuclear Navy. He was instrumental in the development of the first nuclear reactors for generating electricity and ship propulsion.
ADM. HYMAN G. RICKOVER, USN
THE TWO HOURS
Did you do your best?
For more than two hours they sat in a room by themselves. The Admiral let Carter choose the topics he wished to discuss. Carter stuck to the subjects that he knew best: current events, seamanship, music, literature, naval tactics, electronics, and gunnery.
The Admiral asked a series of questions of increasing difficulty. Stone-faced and without breaking eye contact with Jimmy Carter, the Admiral gradually proved Carter knew relatively little about the subjects he had chosen.
Carter finally felt some relief when Admiral Rickover asked his class standing. “Sir, I stood fifty-ninth in a class of eight hundred twenty!” Waiting for a congratulatory remark which never came, Carter was asked a follow-up: “Did you do your best?”
Carter started to say, “Yes, sir!” Remembering who he was sitting in the room with, Jimmy Carter thought about the many times he could have studied more about America’s allies, America’s enemies, weapons, strategy — but he was human. After a gulp, Carter said, “No, sir, I didn’t always do my best.”
Rickover looked at Carter for a long time before turning his chair around to end the interview. His back turned to the future President, the Admiral asked a final question, “Why not?”
“Why not the best?” – President Jimmy Carter’s
1976 Presidential Campaign Slogan