The Carter-Rickover Relationship

An important moment in U.S. naval history occurred on 20 January 1977, when the paths of two submariners converged to mark the “Day of the Nucs.” Those men were Jimmy Carter and Hyman G. Rickover. As historians Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar have written:

The nuclear navy was, by the 1970s, becoming the better navy. It was receiving considerable money and brains, more of the best and the brightest. Nucs were running large areas of the Navy and, in many ways, remaking it. The 1970s were the years of the nucs. And if one day could be circled as the Day of the Nucs it would be Inauguration Day, 1977, when former Lieutenant James Earl Carter Jr. became President—and Nuc One.¹

Allen and Polmar might have added that, from the beginning of Carter’s long road to the White House, he had tethered portions of his political identity to his association with the iconic Rickover.

‘Did You Do Your Best?’

In his presidential campaign autobiography Why Not the Best?, Carter reflected on a now well-known interview with then-Captain Rickover. The young Carter was near the end of a two-hour interview with Rickover, which had come to function as a rite of passage for anyone seeking entrance to the Navy’s nascent nuclear submarine program, when Rickover brought up the topic of Carter’s standing at the U.S. Naval Academy. After Carter proudly announced ranking in the top 10 percent of the class of 1947, Rickover pointedly asked, “Did you do your best?” Carter hesitated but answered truthfully that he had not. To which the captain queried, “Why not?”

Unnerved by the question, Carter did not reply. His honest confession, however, did not prevent him from being selected for the program. Carter served under Rickover from October 1952 to October 1953, when he resigned from active duty following the death of his
father.²

Carter biographers as well as presidential scholars have proclaimed the interview encounter to be a transformational event for Carter. They credit Rickover’s probing question with prompting Carter to undergo a life-changing period of self-reflection that compelled the young sailor “to make the maximum effort in every single thing he did for the rest of his life.”³

Without a doubt, the Rickover interview constituted a significant moment in Carter’s personal and professional life, as it did for virtually every sailor who was part of the nuclear submarine program. Indeed, as another celebrated nuclear submariner, Commander Edward L. Beach Jr., wrote in a 1977 Washington Post op-ed: “With all due respect, the President will have to move over on this one. He is not alone on this bench. If all the nuclear submariners in the Navy were asked the question, [about Rickover’s influence] . . . all, without exception, would give the same answer.”⁴

Appropriating the Rickover Association

In October 1952, there were no nuclear-powered submarines in service. Carter drew a precommissioned assignment in the USS Seawolf (SSN-575), the second nuclear-powered submarine to be authorized. He trained as the ship’s engineering officer, taking college classes in nuclear physics and reactor technology. Carter performed his technical and administrative assignments “excellently,” wrote Rickover in a fitness report. In the categories of initiative, moral power, leadership, loyalty, endurance, industriousness, and military bearing, Carter received the highest possible rating from his stern and demanding boss.⁵

Carter began referencing the memorable Rickover interview in public speeches as early as the 1960s.⁶ When Carter formally announced his candidacy for President, he concluded his remarks by making a direct reference to his last billet and presented the “why not the best” question as a challenge to the nation and its citizens.⁷ He referenced his association with Rickover repeatedly on the campaign trail, including at Johns Hopkins University, where he gave an address on how “a high standard can be restored to our government and to our own personal lives.”

After delivering his remarks, Carter opened the floor to questions from the audience. A student, perhaps tired of the oft-repeated interview analogy or generally curious about the legendary admiral, requested, “Any more Rickover stories?” Carter replied: “No. Yeah, I’ve got plenty of them. It would take me all day to tell stories about Rickover. Yes, sir.” Despite the assertion, Carter moved
on without elaboration.⁸ While Carter may have been able to tell an additional story or two, he seemed satisfied that the interview anecdote alone fulfilled his purpose.

During the campaign, the press—and Carter’s political opponents—raised serious questions about Carter’s limited background in foreign policy. The candidate and his advisers were “sensitive” to these questions.⁹ Given Carter’s stated intention to alter dramatically the course of U.S. Cold War foreign policy, he needed to establish that he could be trusted on matters of national defense, and he used his association with Rickover toward those ends. For Carter, his time in uniform communicated how he had acquired “military expertise and an appreciation for the seriousness of war.”¹⁰

From ‘Jimmy Who?’ to the White House

As a Washington outsider and a one-term governor of a Southern state, Carter struggled to score well in presidential name-recognition and candidate-preference polls. And ironically, for a time, Admiral Rickover was among those Americans asking the question, “Jimmy Who?”

Despite the positive fitness reports and a promising start in the nuclear Navy, Carter had no actual post-Navy relationship with Rickover prior to being elected governor of Georgia. Tellingly, when Carter sent Rickover an invitation to his gubernatorial inaugural, the admiral did not remember his former submariner. To solve the mystery, Rickover eventually pulled and reviewed Carter’s personnel file.¹¹ But from this inauspicious beginning, a personal line of communication between the two men recommenced—one initiated by Carter.

Once Carter made the decision to run for President, he contacted Rickover seeking his input on “developing a clearer concept of what our Defense establishment should be.”¹² In a follow-up, he sought the admiral’s advice on government contracts with private corporations as well as nuclear power research.¹³

The queries caught Rickover’s attention, and he responded appreciatively. He sent Carter copies of his congressional testimony on energy; a speech, “The Role of Engineering in the Navy”; advice on making governments more cost effective and efficient; and comments on improving the procurement process for weapons systems.¹⁴ Following Carter’s acceptance of the Democratic Party nomination, their communications included face-to-face meetings. As Carter inched closer to the White House, the range of emerging possibilities piqued Rickover’s interest, and he reached a point at which he had an assistant shadow Carter on the campaign trail and report back with minute details on the candidate’s speeches.¹⁵

The Presidential Years

With Carter’s election as President, he and Rickover moved from an informal association to an authentic relationship. They entered the transitional phrase of this move with different expectations. According to historians Allen and Polmar, “Word was passed in the Navy that Rickover would enter the White House inner circle . . . [and] would become a gray eminence, a cherished White House elder in the tradition of Bernard Baruch and W. Averell Harriman.”¹⁶ 

Such conclusions were not confined to the Navy grapevine, as some in the media made similar predictions.¹⁷ The speculation grew with Rickover’s early visits to the White House. In addition, evidence of a new interpersonal dynamic appeared during the first month of Carter’s presidency.

After meeting directly with Rickover, Carter noted in his White House diary that he “seems very proud of the fact that I’m President. He gives me frequent memoranda concerning ways to make the government more effective, and although he’s highly opinionated and is sometimes perhaps in error, his suggestions have been helpful.”¹⁸ Without question, the admiral expressed a peculiar political perspective. As early as April 1977, Rickover told Carter to “stick” to his principles and he “would come out alright,” adding that the President might not win reelection in 1980, but could win in 1984.¹⁹

Setting aside the utility of Rickover’s political acumen, Carter continued to welcome the admiral’s input on a range of topics and granted him unfettered access. On multiple occasions, they discussed such issues as educational testing, organized-crime control, abortion, the process of calling a Constitutional convention, Israel, a possible Rickover trip to China, Carter’s public speaking skills, the State Department and ambassadorial appointments, race relations and African American leaders, political action committees, the two-party system, SALT II negotiations, the media, and even Confederate General Robert E. Lee.²⁰

One of the most obvious examples of Rickover’s influence occurred when President Carter delivered a televised address on one of his campaign’s signature issues—the nation’s energy policy. The complex plan contained 113 separate provisions.²¹ Increased costs were likely, Carter warned, and the urgency of the crisis required sacrifice. “This difficult effort will be the ‘moral equivalent of war,’ except that we will be uniting our efforts to build—not destroy,” the President declared in the most memorable line of the speech.²² Interestingly, just days before the important address, Rickover sent Carter “some general words for introducing” his energy program, including the memorable declaration, the “moral equivalent of war.”²³

In addition to policy discussions, moments of intimacy and personal bonding manifested between the two men. On one such occasion, Rickover returned to Carter the workbook that Carter had kept as a student at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory while training as the engineering officer of the Seawolf, telling the President, “Should you decide to leave your present employment, you will be welcome once more in the Naval Reactors Program.”²⁴

The two men also included their families in these frequent interactions. Their wives exchanged gifts with one another, and Carter’s preteen daughter also participated in the memento swapping.²⁵ After a joint appearance in the Navy town of Norfolk, Virginia, Carter thanked Rickover for his “sensitive and human gestures.”²⁶ Rickover’s wife invited all three Carters to an intimate surprise birthday party at the admiral’s private residence.²⁷

‘Nuc One’

Neither Carter nor Rickover was known for being humorous. Yet as their relationship grew, a jocular camaraderie emerged. During one of their may public appearances, Carter and Rickover conducted a joint sea trial of the USS Los Angeles (SSN-688). The sea trial mixed a nostalgic reflection on the Commander-in-Chief’s naval career with the politics of national defense.

On the one hand, reporters posed serious questions during the Q&A session relating to national security and foreign policy negotiations. On the other hand, they could not help but appreciate the soft-news dimensions of the story. In fact, the moments of levity prompted one reporter to ask whether Carter still had his sea legs. Rickover even managed to slip in a humorous quip in which he stated that Carter’s performance while operating the throttle of the submarine’s nuclear plant and his piloting of the ship demonstrated “that any sailor or officer in the Navy can become President.”²⁸ 

For his part, Carter sometimes honored Rickover in funny or self-deprecating ways. “I invited my old boss . . . to come and join us,” he told the 1978 graduating class at the U.S. Naval Academy. “He sent word back that he would, of course, comply with my orders as Commander-in-Chief, but he thought his work for the Navy in Washington was more important than listening to my speech.” After the audience laughed, the President added, “and I was not surprised.”²⁹ On another occasion, when Carter presented Rickover with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Carter told those gathered on the South Lawn of the White House, “This is one of the few times when Admiral Rickover has walked toward me that I didn’t tremble in my shoes.”³⁰ The comment elicited laughter, but it revealed the evolution of Carter’s relationship with Rickover since the days of the unnerving interview 30 years prior.

From Carter’s perspective, his bond with Rickover was authentic and unfeigned, but it was not deferential to the point of subservience. To Rickover’s credit, he understood the unique dynamics that entwined their relationship. During the Los Angeles sea trials, when a reporter asked if the admiral had convinced his former protégé to “build more nuclear subs,” Rickover snapped, “I don’t believe the President is a man who can be convinced except by his own convictions.”³¹

Not long after, Carter proved Rickover correct when he vetoed a Defense Department authorization bill. The President’s primary objection concerned what he deemed the unnecessary construction of one of Rickover’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.³²

Although Carter valued Rickover’s counsel throughout his presidency and continued to admire him deeply, their relationship did not conform to the typical protégé model. The President was certainly not beholden to the admiral. Perhaps being President and Commander-in-Chief afforded Carter a degree of agency that allowed him to control better the terms and parameters of their relationship. Rickover will forever be known as the father of the nuclear Navy, but only Carter earned the sobriquet “Nuc One.”

Wise Counsel—and Plain Old Friendship

Scholars have done a poor job of defining the Carter-Rickover relationship. True, Rickover’s influence on Carter began in the fall of 1952 when the young sailor began his career in the nuclear Navy. However, those who cling narrowly to the proposition that the interview question produced a life-changing period of introspection, both overstate the role of the interview in Carter’s life and, more importantly, fail to appreciate the depth and essence of his relationship with Rickover.

Despite Carter’s attempt to connect with Rickover during the gubernatorial period, the two men had no relationship prior to Carter’s decision to run for President. As part of his presidential campaign, Carter used the interview question as a rhetorical device to frame his political identity, and he appropriated his time in the nuclear Navy to demonstrate his preparation to be Commander-in-Chief. Moreover, as a presidential candidate, Carter finally established a connection with Rickover by appealing to the admiral for policy advice and by offering White House access.

Between 1977 and 1980 the two men forged a bond that was far more complex and personal than has been acknowledged. Indeed, a synergetic relationship between them emerged, one from which both men benefited, although in different and unique ways.

From Carter’s perspective, what transpired between himself and the admiral during the White House years more closely resembled a friendship than anything else. Rickover was a loner, but Carter has been described best as “self-contained and unneedy.”³³ Consequently, Carter was someone who developed few friendships. Within his administration, the President’s closest personal and professional confidant was fellow Georgian Bert Lance. But Lance resigned after just six months because of allegations of unethical banking and business practices. As historians Burton I. Kaufman and Scott Kaufman have maintained, “Lance’s resignation deprived the President of a close friend . . . someone with whom he could engage in frank discussions on an almost daily basis and who might have acted as a rudder to a president and an administration whose course often seemed aimless.”³⁴ To a certain extent, Rickover filled a personal void for Carter created by Lance’s departure. Thus, for a multiplicity of reasons, Carter often referred to Rickover as “the man who’s had the most effect on my own life, other than my own father.”³⁵

For Rickover, he obviously understood that a relationship with Carter presented a platform for advancing his ideas beyond the Navy and the defense community. In fact, he admitted later in life that Carter’s electoral victory “exhilarated” him and that “he might even be at the crest of his career.”³⁶ Despite Rickover’s universal recognition as the architect and father of the nuclear Navy, the dark side of his personality was not a secret. Even those who had served under him and respected him acknowledged that he was “a man self-serving to an unbelievable degree, devoid of appreciation of or sympathy for the differences in people, intent only on getting his job done as he and he alone conceives it should be done.”³⁷

Ultimately, by digging deeper into the Carter years and exploring more fully the private interactions between the two men, one can see Rickover in a fresh light. The cards, gifts, phone calls, and family gatherings, as well as the words of support and encouragement, all point to a heartfelt rapport and companionship between Carter and Rickover. Perhaps the time has come for some new chapters to be written on Nuc One and Nuc Two—chapters that recognize and appreciate the authenticity of mutual friendship.