Rosalynn Carter was a political activist First Lady who publicly disclosed the fact that the President consulted her and sought her advice on his domestic and foreign affairs decisions, speeches and appointments. Traveling the nation at length, Rosalynn Carter also served as a liaison of current information between the President and the American public she encountered, providing him with reaction to Administration policy from the citizenry and providing them with explanations of that policy. A consequence of this was her unprecedented attendance at Cabinet meetings where she heard policy discussion first-hand and took notes on issues that she would subsequently carry to the public. She and the President maintained a Wednesday business lunch in the Oval Office to discuss Administration policy on issues that she had taken on as a spokesperson or on legislative matters of concern to her. She was also not averse to disagreeing with the President's final decisions; most often her bone of contention was that Carter did not make decisions or announcements with a sense of timing that always served the Administration's political purposes including issues such as New York City budget cuts, the Panama Canal treaties, and Middle East negotiations.
Rosalynn Carter was the first First Lady to maintain her office in the East Wing, the traditional office space reserved for the social, correspondence, scheduling and projects staff of the presidential spouse. She would often walk outside the mansion to avoid tourists going through the White House, carrying her briefcase with her. Frequently, the First Lady worked directly with Cabinet members, including the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Patricia Harris and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph Califano. In 1979, during her tenure, the federal government more formally recognized the role of First Lady as a bona fide federal position, albeit undefined by the U.S. Constitution, when automatic congressional appropriation was enacted for a staff for the First Lady on the premise that the "spouse assists the president" in fulfilling his duties.
Rosalynn Carter assumed an active role in the Administration's response and initiative on behalf of several domestic and foreign issues. The largest and most important was her work as the Active Honorary Chair of the President's Commission on Mental Health, which began on February 17, 1977. The First Lady oversaw an advisory board of twenty commissioners composed of social workers, medical experts, lobbyists and psychiatrists who toured the nation, holding public hearings, consulting hundreds of community activists, doctors, legislators, and former mental health patients, while also developing thirty task forces, staffed by over 450 volunteers, concentrating on specialized issues and holding their conference gathering in the White House State Dining Room. The commission prepared recommendations in a final report, suggesting that a 1963 act be overhauled to strengthen community center services, erase state-federal overlaps and create changes to health insurance coverage, public housing, Medicaid and Medicare and state support for the most chronically mentally ill. There was also an advocacy recommendation for a bill of rights protecting the mentally ill from discrimination; such clauses were enacted within the federal bureaucracy immediately by presidential proclamation. After touring the National Institute of Mental Health, the First Lady was also able to initiate increases in federal grants to continue research which often lagged because the previous grants were short-term and too low.
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In June of 1977, Rosalynn Carter undertook one of the most overtly political international missions ever assumed by a First Lady; she visited Jamaica, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela as the President's personal representative, holding substantive meetings with Central and South American policy leaders on issues that included human rights, arms reduction, demilitarization, beef exports, pilot training, drug trafficking, nuclear energy and weaponry. After each day's talks, she filed a report with the U.S. State Department. At many of her meetings the First Lady spoke in Spanish, having just previously completed an intensive language course. Throughout the breaks of the "Camp David Accords," peace talks negotiated by the President between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, Rosalynn Carter was present to provide support and advice as her husband asked of her. As a representative of the President, she attended the inaugurations of new Bolivian and Ecuadorian presidents, as well as the funeral of Pope Paul VI. The First Lady was also the American representative who greeted Pope John Paul II when he made his first visit to the U.S. in 1979. The First Lady frequently sat in on the daily National Security Council briefings held for the president and senior staff. In November of 1979, she learned the details of the Cambodian refugee crisis; starvation and extermination had killed almost half the population of Cambodia and millions of homeless refugees were flocking to the Thailand border to seek food and medicine in large camps set up for them. She flew to see the conditions for herself and successfully urged the United Nations creation of a world relief coordinator. Her influence further prompted the creation of the National Cambodian Crisis Committee and CambodianCrisis Center, which became the clearinghouse for all donated aid; she raised millions of dollars for the cause in the U.S. and got the president to increase U.S. quotas for refugees, permit food delivery directly into Cambodia and to accelerate Peace Corps efforts. With the November 4, 1979 taking of American hostages in Iran, the First Lady urged the President to immediately enact an oil embargo from that nation.
http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=40It is a much more substantive list of achievements than raising money from corporations, testifying in front of grand juries, and misplacing documents.
Clinton's Senate experience is war mongering. It is not something to be proud.