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After years of helping to bring Jimmy Carter's vision into reality, Bob Pastor leaves the Carter Center Beginning a new life
Don Melvin. The Atlanta Constitution. Atlanta, Ga.: Apr 23, 1998. pg. A.16.16
Subjects: Social services, Resignations, Personal profiles
People: Pastor, Robert A
Companies: Jimmy Carter Presidential Center
In photographs of Jimmy Carter --- conferring in the Oval Office with National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, discussing election monitoring with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega or negotiating in Haiti to avert a U.S. invasion --- there often appears in the background the image of a small, dark-haired, bespectacled aide. Bob Pastor's face may not be instantly recognizable. But behind some of Jimmy Carter's most famous successes lies a lot of Bob Pastor's work.
When Carter was president, Pastor helped negotiate the Panama Canal treaties. When, as ex-president, Carter wanted to observe Panamanian elections, Pastor went to secure permission. (In a rage, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega leapt onto a table and began throwing things at Pastor but eventually allowed Carter and his team to come.) And when Carter persuaded Daniel Ortega to accept election results and yield power peacefully, launching a new era in Nicaraguan politics, the moment was one for which Pastor had worked, in one capacity or another, for many years.
Pastor commands wide respect in foreign policy circles. In 1994, President Clinton nominated him to be ambassador to Panama, but the nomination was blocked by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said he would prevent a vote. Denied and disappointed, Pastor soldiered on at the Carter Center. When Carter, former Sen. Sam Nunn and Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, negotiated an agreement under which Haiti's military regime left the country without a fight, Pastor was the man who stayed behind to make sure the deal stuck, even as U.S. troops flew toward the Haitian coast. More recently, Pastor traveled to villages in China, working to bring a few sparks of democracy to that vast Communist tinderbox. But the era of appearing in the background of Jimmy Carter photographs is coming to an end.
Now 51 and restless, Pastor announced last week that he will leave the Carter Center this fall to write and . . . well, begin the rest of his life. "Not only will I miss Bob in a professional capacity," Carter said, "but as a personal friend."
There are two questions only time will answer: How effective will Carter continue to be, particularly in Latin American affairs, without Pastor? And what will become of Pastor's career without the Carter name behind him?
Giving in to wanderlust
Pastor grew up in New Jersey, the son of a bricklayer, but heard the siren song of international affairs early on. He spent his junior year of college in England; that summer, the summer of '68, he traveled all over Europe. He was in Czechoslovakia in August trying to stop Soviet tanks from rolling in; he got out, fortunately for him, before they did.
"There's just a personal excitement from living abroad," he said. "I mean, the amount of knowledge one can consume in living in a completely alien environment was so high, so large, that there was almost something intoxicating about it."
He returned to Lafayette College, in Easton, Penn. But at Christmastime of his senior year, he hitchhiked to Tampa and got a job clearing snakes out of the hold of a banana boat --- "the worst job of my entire life," he said. Then, in a move that is pure Bob Pastor, he jumped ship in Bluefields, Nicaragua, hitchhiked north to Guatemala --- and worked on his senior honors thesis on the Guatemalan revolution. That combination of intellectualism and adventurism, of writing and hands-on experience, would mark the rest of his life.
After college, he served in the Peace Corps in Borneo, where his contact with the outside world consisted of the New York Times Week in Review delivered four or five months late --- "which wasn't bad," he said, "because it still put me about 20 years ahead of the people I was living with." The year was 1972; Pastor hitchhiked through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, right in the middle of the Vietnam War. His parents, of course, thought he was nuts. "They were not very supportive, let alone enthusiastic," he said. "But they were glad I came back."
Adventurous path to Washington
Armed with a Ph.D. from Harvard, Pastor moved quickly into the councils of power. In his 20s, he was executive director of the Commission on U.S.-Latin American Relations. In 1977, at the age of 29, he was working in the White House, having been picked by Brzezinski to be director of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs on the National Security Council. "He was a real beaver," Brzezinski recalled. "He worked late hours. Sometimes I would call him at 3 a.m. and say, 'Get your (expletive) over here.' And he would."
Pastor proved he could not only develop ideas but put them into practice. When he was with the Commission on U.S. Latin-American Relations, it offered 28 recommendations for Latin American policy; in the White House, Pastor helped implement 27 of them. But there were failures, too. In 1979 and '80, Carter and Pastor tried without success to mediate a democratic transition of power in Nicaragua. Ten years later, they would get a second chance. Still in all, it was an exciting time for a young man. Pastor served every day of the Carter administration. "My greatest fear, when I finished those four years, was that I might never find a job as interesting as that again," he said. "And that was almost true."
Advocate of fair elections
Pastor joined the Carter Center as a fellow in 1986 and racked up an impressive list of achievements. The Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government, a group of 30 current and former heads of state from the Americas that has lent weight to Carter's efforts to monitor elections and encourage democracy, began as a memo from Pastor to Carter. Pastor secured permission from Noriega for Carter's team to monitor elections in Panama in 1989 --- elections Carter criticized as fraudulent. His work was important in heading off a U.S. invasion of Haiti in 1994.
Perhaps his proudest achievement came in Nicaragua in 1990. Invited in 1989 to a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Sandinista rise to power, Pastor had a message for President Ortega: " 'If you want to convince the world that you're serious about a free election, there's an easy way to do it.' "He said, 'How?' "I said, 'Why don't you invite the person who denounced Noriega's election as a fraud --- Jimmy Carter?' "
Ortega accepted. But Pastor had learned from the experience in Panama, when Noriega had refused to meet Carter as the election results came in. The Panamanian election had been exposed as dishonest, but a peaceful transfer of power had not been achieved. So Pastor had a message for Carter: " 'If you're serious about trying to influence and mediate this electoral process, you're going to have to invest a lot of time. We can't come down here on the day of the election, or a week before. You're going to have to come down here at least six or eight times. You're going to have to actively engage in mediating every single problem.' And he agreed to do that. 'You have to,' I said to him, 'get to know Ortega so well that on election night you can tell him, if he loses, that he's got to respect the results.' "
When the results showed the Sandinistas losing, Ortega --- in contrast to Noriega --- met with Carter. "I have won a presidential election and lost one," Carter told Ortega, "and losing wasn't the end of the world." Ortega yielded. It was the first time in Nicaraguan history that power had been transferred peacefully. And it brought to fruition the effort Pastor and Carter had launched from the White House 10 years before.
Toward a better world
Pastor is an academic, a teacher, the author of 11 books --- but he has never been content with only that. He has always wanted not merely to theorize, but to effect change in people's lives. "He has this ability to believe you can change the world," said Bill Foege, former executive director of the Carter Center. "So he seems undaunted by any size problem. He wades right into it."
"He's very idealistic," said Pastor's wife, Margy, whom he met in the office of Rep. Bella Abzug and who is the daughter of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. "He really is one of those old types that still has, despite the fact that we read so much negative stuff about the world today, idealism."
People familiar with the operations of the Carter Center say Pastor's work has been indispensable. He and Carter have had a mutually beneficial relationship. Pastor's influence has been increased because he was able to use Carter's name. Carter benefited from Pastor's savvy, energy and deep knowledge of Latin America.
"When he came to the Carter Center, it took on a whole new aura," said Douglas Brinkley, who has just finished writing a book on Carter's work as ex-president. "I don't think President Carter's post-presidency would be anywhere near what it has been without Bob." Carter himself said Pastor's "encyclopedic knowledge of this hemisphere" has been "of crucial value." But it would be wrong, Brinkley said, to think that "Bob Pastor steers the bicycle that is Jimmy Carter."
And Marion Creekmore, former director of programs at the Carter Center, said the center will continue to do good work, because, "What President Carter does, and his successes, depend first and foremost on himself and his wife."
No one doubts that Pastor will do well, also. At 51, he knows he can no longer wait for an ambassador's post, especially as long as Jesse Helms, who opposed the Panama Canal treaties, remains in the Senate. His days of typing late into the night so that Carter can hold a morning press conference, or running down the hall with an agreement Carter is waiting to sign, are drawing to a close.
Brinkley has no doubt that one day, whether four years from now or 10 or 12, Bob Pastor will be an ambassador. Pastor says he might like to head a non-governmental organization --- which is to say a development, trade or policy organization like CARE or Amnesty International or the Carter Center --- but he is not sure exactly what he'll do.
"I just think there are points in life where people have to change, they have to go on, they have to do something different," says Margy Pastor. "Now it's time for him, having hit the age he's hit, to say, 'hey.' He just needs to find new places to roost."