He paused and looked up at the ceiling as his voice cracked, and he fought back tears.

The members of the audience – government officials, journalists, students, professors and locals – leaned forward in their chairs, waiting for former President Jimmy Carter to finish his story.

The president remembered the time he pled with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to stay at Camp David and finish the negotiations in 1978 – a story that had never before been shared with the public.

“I told him that he had betrayed me and betrayed his own people,” Carter said.

Sadat stayed, Carter said, and the Camp David Accords were completed, brokering peace between Israel and Egypt.

The memory was one of many shared by the president, first lady Rosalynn Carter and dozens of his former staff members at the three-day conference, “The Carter Presidency: Lessons for the 21st Century.”

The event, held to honor the 30th anniversary of Carter’s inauguration, was not short on praise for the former president.

“He says things that other American politicians don’t have the courage to say,” said Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s former national security adviser, during a panel focusing on foreign policy in the Middle East.

Courage remained a theme of the conference. Former staff members praised Carter’s administration for tackling “tough” and “unpopular” issues, such as the energy policy, the Panama Canal Treaty, peace in the Middle East and human rights.

Throughout the conference, Carter defended his book, “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” especially during the Town Hall meeting when a Holocaust survivor called the title “racially inflammatory.”

“The motivation [for the title] is that a majority of Israelis are motivated by a greed for Palestinian land – not racism,” Carter said.

“I think it’s very important for the American people to realize the horrible oppression that’s being perpetrated by Israel on the Palestinian people.”

But panelists remembered the second theme of the conference – “looking forward.”

And almost no one had kind words for the current administration.

“I do think the incumbent president has departed from basic Constitutional principles,” Carter said at a Town Hall meeting Saturday, which was open to the public.

Carter criticized President George W. Bush for his domestic wiretapping program, his lack of efforts to bring peace in the Middle East, his record on human rights and the Iraq War.

On Middle East issues, the panelists had a long list of complaints about Bush’s policy.

“When I look at the dilemmas that America faces today and I hear our present president speak about lessons from the past, he seems to be drawing simplistic and mechanical conclusions,” Brzezinski said.

On Bush’s Middle East policy, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright quipped, “You have to have a president who knows where the place is.”

“I would say that one of the big problems we have today is there was no real dialogue about Iraq,” Albright said.

Many criticisms of Bush came in the form of veiled comparisons to Carter’s policy.

“I do think that religion informed [Carter] about what to do,” Brzezinski said. “He, however, never made his religion become part of the policy of the United States. There is a big difference between saying that ‘God’s on our side’ versus ‘We should be on God’s side.’”

In a press conference with local media, Carter blamed the Iraq War for students’ “disillusionment with our government.”

“They can’t trust the statements that are made at the highest level of American government,” he said.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale echoed Carter’s statement in a separate interview.

“Our kids are in the middle over there,” he said. “Our kids become the pawn of all of this.”

Mondale said he would like to see more young people interested in public affairs.

“These huge deficits, you will pay them,” he said. “This war and its wreckage, you’ll pay for that. Damage to the environment, global warming, you’ll pay for that, too.”

Carter also blamed bipartisanship in Congress for the government’s failure to tackle important issues.

“The last six years of domination by Republicans meant that all the decisions were made in party caucuses,” Carter said.

Despite the warnings and criticisms sounded throughout the conference, Carter and his former staff were optimistic about the future.

“I hope that after these 100 hours are over by the Democrats, [Congress] will once again open up discussion of important and complex legislation to public debate on the floor of the House of Representatives.”

At a dinner in his honor at the Classic Center on Saturday, Carter spoke about his presidency, his work with the Carter Center and the future.

“Peace, freedom, democracy, human rights, law, the alleviation of suffering: I would like everyone in the world to say the United State epitomizes these human dreams.”

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