ABSTRACT
On the morning of October 5, 1976 Zbigniew Brzezinski sat across from Jimmy Carter in a suite at the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Carter had summoned his primary foreign policy adviser to prepare for that evening’s debate with President Gerald Ford. Carter, barefoot and in blue jeans, was not in a good mood. He had left the Democratic convention in July leading Ford with the largest margin recorded in modern polling. But the Ford campaign had pulled the race even, largely by hammering away at the point that Carter lacked the necessary experience in foreign affairs.
