Watson was fascinated by Carter’s steely determination and eclectic intellect: trained in the navy on nuclear submarines, he could talk knowledgeably about the throw weights of intercontinental missiles and the political theories of Reinhold Niebuhr: “He was the most supremely self-confident person I had ever encountered,” Watson says. “He had an amazing capacity to absorb and assimilate information on a wide range of subjects and to pull the information out in an organized way, and apply it.”
