JIMMY CARTER ALOFT.(The Talk of the Town)

Unlike Bill Clinton, a serial moocher of private jets, Jimmy Carter flies commercial. He shambles through airports, towing a wheelie bag. He and his retinue of Secret Service men bypass security, board the plane before the other passengers, and procure the first few rows. Prior to departure, he takes a window seat, in order to insulate himself from his fellow-travellers as they step onto the plane and glance at him with tight smiles that seem to indicate pride not only in their sudden proximity to an ex-President but also in their ability to refrain from making a fuss. Then, after the plane's door has shut, he stands up and walks aft, shaking hands, posing for pictures, learning all the children's names. "It saves me a lot of headaches," he explained last week. "It saves me from having them come up to see me during the flight." (It's hard, but fun, to imagine Keith Richards doing this.) Carter returns to his row and takes an aisle seat--"Rosalynn likes the window"--and the plane leaves the gate.

So it went, anyway, on the eight-thirty Delta shuttle from New York to Washington last Tuesday morning, on the second day of Carter's latest book tour. The book, his twenty-first, is "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid," a provocation that had him parsing words, especially that last one, all week: "I'm not alleging racism, and I'm not referring to Israel. I'm talking about Palestine." It is his contention that the situation in the Occupied Territories "is not debated or acknowledged or even known in this country," and that the "tremendous aversion" here to criticism of Israel's policies has contributed to the disintegration of the peace process. "I can't imagine a Presidential candidate saying, 'I'm going to take a balanced position toward the Israelis and the Palestinians,' and getting elected," he said. "It's inconceivable. AIPAC is smart enough to penetrate any sort of circumlocutions."

Carter, who is eighty-two, was coming off a full day of interviews in New York (Rose, King, Gross) and embarking on another (Russert, Blitzer, Lehrer), but his zest for trumpeting his ideas and accomplishments seemed undiminished. He wore a checked jacket, gray flannels, and brown Kiltie loafers. Jonathan Demme, meanwhile, was shooting a documentary about ...