EDITORIAL
A NEW CARTER? Jimmy Carter is having his .political troubles. None of them is huge, but taken together they add up to something. Once again he has had to back down on a much publicized proposal,...
...Much can change between now and 1980, of course, but as things stand now, he may not have much of a choice...
...Carter is having enough trouble with Africa as it is...
...Carter repeatedly assailed Cuba for the use of its army in conflicts abroad, and delivered his most forceful attack to date on the USSR for its role in Africa...
...President Carter's closest political advisers are urging him to get out of Washington and travel around the nation to bolster his sagging public image, and he has already started to take that advice...
...Carter's reaction to labor's rejection...
...More significantly, Mr...
...Carter, while Ronald Reagan and Mr...
...All in all, then, it looks as if we will soon have a new Carter image—-that of a President much, on the road, popping up here, there and everywhere, but above all a President who is tough-talking, firm and decisive...
...Meanwhile, the polls are full of bad news...
...Worse, this was only .part of a pattern of growing coolness between labor, especially in the person of George Meany, and the President—this despite the fact that any Democratic presidential hopeful desperately needs labor's support to get out the vote and to vote itself, as George McGovern's catastrophic defeat testifies...
...Carter run neck and neck...
...And just to make matters worse, the authoritative...
...Carter is reported to be unsure as to whether or not he will run for a second term...
...And according to the Harris/ABC Poll, 48 percent prefer Gerald Ford as President to 43 percent for Mr...
...Carter for some reason expected organized labor to follow the lead of big business and agree to a voluntary lid on wage increases, and he was reported to be mightily vexed when labor rejected his wage guidelines...
...In a most unlikely event, all 38 GOP members of the Senate unanimously signed a manifesto condemning Mr...
...His relations with minority groups continue to deteriorate, with Jews over Israel, and with bjacks, despite their important role in putting him in the White House...
...There will be "more vetoes, more hard negotiating than we've seen in the past," and the public is expected to react favorably to more direct action and positive statements by Mr...
...In IS short months of incoherence, inconsistency and ineptitude," the Republican senators said, "our foreign policy and national security objectives are confused and we are being challenged around the globe by Soviet arrogance...
...Small wonder that Mr...
...seven out of 19 blacks on the White House staff are in the process of leaving, some for higher-laying jobs, it is true, but others out of frustration with the Carter administration...
...Once again he has had to back down on a much publicized proposal, this time putting off his target date for a tax cut and agreeing to pare it down...
...Disappointed" was given as a mild description of Mr...
...Nor are the Republicans helping matters...
...Carter's conduct of foreign policy as a menace to the security of the nation...
...A new "tougher" image is needed, say Carter advisers, to counter the current impression of changeability and indecision...
...The White House is not taking all this lying down, of course...
...Even in his own state of Georgia, only 38 percent of those polled feel that the President has lived up to their expectations...
...It remains to be seen if die formula wiH work...
...According to the Gallup Poll, Democrats prefer Senator Edward M. Kennedy to Mr...
...Thus the President had hardly finished pounding lumps on the nation's lawyers when he attacked organized medicine as the "major obstacle" to better health care in the U.S.— two unpopular targets...
...Carter by many of his critics, Republican and otherwise...
...Carter as their 1980 presidential nominee by 53 percent to 40...
...International Institute for Strategic Studies said in its annual report that the Soviet Union was able to extend its influence in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world because the Western (read "United States") response to the Communist challenge was often uncertain—thus underlining the exact point made against Mr...
...he did not need this torpedo into bipartisan foreign policy...
Vol. 105 • July 1978 • No. 13
