A Kenedy delegate in Carter's Camp
Cronin, Thomas E.
How I am voting
i As in past presidential years, Commonweal has asked sup- porters of the various candidates for personal statements ex- plaining their choices. Thomas E. Cronin is a...
...And he has been, as circumstances virtually compel a president to be today, an unpopular bearer of bad news...
...We do know who would bear the immediate burden...
...How I am voting i As in past presidential years, Commonweal has asked sup- porters of the various candidates for personal statements ex- plaining their choices...
...He deserves credit for pushing SALT II, a measure I think he can successfully get ratified in a second term...
...Carter is a disciplined person who thinks independently and has avoided rigidity...
...Carter has not been a popular president...
...He is so by nature...
...Whether his scheme would work in the long run even to strengthen the economy, let alone compensate today's los- ers, no one really knows...
...A healthy society, John Gardner has written, "should be able to function well with good rather than great leaders...
...The Republican platform rejects the Equal Rights Amendment, encourages nuclear power, makes job- creation subsidiary to fighting inflatio~i, signals its attitude toward energy conservation in an indulgent dismissal of the 24 October 1980:587...
...His personal style is underwhelming...
...and if it has not been enough it may reflect more on the health of the society than on him...
...A KENNEDY DELEGATE IN CARTER'S CAMP THOMAS E. CRONIN F OR THE FIRST three-and-a-half years in office, a presi- dent is judged against the textbook model of near- perfection...
...Jimmy Carter is a man of caution and compromise...
...1KE MANY OTHER people I have a number of specific policy mdifferences with the president, on the MX missile system, draft registration, nuclear power, and so on...
...Or he is measured against great leaders of the past, against the brilliance of a Jefferson, the courage of a Lincoln, the robust activism of the Roosevelts, the charm of a John F. Kennedy...
...He helped formulate and get passed the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 that should make it easier to reward outstanding civil servants and bring abler people into the upper reaches of the executive branch...
...Under the banner of free choice and incentives, he would redistribute income and wealth, in a broad and rather indis- criminate way, from lower-income groups to the well-to-do, in order to create a suitable climate for investment and prod- uctivity...
...He is so because he understands the limits of the presidency...
...MichaelNovak is a theologian, syndicated columMst, and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington...
...Carter has lost some good people from his administration, but he has cared about, worked very hard on, and generally succeeded with the per- sonnel side of his job...
...And for every Georgian there are two or three Robert Strausses, Charles Schultzes, or Lloyd Cutlers...
...Yes, that is a partisan reason, but it is also based on what the two parties' stand for in 1980...
...Doesn't this make us overly dependent on one person...
...Carter is rightly proud to have appointed more women, blacks, and Hispanics to top administrative positions than all previous presidents...
...Among the Georgians them- selves, individuals like Jack Watson and Stuart Eizenstat would be welcome and outstanding members of any White House staff...
...With the exception of the abortive Iranian rescue, he has displayed praiseworthy re- straint in international affairs...
...Here again, Carter should not be measured against some ideal but against the available alternatives...
...his '76 victory) has always been widely recognized, even when liber- als preferred to wish it away...
...He recognizes the backlash to government, but he has tried to master it, not surrender to it...
...3. He is a thoughtful, hardworking, and decent person...
...In fact many of the complaints about his administration arise precisely because he is not controlled by the unions, big business, the military, Congress, the bureaucracy, or even the South...
...Leading journalists of our day, perhaps because they are almost all Washingtonians, charged with watching the White House fulltime, persist in putting this burden on the president...
...Perhaps a minor achievement but one, it might be noted, where almost all Carter's predecessors have failed...
...Anderson's other economic proposals are similar in spirit to Carter's with the difference that, as an out-of-office "free-lancer," he has had the liberty to draw them up without attending to any political constituencies and the likelihood of their actually being translated into law...
...5. Carter has not succeeded in economic policy, but he has resisted the worst of the "bumper sticker" solutiolts that are now so prevalent...
...Carter gets blamed for failing to provide an inspiring ideology, but what other presi- dents have really done this...
...Carter gets blamed for not being a national planner, but let it be pointed out that by and large the Commonweal: 586 country is not ready to allow a president to serve as a national planner...
...But by the end of their first term, presidents are judged against a more mortal standard, namely the other canddidates who are available and running for the office...
...It has been said that Eisenhower's appointment of Earl W~'ren was about the most important domestic deci- sion made during all the 1950s--and perhaps it was...
...Carter sponsored a measure for full financial disclosure for all high-ranking government officials...
...2. In practical terms he has had success in dealing with the Chinese, Israel, Egypt, Panama, and most of our allies...
...But I also see solid reasons why he should be reelected: 1. Carter has kept us out of war...
...Donald Kennedy, his first F.D.A...
...6. Carter is a Democrat, not a Republican...
...administrator, Judge Wil- liam Webster, head of the F.B.I., and Paul Wamke as chief SALT negotiator, were also all excellent choices, as have been Carter appointees to federal regulatory commissions...
...There is some validity to the criticism that Carter has remained unduly loyal to his Georgian staffers, but it fails to recognize the able people he has brought into government...
...It is not a headline-grabbing aspect of the presidency (except when there's a scandal or someone resigns) but it affects the quality of crucial government per- formance for millions...
...He is a poor orator and an indifferent coalition-builder...
...Senat6r Ken- nedy is no longer a candidate, and I have no doubt, as we select a president for what will surely be a crucial time of testing for America, who is now the best choice...
...The next president may have three or four or even five nominations to make the Supreme Court, including that for Chief Justice...
...He ap- pointed inspectors general in every major federal agency...
...Could any president have...
...My own view is that we need all the leadership we can get from presidents, but are even more in need of a nation of leaders, say 500,000 or more, in business, local govern- ment, unions, universities, and so on, who will serve as policy- clarifiers, agenda-setters, and renewers of national purpose...
...In fact, Carter has often tried to talk of national purposes...
...He appointed wise and seasoned veterans such as Vance, Brown, and Califano to his cabinet...
...Carter's ambassadorial appointments have been similarly praised--Mike Mansfield in Japan, Leonard Woodcock in China, Kingman Brewster in Great Britain, William Shannon in Ireland, to name just four...
...He has steadfastly opposed both the Proposition-13 mentality and constitutional proposals'to limit spending or force a balanced budget...
...Hardly...
...I found' one, and as a delegate to the Demo- cratic conventiOn I supported Edward Kennedy...
...Carter's recruitment and appointments to the judiciary at the lower levels have been widely praised, and deservedly so...
...Thomas E. Cronin is a political scien- tist, author, and consultant on political leadership and public policymaking...
...There have been no more Vietnams--and unlike Governor Reagan, Jimmy Carter does not believe Vietnam was "a noble cause...
...The author of The State of the Presidency (Little, Brown), he is currently Director of the Direct Democ- racy Research Project at Colorado College...
...It is asked wheiher he has "solved' Ameri-ca's outstanding problems...
...John Anderson has distinguished himself with his proposal of a fifty-cent tax on each gallon of gasoline, a Rube Goldberg scheme that ducks the real issue and works a severe hardship on those poor and working-class employees who must travel any significant dis- tance to their jobs...
...He is blamed for betraying liberalism, but let it be noted he was decidedly not the liberal candidate in the 1976 Democratic primaries...
...Carter chose Walter Mondale and has not only used him effectively as an individual but has integrated Mondale's able staff with his own...
...Carter is also his own man...
...Richard C. Wade is an urban historian at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the author of The Urban Frontier (Harvard University Press) and Slavery i~a the Cities (Oxford University Press...
...That is what Jimmy Carter has been...
...4. Carter has made excellent appointments...
...There have been no Watergates, no enemies lists, and no Gulf of Tonkins...
...The plain fact is that the science of econom- ics is in a state of confusion and the politics of economics has made it an uphill battle for the administration to achieve even those liberal measures it felt confident about...
...Doesn't this demote Congress, as well as relieve it of re- sponsibility...
...All three are previous contributors to Commonweal...
...but it is his fate to be president when such talk comes hard: during a time of worldwide economic dislocation and a time when the nation yearns for austerity...
...and while he has always been a liberal in some respects, the extent of his conservativism (which had a good deal to do with...
...Not surprisingly, Jimmy Carter looks better now than he did a year ago...
...Will these pundits also say about a President Reagan that only he can explain our national issues and serve as public educator...
...A year ago I shared enough of the general dissatisfaction with the Carter presidency to look for an alter- native candidate...
...Reagan, on the other hand, does have a different approach...
...Illustrative is this generalization by Haynes Johnson in his recent bookln the Absence of Power: "Only a president can articulate a national purpose and explain national issues, and in our system only a president can serve as public educator for the nation...
...Has President Carter "solved" the nation's ills...
...None of these interests can ever consider him sufficiently "safe...
Vol. 107 • October 1980 • No. 19
