Mr. Sincere Runs for President

...People had an immediate and warm response to him...

...Nevertheless, he delivers his message in a soft, genuine, polite voice, sprinkling his speeches with unabashed references to truth, honor, patriotism, and equality...

...I am not a candidate who appeals naturally to the very powerful fund-raising groups," Carter says, "so contributions will have to result from personal appearances...

...We must make it absolutely clear to Russia and to Israel's neighbors that the United States will guarantee the existence of Israel...

...At the same time he thinks that Senator Henry Jackson (D.-Wash...

...he was a master at the factory gates...

...One Southern voice offers this explanation for the new posture: "Jimmy knows he'll never get any Wallace money, so he figures he might as well go liberal...

...Thus, while Maynard Jackson, Atlanta's 36-year-old black mayor, has contributed $25 to the Carter-for-President campaign, his press secretary has been careful to announce: "The Mayor wanted to help Jimmy a little in the beginning because he did a good, respectable job as Governor...

...At home in Georgia, Carter condensed 300 state agencies into 22 departments and most people give him credit for having run a good, tight ship...

...Uncertainty is a major contributing factor in economic setbacks...

...His reply suggests he is not yet too sure: "I've been active in the national party so hundreds of people around the country know me...

...Uncertainty," he told me, "is the worst thing a nation or person can face...

...Naval Academy graduate, who worked as a nuclear engineer under Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, and who later parlayed 1,000 acres of peanuts into a million dollar seed and farm supply business, quit the Governor's mansion after serving a single four-year term to pursue his new goal...

...Carter has developed position papers and speeches on energy, housing, welfare, tax reform, and the environment that read as well as material being put out by the White House...

...He vehemently opposed the nomination of George McGovern because he thought the South Dakotan would lose the election...

...There is no equivocation, nothing tentative about what I'm doing...

...There is a whole generation of the young and of businessmen who at least pay lip service to this new moderation...

...So last month the 50-year-old U.S...

...governors know me...

...He conducted issues seminars for candidates, instructed them in how to run a campaign, and occasionally gave on-the-spot demonstrations...

...as a farmer I will appeal to other farmers...

...They are the same breed of cat who 10 years ago were on the White Citizens' Council...

...Many of the politicians he helped made it to Congress and acknowledge the value of the assistance...

...He is, indeed, widely supported by the black community and some of its leaders, particularly by Congressman Andrew Young and Ralph D. Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference...

...One of his major foreign positions is: "The existence of Israel as a nation is an integral part of our own country...

...The tentative entry into the Presidential nomination sweepstakes of Georgia State Senator Julian Bond, though, leaves uncertain precisely what this backing means...

...All of that was already clear last year when the Georgian visited some 30 states around the country in his capacity as chairman of the Democratic campaign committee...

...I've had a strict program...

...Carter, the Southern-liberal Northern-moderate, is bound not so much by ideology as by process...

...made a big mistake when he tried to connect Russian Jewish emigration with a U.S.-USSR trade agreement...

...To be sure, there are those who will never forgive him...

...I've spent the last two and one-half years working on this...

...I'm an engineer and a scientist...

...Jimmy Carter, voice of the progressive and compassionate New South, is neither a philosopher nor a word-smith...

...He favors reduced oil imports and a "partial oil embargo," but not rationing, except for allocations at the wholesale level to existing state energy offices...

...In 1972 Carter nominated Jackson for President at the Miami convention...

...Still, he feels he has just as good a chance at this point as any other announced candidate...

...I also have other constituencies through my religious denomination and through former classmates...

...Our people can accommodate to the economic crisis if they have a sense of purpose...

...And I have the tenacity that is required...

...A Southern Baptist who speaks of a "personal relationship with God," he vows he will enter every primary in the nation...

...During his initial two weeks of active campaigning, Carter made appearances in nine states and Washington, D.C...

...Freshman New Hampshire congressman Norman D'Amours, for example, says: "He showed me what low-key, down-home friendliness is all about...

...And he may not be much of a thinker...

...Yet as one white Southerner, a veteran of the civil rights battles of the '60s, told me: "Carter is closer to the norm of the South today than Wallace...

...Fund-raising will be a problem, but I can do it...

...When he returned to his Atlanta headquarters to regroup his forces, I asked him to describe his political base...

...Critics, after granting his administrative ability, ask what he knows about economics or foreign affairs...

...Perhaps that accounts for the ex-Governor's insistence that the country is no longer preoccupied with race...

...A giant poster of Carter's beaming face at the end of a narrow, Iow-ceilinged 60-foot corridor leading into his Peachtree Street campaign suite is the light at the end of the tunnel...

...But of course this cannot be seen as an endorsement at this time...

...If that is what Carter is up to, and if his long-shot for the nomination fails, he might make a sensible Vice Presidential candidate this time around-with Scoop Jackson at the head of the ticket...

...it is crucial to us...

...Carter distinguished himself on his inauguration day by declaring that no Georgian should "ever again be deprived of the opportunity for a job, an education, or simple justice because he is poor, rural, black, or not influential...

...Now that Bostonians can tell you the issue has in fact gone national, his perspective on such matters may be a bit out of focus...

...Sincere, and even his rivals agree that he knows how to run a bureaucracy...

...National Reports MR SINCERE RUNS FOR PRESIDENT BY KATHY STARBUCK Atlanta Although elected to his first major office as Governor of Georgia only in 1970, Jimmy Carter decided to enter the '76 Democratic Presidential race in August of '72, even before George McGovern lost the election...

...Shortly after taking office, he had a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr...

...Cabinet...

...And many black leaders support me...

...We can handle the energy crisis without doing permanent damage to our environment," he insists...

...Kathy Starbuck, whose article on Fred Harris' bid for the Presidency, "Coffee and Populism in New Hampshire," appeared in our Januuary 6 issue, is the political editor of the Milford (N.H...

...If this kind of planning existed at the Federal level, this country would survive the present economic crisis and it would prevent overlapping and conflicting programs...

...He knows he is a long-shot and that people with money don't like to bet on long shots...

...But he is Mr...

...Here in Georgia we have written goals that cover every realm of a Georgian's life-mental health, prison reform, alcoholism, taxes, welfare-a detailed plan for reaching our goals and how they interrelate to each department...

...I will present the personification of what the people want," he continues, outlining the same strategy for winning both the nomination and the general election...

...Today Carter wishes he had been McGovern's running mate: He feels it would have given him a "very fine elevation" to the national scene...

...Unruffled, he responds that travel to 10 countries as Governor and his experience as a peanut farmer have furthered his understanding of international trade and politics...

...hung in the state capital...