Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Carter Ascendant July, by common agreement, was a pretty fair month. America's birthday was celebrated around the land with general good feeling and without too many...
...But let us suppose for a moment that his words reflect a state of mind...
...It adds up to a kind of platform populism that has had a now-and-again history in America...
...Clubhouse pols will count the blessings of being led by a man of faith, though the connection will probably not cause too many of them to behave like saints...
...Let us suppose that Jimmy Carter, bolstered by his intimate relationship with God, really believes there is something about himself that is worthy of our confidence...
...Populist Impulse The Carter combination—the stance of unshakable self-assurance, the incessant iteration of his connection with the people...
...As the campaign gets going, Democrats of all kinds, along with many non-Democrats, are going to get more comfortable with Jimmy Carter...
...Whereas Carter comes out of a populist tradition and the evangelical churches, modern-day liberals come out of the big northern cities, the industrial unions, the college campuses...
...But if he is intent on going where populism leads, then he may be in troublesome waters...
...For populism has not in the past proved to be a kindly and loving sentiment...
...New York was the beneficiary of tall ships and fireworks, and several million people mingled on the city's streets in a friendly manner that defied all odds, probabilities and expectations...
...Populists have never been able to abide the restrictions imposed on the hour's passions of a majority by institutions controlled by the elite, such as judges...
...For the moment, all we can do is watch the man and get him to understand that although charm, brains, hokum and luck can carry a fellow quite a distance in American politics, there are still numbers of people around who will resist purchasing him on his own high estimation of himself...
...In a child, that kind of thing is called bragging...
...His success owes less to any issue he has raised or to any accomplishments in his modest public record than to the freshness of his face and his manner, his down-home style and evident intelligence, his refreshing contrast to Nixon-Ford, and the Democratic disaster of 1972...
...Still, we have to go on what is given to us, and Jimmy Carter's first speech as the Democratic nominee, his acceptance speech at the convention, does have its illuminating aspects...
...Some of its impulses, such as those to bust the trusts and soak the rich, have been more or less in accord with liberalism...
...For a politican to believe he is in a state of grace, one of the eleot, is not an unmixed blessing...
...It has preached reform, but has been connected with appeals to humankind's more vicious impulses in the name of the people, and with accumulations of personal power under the flag of crusading against privilege...
...It is an achievement that bespeaks tactical sharpness, tough determination and an ability to keep a steady eye on a desired destination...
...Populists have won no medals for championing the civil rights or civil liberties of people they didn't like...
...Now it is August...
...And Democrats, even while basking in their forseeable triumph, must get used to living for some years to come with the reality of Jimmy Carter...
...There is no evidence that Jimmy Carter is a potential Huey Long...
...Under the direction of Robert Strauss, manipulator of men, and Jimmy Carter, servant of the Lord, the delegates did what it had been given to them to do for the sake of unity...
...He will be celebrated—by persons better acquainted with the Caribbean than with the Mississippi —as representing a New South where, it will be discovered, blacks have always had a warmer place than they could find in the cold North...
...Carter's saving feature, in the view of one who finds no joy in the religious impulse in politics, is that however deep his faith, however deep-rooted his populism, he is also a smart, up-to-date, American go-getter...
...People have a way of finding remarkable qualities in probable winners...
...There is so little evidence of anything about him that his populism could easily be just noise for the season...
...But what it comes down to is that he, in his strength and wisdom and courage, will tell us what our dreams are, and then go realize them on our behalf: "if I'm eleoted, it's going to be done and you can depend on it...
...The trouble is that we will probably have to wait until 1977 to begin to learn what Jimmy Carter is all about...
...My guess is that Carter will not turn out to be a notably unconventional President...
...Or, "I've never had more faith in America than I do today...
...No sooner had the tall ships sailed off than the Democrats sailed into Madison Square Garden and gave TV viewers a display of political hand-shaking and back-slapping and hugging that has not been seen at such an affair since Jim Farley stopped running them...
...Some may wonder at moments, what price victory...
...Carter represents 19th-century values while the Northern liberals are very much of the 20th century, and he has deep roots in the land, which may give the Irish and Jews and urban blacks who have been the Democratic party's Northern troops for decades a feeling of being newcomers to America...
...Jimmy Carter is not likely to turn out to be an Oliver Cromwell, but Samuel Butler's strong words about Puritans may be pertinent: ". the modern Saint that believes himself privileged and above nature engages himself in the most horrid of all wickednesses with so great an alacrity and assurance, and is so far from repentance, that he puts them upon the account of pious duties and good works...
...When Carter tells us that government should be the servant, and not the master of the people, we must all utter "Amen.' But our founders knew that the people do not make good masters either...
...If populism seems to be one element of Carterism, "born-again" religion seems to be another...
...He may be much better Presidential material than anyone can yet know...
...His preaching is done with an eye to earth as much as to heaven...
...It has been fired largely by hatred of the big guy, of the foreigner, of the outsider...
...Whatever the issue, he guarantees us that it will get done, and we can depend on it, because he, Jimmy Carter, says so...
...and his populism has a neat button-down quality to it...
...And there were the usual number of lines that one seemed to have heard before?I say to you that our nation's best is still ahead...
...but they have over the years proved more durable and more trustworthy than personal charisma and less dangerous than the Voice of the People...
...Should President Carter actually pursue his announced intention of shifting power from the Federal government back to states and municipalities, we may have cause to remember that it is the big government in Washington, not the little governments around the country to which minorities have had to look for defense against the impositions and insults of the majority...
...This is not meant in criticism...
...Campaigns have to do with winning, not with governing...
...in politics, as used by so untested a figure as Jimmy Carter, it is called campaign oratory and may bespeak nothing more serious than the banality of his speechwriters' imagination...
...He tells us, courteously, that he feels our pain and shares our dreams and takes his strength and his wisdom and his courage from us...
...it's time for the people to run the government and not the other way around"), the indignation over the holders of wealth and privilege ("Too often, unholy, self-perpetuating alliances have been formed between money and politics"), the touch of religion—is not new...
...New Yorkers may still take satisfaction from the good spirits that infiltrated their city for some days, but must live with all the ailments to which America's cities are heir...
...He shows no traces of lunacy and evidently knows how to make his way along the corridors of power...
...It probably did not knock anybody out of their chairs to hear him come out for honesty, love, tax reform, jobs, free enterprise and our pluralistic heritage, not to mention an end to discrimination and no Republicans in the White House...
...Other nations helped to wish us well—especially the Israelis and the Ugandans, who put on a show stopper at Entebbe Airport...
...America's birthday was celebrated around the land with general good feeling and without too many generals...
...others have been in serious conflict...
...We know little about Jimmy Carter beyond what his achievement in obtaining the nomination can tell us...
...there was no way to tell from the campaigns of FDR or JFK or Abe Lincoln the sort of Presidents they would make...
...An inspection of his campaign so far tells us something about the reasons for his success, but little about the kind of President he will make...
...The Israelis may dream still of their hour of glory, but must live in the precarious real world...
...Granted these institutions are often exasperating, often unfair, often fronts for privilege...
...To be too certain of one's virtue is a dangerous thing in a politician...
...What is left of the conventional Left in the Democratic party may not find it easy to cotton to the Carter style...
...I suppose that Jimmy Carter will have to wait too...
...But one constant of his address and of much of his campaign does deserve attention—his insistence that he speaks for "the people," as distinguished from "the elite," along with the assurance that the people can put their faith in him to do what he says he's going to do because he has so much faith in himself...
...That is, when he tells us we can depend on his evolving "an efficient, economic, purposeful and manageable government for our nation," we are meant to receive this pledge like a signature on a check, even though nobody has seen his bank statement...
Vol. 59 • August 1976 • No. 17
