The Challenge to Carter
FENTRESS, CALVIN
Perspectives THE CHALLENGE TO CARTER BY CALVIN FENTRESS Let's see now. Carter came out swinging at Harding and Hoover, gave them both an awful licking. Ford proudly signed some bills he had...
...He is just there, and if it comes to that, we probably can muddle through four more years with him...
...Considering how highly each has endorsed his own character, there have been some notable lapses...
...the month was an unbroken disaster for Carter...
...In the same celebrated interview, Carter observed that the media are less interested in issues than in pouncing on "some crazy statement...
...Carter is hardly the first politician to try to please all of the people all of the time, but it is a tendency of his that leaves many voters feeling he is a little too nimble for their own good...
...More than anything else, the uncertainty of Carter's message was his undoing in the early going...
...At the end, as at the beginning, it is Carter's race to win or lose...
...If he can convince them he will be part 01 the solution and not the problem, he will be elected...
...Neither candidate distinguished himself in September, but if the election had been held at its end, Ford would have won by default...
...Ford proudly signed some bills he had fought, vetoed several he had supported...
...If Carter can stop titillating the press and instead drive home these themes in commanding fashion, he still has time to overcome the concern of many Americans that his "vision" does not extend much beyond his own election...
...One recalls the President waiting for the political dust to settle to see if it would be necessary to part with Earl Butz, and finally letting him go with a testimonial fit for a Lincoln...
...The result soon enough was that for every analysis of Carter's nuclear control proposals, there were a thousand stories weighing the linguistic and political niceties of his use of the words "shack up...
...Ford promised a handgun to everyone in the South except George Wallace...
...What of the crucial racist vote...
...Carter's ads stress his strengths and illustrate his greatest weakness in this campaign...
...Sixteen years after Kennedy-Nixon, we are sadder, wiser, more hip to the hype...
...Stay awake if you can...
...Yet if he is to win, to advance the momentum he seemed to gain following the second debate, he must in these last weeks and days bring a more specific message into sharp focus...
...Ford said that although he had never tried marijuana, he was pretty sure Earl Butz had...
...Ford's ads have been prepared under the direction of two of the best political consultants in the business, Douglas Bailey and John Deardourff, and it shows...
...but if voters want their visions through a rearview mirror, they will turn to Michigan...
...According to James Wieghart of the New York Daily News, although the subject did not surface at any of the whistle-stop rallies, the interview "completely dorninated discussions inside the campaign train among reporters...
...As Julian Bond said of the Democratic nominee, even his specifics tend to be general...
...They portray a non-neurotic in the White House...
...I see an America governed with vigor and vision and affirmative leadership...
...or Jimmy Carter in Mississippi, extolling those giants of the civil rights movement, Senators James O. Eastland and John C. Stennis, for their "courage" on the march to racial equality...
...As he groped his way through September to define and explain himself, that sureness of self and purpose which had impressed so many in the primary season seemed to evaporate...
...He is under close scrutiny now by millions of voters still undecided whether or not to take a chance on him...
...As is the custom, the press has played up campaign trivia until it is trivia no more...
...Will Pat Boone's white bucks further offend blacks...
...Between the candidates and the coverage, this has been the most depressing Presidential campaign since 1972...
...Earlier it had caught up with him when he discussed "ethnic purity" with the New York Daily News...
...I have a vision of America," says Carter at the start of one of his peanut-infested commercials...
...the defense budget is bloated...
...It caught up with him when he told a vociferous critic of the war in Vietnam what a louse LBJ was...
...Not a moment too soon do the days dwindle down to a precious few...
...One recurring problem was that Carter kept trying to tell people exactly what he thought they wanted to hear...
...But it is Carter who will be chosen or rejected...
...Carter relaxed the second time around, and the occasion was more spirited, but the debates have been a disappointment...
...Perhaps that was inevitable...
...Nelson Rockefeller gave his finger to the Museum of Modern Art...
...In the first debate, Ford impressed people because after 28 years in Washington he remembered a lot of statistics, and because he didn't knock over his podium...
...Our passion for arming the world approaches madness, and certainly Ford's repeated boast that "the nation is on the march to full economic recovery" is news to the millions who can only stand and watch the parade go by...
...Carter confessed his bisexual lust for undecided voters...
...While Carter struggled through September, the President—free at last from his fraternity brawl with Reagan—was doing what he knows best: decrying Democrats and their ruinous big spending notions...
...Only about half of the U.S...
...Steady decisive calm dependable . . Ford in his sincere-as-Jimmy shirtsleeves, talks of his "non-imperial Presidency...
...When Jerry Ford hits the hustings to defend the defense budget and the way we are, you know another election is at hand...
...It started with his flip-flop on firing FBI Director Clarence Kelley, ended with his screw-up in Playboy, and in between he made himself perfectly unclear on everyCalvin Fentress, a past contributor, is on leave as special assistant to Senator Charles Percy...
...thing from abortion to tax reform...
...Matching Ford statistic for statistic, and acting just as wooden, Carter tried so hard to sound and look like a President that he almost forgot to mention why we should bother to make him one...
...It caught up with Carter when he told farmers in Des Moines that "there'll be no more grain embargoes if I'm elected President,'' and was forced to add a day later, except in certain "circumstances...
...Special interests do wield undue influence in government...
...the tax structure does cry out for reform...
...Ford said the Soviet Union will never fall into the Polish sphere of influence while he is President How will it all play in the crucial swingstate of Ohio-California-Penn-sylvania-Texas-IUinois...
...And in 1976, stability may be enough...
...Few doubt his vigor or even his efficiency, but exactly where all that affirmative leadership would lead remains fuzzy...
...Presidential ideas haven't been that terrific in recent administrations...
...Not that the candidates themselves have been so consistently inspiring...
...electorate is expected to vote on November 2. Afterward, there will be much wringing of editorial hands, but the no-shows will have a point...
...Carter said that Lyndon Johnson was a liar, a cheat and liked loose shoes...
...A vision within a vision is a neat trick even for the twice-born, but like Carter's promise of "more efficient, sensitive, responsive government," it doesn't reveal much...
...When Carter's Playboy ruminations about lust first broke on the Today show, he was campaigning by train from New York to Chicago...
...There is nothing he can do, say or veto to surprise us now...
...The ads conclude with the debatable claim that "He's making us proud again," but they remain effective all the same...
...There was no driving dream, no sense of great beginnings...
...The guess here is that he can, and he will...
...No one has whined more about the trifling level of the campaign than the news media...
...That is one reason the campaign commercials now inundating us focus on personality and leadership...
...He was reduced to asking voters to elect him so that they might relive the glory days of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy...
...Ford stirs no passions, few hopes or fears...
...Carter said he wouldn't condemn Amy for having an affair, unless it was with Bob Dole...
...Carter has no surefire remedies for what ails America—no one does —but unlike Ford, he is committed to change, and clearly there is much in Washington that could use a new broom...
...Man the political barometers...
...It was not a widely excerpted quote...
...Carter apologized for saying that Johnson liked loose shoes...
...It is Carter's promise that able, well-motivated management can produce good government, and many will vote for him in the hope that maybe he's right...
...The twominute case for a balanced budget and global harmony is persuasive no more...
...Will Ford pardon Patty Hearst...
...That is a cardinal temptation in politics, but it has a way of catching up with candidates, especially those on the national stage...
...Ford will get what's left...
...Ford said he was too busy running an open Administration to answer reporters' questions...
...Like Ford, they are short on ideas, long on stability...
...A quiet style of leadership,' the ads proclaim...
...His reverse momentum was reflected in, and reenforced by, a bad press and plummeting polls...
...They should know...
Vol. 59 • October 1976 • No. 21
