The Campaign at Midsummer

...That question relates to the third, and most important, element of Carter's approach...

...Carter had none either when he entered the White House, but he has it now...

...Even when he is talking about welfare cheats or Russian cretins, his crinkly-eyed affability is always there, always reassuring: While tossing red meat to his hardline followers, he simultaneously feeds sweet syrup to more moderate listeners...

...Any time you talk to a Carter operative, you get the same line: "He's done the best he can...

...Over and over, when I ask people about the Presidential candidate-, the first thing they say is, "I don't like any of them...

...Ultimately, his success or failure would seem to hinge on this...

...STEVEN V. ROBERTS, a frequent NL contributor, covers politics in the New York Times Washington Bureau...

...In Washington today, getting caught with your cover up is a whole lot worse than with your pants down...

...Secondly, Carter will play heavily on Reagan's lack of foreign experience...

...My guess is that the President will take three lines of attack...

...As a result, I was not really surprised to hear Teddy Kennedy trying, and failing, to kindle some sparks of confidence in government out on the campaign trail...

...He represents a classic example of manner over matter...

...Sure, some people see him as fresh, frank and outspoken...

...But I've heard a lot of voters saying, the current evil is so bad, the alternative cannot be any worse...

...Why didn't these weaknesses show up sooner...

...Through this fog of executive incompetence, one light has shown brightly-carter's own reputation for integrity and decency...

...Then my little girl said, 'Who are you going to vote for this year...

...Nevertheless, Carter's rhetoric of helplessness has aggravated the sense of gloom being expressed by people like Bob Winner...

...Every family has a black sheep, and every sensitive person can understand the demons driving a man whose older brother is such an eminent -And self-righteous-success...

...Finally, Reagan is not without the means to throw fear into people about Carter...

...Yet while the dollar's decline in value hurt a lot of people, many voters were tinged with the inflationary psychology: Buy now, it will only cost more later...

...Iran and Afghanistan, of course, top the list of reasons...

...No one could have done better...

...Yet he seemed to want to talk about his alienation from the political process, about how it all turned sour after he came back from Vietnam, frustrated and disgusted...

...But he might get them by portraying Reagan as a disaster...

...But there is another aspect to t^e Anderson candidacy...

...POLITICS OF THE NEGATIVE The Campaign at Midsummer by steven v roberts This pervasive hostility is the most striking fact of political life at midsummer as the Republican convention fades away and the Democratic meeting rushes toward us...

...They have been called the "brainworkers," or the "new class," people who are almost totally severed from traditional ties to parties, neighborhoods, churches, unions, ideologies...

...We went on a bit of a national binge...

...It just seems that bad things continue to happen...

...Winner, who is 31, recently took his children to Washington and showed them the Jefferson Memorial...

...What he more often received was a round of half-hearted verbal shrugs...

...If the new class sees no difference between Carter and Reagan, Democrats and Republicans, they could vote for Anderson and let Reagan slip in...

...He's a much better politician, a much more slippery target...

...I see no chance, though, of denying the incumbent the nomination...

...Reagan is no Goldwater, or George McGovern for that matter...

...At the outset of the campaign the main issue was inflation...

...He will attempt to raise doubts about Reagan's character, intelligence, honesty, and judgment...

...I think the members of the new class are attracted to Anderson for the same reason they might be attracted to jogging: He's something new, something trendy, unrelated to past patterns or rules...

...None of this remained persuasive for very long...

...Enter the third man in the Presidential race-john Bayard Anderson...

...Thus, Anderson is the ultimate negative candidate...

...The same sort of fear drove Democratic members of Congress and prominent state and local Democratic officials to urge in late July that ways be sought to open up the party's convention...

...it's too pitifully thin, Accordingly, as even his aides have admitted privately, his strategy has been to blame his record Washington Wandering through one of those huge shopping malls outside Allentown, Pennsylvania, I stopped to chat with a young appliance repairman named Bob Winner...

...I just don't have faith in government," he said, "they have nothing new to offer me...

...At the moment, Anderson faces a devilish Catch-22...

...Those people said things that, to this day, pull deep down inside you...

...Reagan has some grave weaknesses, but he has enormous strengths as well...

...When he gets up and says that the campaign will be fought on five issues-work, family, neighborhood, peace, freedom-he touches on the fears and values that thread through the lives of every American, every day...

...As Ed Gray, a United Auto Workers' official in New Jersey, told me: "If the Republicans had dared do anything of that sort, we probably would have demonstrated in the streets...

...For I think one key to the election -if not the key-is Carter's ability to scare voters into abandoning Ronald Reagan...

...But there seems to be a greater measure of intensity and bitterness in the talk now, and a determination to register some son of protest against what are looked upon as unpalatable choices...

...to others, it also means phoney, and that could really hurt...

...When he asked audiences if the country could solve its problems, he was aiming for a big applause line and a roar of approval...

...Daddy?' I didn't know what to tell her...

...When 1 started asking him political questions, he simply tuned me out...

...The most fervent loyalists seldom claim that he has been a good President...

...Consequently, some politicians are starting to believe that Jimmy Carter is through...

...As Everett C. Ladd and G. Donald Ferree Jr...

...Voters are holding off, afraid he can't win...

...If it is a mistake to count Carter out, however, I think his advisers have been deluding themselves by adding up Reagan's negatives and concluding that he will be an easy mark...

...Carter will not get these people back by appealing to party loyalty...

...But for the first time since taking office, Carter has appeared to be less than candid or forthright...

...When a man gets nominated for President, voters look at him with a whole new eye...

...He has helped foster the "malaise" he seems to deplore...

...President Carter: has known that he cannot inn on his record...

...So 1 did vote...

...Or rather, why did they seem to fade away during the key early primaries...

...I always voted in the past," he recalled, "I always thought it was my patriotic duty to vote...

...Like his two opponents, his major weapons will have to be negative...

...Jerry D'Amico, a Kennedy delegate from Massachusetts, said to me: "I'm a realist, and the President has shown himself to be a resourceful politician...

...they see things, and care about things, they didn't before...

...voted for Nixon -And he got thrown out...

...In any case, we seem slated for an election battle similiar to Hobbes' description of life for the English peasant: nasty, brutish and short...

...I rom the beginning oft he campaign last fall...

...Over and over again, the man has proven himself to be a mean, effective, tenacious politician...

...Every poll shows that his strongest support comes from the better educated, higher income voters, usually with professional jobs...

...It turns out, however, that Kennedy was right about one thing: Carter was a weak, eminently beatable candidate -Albert not by Kennedy...

...But even a resourceful politician reaches the point where he tries to pull another rabbit out of the hat, and it just isn't there...

...For one thing, he has an uncanny ability to grasp what bothers people...

...Grumbling about "the lesser of two evils" has marked the last several elections, and this year it's "the lesser of three evils...

...By early August of 1980, the President has plunged downward in the polls to where he was a year ago, at the time Kennedy was first getting into the race...

...You know, if you don't vote, you can't complain...

...This shifting of the blame to others is combined with an argument that government can only do so much, that some problems are simply insoluble...

...Today the deepening recession and rising unemployment are attributed to Carter's policies-especially high interest rates and restricted consumer credit...

...And it leads me to believe that the eventual winner in November will be the last man left standing, the contender who does the best job of tearing down his opponents...

...The government has been over personalized in the Presidency, and there is no doubt that certain programs-particularly in the area of welfare-might hurt as much as they help...

...Indeed, he will pound relentlessly on the inflation and interest rate issue...

...1 felt such pride in the country...

...That is why the flap over Billy Carter is so damaging...

...If they do see a difference, however slight, then enough might vote for Carter to save him...

...Then there was the nature of the economic crisis...

...But it will be fun to watch...

...If there is a rabbit in that hat, he'll find it...

...But along about March -?when Carter started losing primaries in places like Pennsylvania and New York-people got frightened and "buy now" was giving way to a mood of batten down the hatches and prepare for the worst...

...When asked to characterize Anderson's views, the answers are remarkably inconsistent...

...So, as much as it is normally an advantage to be the incumbent-to already be President-this year it might not be...

...In other words, Carter must make the potential Anderson voter feel that he will pay a price for that choice...

...He seems to have conquered one major problem...

...Jimmy was telling us the invasion was the most serious ious threat to world peace in a generation, and Rosalynn was stumping the country equating a vote for Kennedy with a vote for betrayal of the President...

...That is the exact opposite of the old-line Democrats, who are conservative on social issues and liberal on economics...

...In the past six or seven months, I have spoken to many Americans who talk like Bob Winner, and the talk is hardly new...

...Reagan's age will certainly be a factor, particularly among older voters who know how they feel at age 69 and wonder whether anyone like them can stand up to the pressures of the Oval Office...

...Another issue that is just beginning to emerge as a potentially damaging one is Reagan's career as an actor...

...A growing number of voters have told me that when they look at Reagan, they're never sure whether they're seeing the real man, or just another theatrical character...

...but he would not be in the race at all if either of the other two elicited any widespread enthusiasm...

...but he can't overcome that obstacle unless voters commit themselves to him and boost his ratings in the polls...

...We will hear a great deal, too, about Reagan's slightly shady financial past-he paid no taxes one year while serving as California governor-And his reliance on a small group of Right-wing California businessmen for political and business support...

...Carter could score some points by reminding people what protection the government provides them, and threatening them into believing that Reagan will take it away...

...getting on the ballot...

...That is what makes him different from Barry Gold-water, who never sugar-coated his crusty brand of conservatism and proved to be an easy victim of Lyndon Johnson's scare campaign...

...Besides, inflation was so familiar that many agreed when the President said no one could really control rising prices...

...Put another way, Carter will try to make people ask themselves one blunt question: Whose finger do you really want on the button...

...It's a messy and unappetizing prospect, but this is simply not a year for upbeat, positive politics...

...What is more, although Reagan's words may sound harsh and reactionary at times, his style never is...

...To some voters, actor means simpleton...

...Since the present mood of the country is rather conservative and selfish, a great many voters also have no burning desire to help the poor-in the abstract...

...I think the argument has some merit...

...he still must accomplish something no other third party candidate has ever done-convince people that voting for him is not a wasted vote...

...His voters have to be shaken out of the trees, not attracted by some bait he's put on the ground...

...Also, close and not very edifying...

...Liberals think he's a liberal, conservatives think he's conservative, and few people really know much about him...

...First, he will seek to portray Reagan as an unfeeling skinflint with no concern for the needy and helpless...

...on others-from the oil companies and opec to a careless Congress and carnivorous consumers...

...he can paint the contrast between a seasoned foreign policy veteran and a bumbling newcomer, who sees the world too simply and could blunder into war...

...point out in the current issue of the magazine Public Opinion, this group is liberal on social issues, such as abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment, and conservative on economic matters, which might affect their own financial situation...

...Carter can try to worry people by saying, better the evil you know than the one you don't...

...Moreover, it would be a big mistake to write off James Earl Carter...

...Then I voted for Carter, and he didn't keep his promises...

...I don't think we have leaders any more...

...The Gallup poll reports that 57 per cent of all his supporters are primarily against the other candidates, not for him...

...And it may well turn out to be his Republican opponent...

...Of course, he was elected governor twice, but that's different...

...But most families do need government at certain moments in their lives: when they lose a job, or care for an elderly relative, or send a child to college...