Carter Sounds the Trumpets

...It is a safe bet that none of the GOP contenders thought the gentle-spoken, seemingly inept Chief Executive would be transformed this election year into a hard-nosed Cold Warrior who could give Barry Goldwater a fair race in hoisting the flag and blowing the trumpets...

...The regime in Kabul was clearly a tractable Soviet satellite before its Marxist leader, Hafizullah Amin, was slain and a Soviet stooge, Babrak Karmal, was flown in from Eastern Europe to replace him...

...There is much less private talk among U.S...

...Carter went to Camp David to brood...

...And, for what it's worth, Jimmy Carter is absolutely convinced that he will be the first President since Dwight Eisenhower to serve two full terms...

...Moreover, the contenders knew that any blows of this kind that did manage to land on target would have the counterproductive result of weakening the country's stance abroad and thereby prolonging the crisis...

...But the line does not appear to be going over...

...The Kremlin hierarchy could well insure the success of Carter's Olympic campaign by barring the Israelis from competition, since there would then be inexorable election-year pressure for the United States to bow out in a sympathetic protest...

...Halting U.S...

...But politically his efforts were to little avail...

...The political implications for the coming battle with the eventual Republican nominee are obvious...

...During that campaign, he forged some temporary alliances without ever managing to create a broad and loyal Carter constituency...

...As it turned out, this was precisely the moment that Senator Edward M. Kennedy chose to formally proclaim his candidacy, seeking to restore his family dynasty to the White House...

...The correspondents quickly found, though, that with the competition from the flag burnings in Iran they could get their stories on the air only when Kennedy flubbed one...

...Win-the-War," playing the game as high as possible above the ordinary ground that smaller men occupy...

...He was ready to talk about how weak leadership and a faltering economy had obliged him to reluctantly step in...

...Clean" image in a period of profound disenchantment with the status quo...

...Among the considerable number of lesser-developed nations taking their ideological cues from Peking, rather than Moscow, the Soviets are being left as odd man out...

...The television networks promptly assigned enough people to Kennedy to justify his chartering a big commercial jet, the only candidate thus far to enjoy such a luxury...

...On the evening news, the Ayatol-lah Ruhollah Khomeini's followers chanted "Death to Carter" as khaki-clad youths shouldered their submachine guns and burned American flags...

...At one point last summer, it appeared that the double-digit inflation rate might soon eclipse the President's meager standing in the polls...

...In somewhat different circumstances, this is the grand strategy that insiders expect Jimmy Carter to pursue in his campaign...

...As was demonstrated January 14 by the General Assembly's 104-18 vote that "strongly deplored" the Soviet invasion, even at the United Nations, where a membership card in the Third World Club requires at least antipathy to Washington, Moscow is playing a losing game...

...He summoned experts who briefed him on the supposed rot eating away at the once-selfless American character...

...But Franklin Roosevelt beat Dewey in 1944 by running as "Dr...

...grain sales to the USSR has virtually insured that the average Russian will not be eating more meat well into the 1980s...

...Andrew J. Glass, a frequent New Leader contributor, is head of the Cox Newspapers bureau in Washington...

...His achieving what had long proved elusive is attributed to the public's perception of him in the role of crisis manager: a cool, decisive and effective leader at a time of vastly increased peril to American interests around the world...

...Suddenly his central issue, the need for a strong Executive in the new decade, was undermined...

...In contrast, Carter has found his theme: to restore American pride, some sacrifices at home notwithstanding, by not giving in to the Iranian militants and by meaningfully condemning the Russian military thrust into Afghanistan...

...Nevertheless, at this point the only sure thing one can say about the 1980 Presidential race is that predictions have gone awry...

...In the second place, the Carter Administration has benefitted from its efforts to cement a political and economic alliance with Communist China...

...He would help us bury Watergate and forget Vietnam while keeping America at peace...

...The line in the White House now is that anyone who is not willing to use military power to achieve strategic objectives should be holed up in some monastery...

...Predictably, Moscow has tried to sell the idea that Carter's sharp response to its drive in Afghanistan is nothing more than a political ploy aimed at getting re-elected...

...Dulles might have become Thomas E. Dewey's Secretary of State in 1945, instead of having to wait for another eight years of Democratic rule before taking over that job...

...Another Middle East blowup or an oil cutoff or an economic collapse at home, or a combination of all these things, could still turn the electorate against him...

...Even the word "containment," that old bugaboo which reminds people of John Foster Dulles, is being used without any apparent shame at the highest levels of government...

...In effect, one crisis has supplanted another and Carter is banking on the hostage question evaporating, like an unwelcome fog, once the Iranian leadership comes to focus squarely on the threat of subversion and dismemberment from the north...

...As events in middle Asia unfolded, such political attacks from both Kennedy and the Republicans began to sound less credible...

...Several of Amin's children were also killed in the general bloodletting that followed the Soviet-engineered coup—a fact that sits poorly with some Soviet sympathizers in Asia and Africa who, like Amin, were recently made welcome in Moscow...

...One hard-bitten cynic asked White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan whether all those mad mullahs and bearded revolutionaries had been hired to perform street theater by the Car-ter-Mondale Presidential Committee...

...He launched yet another drive to develop more energy...

...He was only half-kidding...

...That major move is being coupled with an effort to build public support against participating in the summer Olympic games in Moscow...

...embassy in Teheran...

...Most important of all, he has failed to communicate a vision of the future capable of rallying deep support for his cause...

...And even more than a lack of experience in statecraft, the absence of any firm political base was to bedevil the Carter White House for the next three years...

...Then, in early November, came the seizure of the U.S...

...Actually, the Administration would be happiest if the games were simply shifted from the USSR to other countries...

...Among themselves, they conceded they were there mainly for "protective coverage"—a code word in the business for having the cameras in place in case the candidate should be shot...

...But the mood in the White House these days is serene, if not exactly euphoric...

...The Afghan situation has subtly shifted the President's policy toward Iran...

...Under the circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that Kennedy has made some political mistakes—notably his ill-timed blast against the Shah, a statement that to his dismay was promptly cheered by the militants in Iran...

...In the first place, through personal messages and on the telephone Carter has managed to persuade quite a few Third World leaders that the Kremlin's reaction to Islamic insurgency in Afghanistan was unnecessarily harsh...

...policymakers these days about a naval blockade of Iran, and much more talk of the possible need to station Marines or paratroopers in the Persian Gulf if the Russians continue their push toward warm-water ports on the Arabian Sea...

...In 1976, Carter won the Democratic nomination by brandishing a "Mr...

...Carter, who has stumbled before in campaigning, could do so again before or after assuring his place on the Democratic ticket...

...It is to Kennedy's credit that he managed to hide from everyone except his closest friends the deep frustration he felt at this unpredictable turn of events...

...His style has upset people, too—entering tens of millions of homes via a small television screen, for instance, while shouting at the top of his lungs before a "live" audience of a few hundred people in Iowa...