Concerns About Carter-And His Chief Courtier

...There is not, however, enough evidence to say that Powell is the Iago behind every such episode...

...But when people reach the position of needing criticism and preparation as much as a presidential candidate-or a President-does, there are a few disadvantages to not being a lawyer, and one of them was clear in the first debate...

...There was absolutely nothing in the long public record of Jerry Ford to suggest that he for one instant had sympathized with Soviet domination of Eastern Europe...

...and I continued to support him through the November election...

...As for Carter-and Mrs...

...He believed his spontaneous answers would be better than Ford’s rehearsed ones...

...Powell’s great importance during the campaign arose from his relationship with Carter...

...This is unfortunate, because if the Carter Administration is like the Carter campaign, Powell will be its second most important figure...

...Only Evans and Novak among the press noted that this scarcely seemed a fruitful line for a Democratic candidate to be taking...

...Even if he is, it must be remembered that every Iago needs an Othello, someone who has enough potential nastiness within him to rise to the bait...

...Television was excluded...

...Ford must have been similarly incensed at the colossal deal made out of his remarks about Eastern Europe...

...They seemed not to understand that you don’t have to use commercials to lie...

...Carter’s briefing book had told him that even fewer bills had passed under Ford than under Nixon...

...They believed that rehearsal was bad because Nixon did it...

...ness is padicularly apparent in the@ relations with the new press secretary, who will be their major source of access to the news of the White House...

...When a new Presideq takes over the government he usually”enjoys a brief period of amicable relatidip with the press called “the honeyqooltl” Reporters tend to be.friendly not on...

...The following dialogue ensued between a White House staff member and a Hickel assistant: “If you find the son of a bitch responsible for leaking that letter, I want you to fire him...

...During the entire general election campaign Carter displayed a tendency to fight the last war, obeying the rule of human nature that led the French to prepare for World War I as if it would be an instant replay of the Franco-Prussian War (leaving the Germans free to invade through Belgium) and that now leads our military to emphasize the helicopters that worked in Vietnam but which will be useless if we ever fight a country that has an air force...

...To the extent it was reported at all, it was depicted as a fight between Jack Watson and Hamilton Jordan...

...This is partly because Powell, who has been with Carter for seven years, understands him so well that he has learned how to say things without upsetting his boss...

...He never seemed to realize two truths about TV and the general election campaign...

...I don’t think it’s possible for him to examine his mistakes dispassionately, a process that is essential if similar errors are to be avoided in the future...

...Louis, Carter did not even check his commercials that were appearing on prime-time television...

...The problem with this relationship, on the evidence of the campaign, was that Powell could not check some of Carter’s less charming tendencies...

...The whole Carter entourage has a strong distaste for the staged Nixon campaign described in The Selling of the President 1968...

...We were in four markets instead of the usual three,’ was the instant reply...

...There are many things wrong with lawyers, but the good ones learn that the only way they can be sure to do their best is to ask themselves, in advance, the toughest questions the other side might ask, and then to expose their answers to hostile scrutiny from their associates...

...In the case of the Carter campaign, this meant campaigning in the fall the same way he had in the primaries, frantically trying to get free publicity on the evening news by hitting three or four television markets in one day”, answering any question asked by anyone who thrust a microphone in his face, and-as a result of his exhaustion and his faith in the spontaneous utterance -making one misstatement after another...

...The Carters could have been in a quiet studio in sure control of what they wanted to say and able to say it with the quiet, calm strength they both have at theirbest...

...his administration, who can of cdllrse become valuable sources...

...You don’t get in the habit of seeking the advice of others...

...Many Presidents would have had their pictures taken with arms loaded down by briefing books as they departed for their vacations...

...Here’s a report from Lee Lescaze in The Washington Post: “What did the campaign gain today...

...And if your only experience prior to having that business is in the command structure of the Navy, you at best become accustomed to talking decisions over with one person, your executive officer...

...He in turn, must discipline himself to demand the truth from his subordinates, to never punish bearers of ill tidings but instead to punish those who try to protect him from the bad news...

...Instead, he put tremendous effort into getting on the evening news programs-as he did in the primaries, when he didn’t have the money for commercials and often didn’t care what the reporters said about him as long as they got his name right...

...Yet Carter and Powell persisted in looking upon these commercials as tainted with Nixonism...

...Powell’s dependence on Carter is, I think, a diminishing danger...

...Carter replied, “Well, I see he’s remarrying now...

...There was nowhere evident the kind of tough cross-examination that Theodore Sorenson and Richard Goodwin, two hungry and gifted lawyers, gave John Kennedy in 1960...

...The real fight was between Watson and Powell, who managed to pull the strings without anyone noticing that he was backstage...

...His staff must tell him the truth...

...We can’t have a President who is exhausted, or a presidential staff .as worn out as the Carter staff was during the last month of the campaign...

...The only way to get your points across is through paid, prime-time commercials...

...They can try to help him be& it and deal with it, but they mugt not protect him from it...

...They can tell the truth about yourself and your programs that is obscured by the daily diet of triviality from the newspaper and television reporters...

...Powell and Carter were justifiably furious at the amount of attention given the Playboy interview and the persistent implication by the press that Carter had somehow advocated sexual immorality...

...Carter picked him up from the floor seven years ago, gave him a job after he had been thrown out of the Air Force Academy for cheating-an act of charity that says something about the amount of Christianity and birddog instinct for talent in Carter and about the degree of devotion and dependence that could have been inspired in Powell...

...And two weeks into the transition, when Carter’s original team of Georgia advisors was being appointed to the major White House positions, Hamilton Jordan answered criticism of the “Georgia Mafia” this way (according to Martin Schram and Jim Klurfeld of Newsday): “At every level of the campaign, that is what we heard-when is he going to bring in more experienced people and get rid of that Georgia group...

...In several of his interviews during that campaign, Carter suggested that there wbuld be a difference between the way he would run the government and the way he ran the campaign...

...Powell is not a simple careerist who sees his relationship to Carter only as a way to get ahead...

...This is not so much of a problem in the early days of a campaign when the simple facts about you are news, but once you’ve become familiar, only your mistakes are reported...

...I know for some readers I might as well be worried that neither man is a sadomasochist...

...These examples of pettiness may be of trivial importance in a Carter presidency...

...They were being punished for what the Carter people thought was unfair coverage during the campaign...

...here is, in addition, a night-andday difference in the mental stimulation one gets from oral argument as distinguished from the passive perusal of written material, which by the way is an important reason for not restricting dissent to memoranda as the Carter people do now...

...Powell was being kind to his boss...

...But the press is that way, and the question is what to do about it...

...The first is that TV news shows at their best do not reach half the audience of the prime-time shows...

...Another factor was Carter’s intellectual arrogance...

...But they would have felt guilty in that studio, as if they weren’t doing their all unless they went to bed exhausted every night...

...I think it’s important that we not forget about those doubts in the euphoria of victory...

...Carter communicated with the rest of his staff through memos, but got most of his face-toface argument from Powell...

...Carter did rehearse for the second and third debates, and his improvement was obvious...

...a Carter aide was asked after a oneday trip from Plains to Columbia, S.C., to Marion, Ill., Moline, Ill., and Chicago during which Carter had said nothing of significance...

...But the $rouble with the Carters in the gene@ election is that they were doing h e wrong hard work, shouting through defective microphones to endless street-corner rallies words that could hardly be understood on the evening news, if indeed the news chose to run those words instead of some account of a candidate’s mistake or pontification about a change in momentum...

...The latter, by the way, Powell had three weeks to correct, but either he failed to read the transcript of the interview or failed to see that it might present problems for Carter...

...The second is that a candidate cannot control what goes on the evening news...

...This friendli...

...One thing that troubled me during the campaign was the occasional evidence that Carter can be petty, vindictive, even nasty...

...But as the campaign went on, I, like so many other early Carter admirers, came to have doubts about him...

...Another thing that worries me about Carter and Powell is that neither of them is a lawyer...

...While scrambling from Sacramento to Albuquerque to St...

...Ford reacted with excellent paid television material of his own...

...The precedent is not hopeful...

...Thus Powell’s response to criticism of the general election campaign was an @patient “Look, it worked before, you guys were wrong then and you’re wrong now...

...Powell’s charm is joined with considerable subtlety...

...But nothin did more to deflate my enthusiasm f or Carter than the mean spirit displayed by the Humphrey and Kelly remarks-and I can’t help thinking that a President can’t get away with too many remarks of a similarly ungenerous nature without losing the affection and respect of his people...

...We heard it when we won in the primaries, and when we got the nomination, and we will hear it again...

...One case that most people remember came when Hubert Humphrey withdrew from the race and Carter graciously commented that his only regret was being deprived of the chance to beat the Senator in the New Jersey primary...

...If you find the son of a bitch responsible for not letting Hickel see the President, I want you to fire him...

...There is much that needs to be done in Washington and most of it is exceedingly difficult...

...Who was behind this particular piece of pettiness...

...Carter and Powell bitched to the press but did nothing on their own...

...The purpose was obvious to television reporters...

...I’m convinced we need a hardworking President...

...I’d guess that there are quite a few executives who are quick to condemn Haldemans in the White House but who in their own organizations tend in time of crisis to communicate through one or two associates who can be relied on to ration the bad news into portions that are endurable...

...Carter prepared himself by learning facts from his briefing books and doing only a little talking with his advisors, chiefly Powell...

...This point was best made at the time the White House staff refused to let Walter hickel, the Secretary of Interior, see President Nixon to express Hickel’s dissent about the war in Southeast Asia and Hickel’s staff then leaked to the press a letter expressing that concern...

...Carter-it seems likely that just as large a factor in their general election behavior as doing again what had brought them victory in the primaries was their compulsively high expectation of themselves, of how hard they should work...

...The same kind of thing must have happened in the five days between the Sunday appearance of the Playboy interview and Carter’s Friday visit to Texas...

...As the campaign turned sour in late September and early October, Carter spent most of his time in the front of his plane with Powell and Greg Schneiders, his personal assistant, who controls access to Carter but who has not developed the deep moral and intellectual bond that connects Carter and Powell...

...So Carter arrived in Texas unprepared and told the-first questioner that Playboy had taken his remarks about Johnson out of context, a lie that he had to retract later in the day...

...Carter was being hit with the lust, screw, and shack-up quotes...

...Powell did not want to burden him with a reminder that on Friday they were going to have to face the Texas press, who would be sure to inquire about Carter’s attack on Johnson in the PZuyboy interview...

...I suspect Carter’s high expectation of himself has another adverse effect...

...His devotion worries me more...

...One of my friends who has worked for Carter, Powell, and Eizenstat, and admires them all, told me he thought this was not because Powell wanted to wish bad news away, but because Carter took his own failings so seriously that Powell wanted to spare him this extra burden in the last few days of the campaign...

...And if these decisions turn out for the most part to be right, you grow accustomed to thinking you don’t need anyone but yourself...

...It’s possible that a President in the space of a few minutes could hear 1) that the Russians have launched their missiles, 2) that the Polaris submarines are all in port for the weekend, and 3) that General Brown has launched a preventive strike against Israel...

...Thus it is unlikely that you will read during this honeymoon period much critical analysis of Jody Powell...

...You don’t have a lot of staff to consult with in a small business...

...The first debate was coming up...

...Carter is probably the first to actually read them...

...As his abilities become widely known, he will not lack for the kind of job offers that free a man from fear of his boss...

...The Playboy interview will be featured, instead of the things you’re planning to do for the country...

...There will be times when lie should not protect Carter, when he.shouldn’t try to ration the bad news into endurable portions...

...Many politicians would sell their souls to have an assistant as capable as Powell, or a press secretary who was so able to charm reporters with his wit...

...An illustration came during the struggle for power over the transition that occurred in the Carter camp in November...

...Charles Peters D editor-in-chief of The Washington Monthly...

...In the first debate, he praised Richard Nixon as a “strong President” who “worked with a Democratic Congress very well...

...If there were aspects of the c&ipaign that we hope not tg See re: peated in the new administration, we must begin the process of preventing them by understanding these two men, their mutual strengths that produced the victory we wanted, their mutual weaknesses that produced the mistakes we worried about...

...In dealing with most of his assistants, Carter behaves as a military commander would with his staff-he is long on efficiency and short on small talk and human engagement...

...Carter’s intellectual arrogance can be explained in part by the fact that he ran his own small business successfully for 20 years...

...When the going gets tough, a leader has a tendency to want to deal with people who know how to express themselves without disturbing him more than he already is...

...The idea for having the session with print reporters came from Jody Powell,” wrote James R. Dickenson of The Washington Star...

...In the last week of the campaign, when the polls showed that Carter might actually lose, reporters on Carter’s plane saw that Powell and Schneiders minimized Carter’s contact with Stuart Eizenstat, the most pessimistic of Carter’s advisors, who was recommending last-minute changes in the television-commercial strategy...

...Both men are extremely intelligent...

...Carter wasn’t...

...Men are especially apt to want to re-fight the last war if they won it, particularly if they had originally been scorned by the experts...

...Kennedy was prepared...

...You grow accustomed to making decisions alone...

...It’s not that Carter is unaware of his mistakes, it’s that he’s too painfully aware of them, so self-reproaching about his responsibility for error that he can’t stand to dwell on it...

...Only with Jody Powell does Carter have the kind of father-son relationship that so many politicians develop with young members of their staff...

...Because Carter merely memorized the information without trying out his answers on a Sorensen or Goodwin, no one told him that there might be a better way to make the point...

...I found myself rooting for him in the lowa primary-I admired his willingness to mix liberal and conservative positions, his combination of concern about human beings and skepticism about bureaucracy...

...Jody is as smart as Jimmy, bright enough to be President himself one day,” is typical of what I’ve heard about Powell...

...On the Friday after his election as President, Carter held a press conference at the Pond House in Plains...

...Another was after Carter had criticized Clarence Kelly for accepting the free valances from the FBI carpentry shop, and reporters reminded him that Kelly’s wife had been dying at the time...

...My favorite example of Carter’s failure to rehearse was one that he somehow got away with...

...Even so, several of the things that went wrong in the campaign revealed traits that can keep Carter’ from being the great President he wants to be, unless he works hard to overcome them...

...Apart from the first debate, there was one other illustration of Carter’s resistance to certain kinds of advice...

...He in turn gives you absolute loyalty outside the captain’s cabin, which is just what Powell gives to Carter...

...There were other reasons for Carter’s poor showing in the first debate...

...This faith in spontaneous utterance got Carter in to trouble throughout the campaign, from ethnic purity to the “screw” and “shack up” of the Playboy interview...