Carter and His Critics

Any presidential candidate who seems to be breaking ahead of the pack is bound to come under fire. That has been happening lately to Jimmy Carter, who has been getting an increasingly critical press. Carter last week discussed specific complaints against him in interviews with TIME Senior Editor Marshall Loeb and Washington Correspondent Stanley Cloud. Some of the charges, and Carter's replies:

Carter, now a caustic critic of Alabama Governor George Wallace, once promised to nominate Wallace at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

"I never promised to nominate him and I never came close to doing so," Carter insists. "I did receive a letter from Wallace in 1972, asking if I would second his nomination at the convention, but I wrote him back and told him I would not do so."

Carter appealed to the segregationist vote when he ran for Governor in 1970 by making friendly gestures toward arch-segregationist Lester Maddox, then a candidate for Lieutenant Governor on the same Democratic ticket.

"Lester and I have always been bitter political enemies," says Carter. "We were nominated in 1970 by the same Democratic voters, so we gave each other mutual support. I said, 'I'm supporting the ticket, with Lester on it.' I said, 'I'm proud to be on the ticket with Lester because his campaign style--not depending on powerful politicians for endorsements--was compatible with mine.' I said his inclination to campaign directly with the people, in the streets, in the factories, in the barber shops and beauty parlors, represents the essence of the Democratic party. If I had disavowed my running mate, it would have weakened the ticket substantially."

Carter is really a disguised segregationist.

"In 1970 I was the only candidate in the entire group of maybe 15 or 20 who were running for Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Georgia who meticulously campaigned in both the black and white communities of every city and town. I said that the South, although it is conservative, is not racist, that there is no place for racism, and that we should recognize the changing times that are on us."

(In Washington, Georgia Congressman Andrew Young, a black, insists: "Jimmy Carter is not and never has been guilty of the kind of implied racism of these charges. He is one of the finest products of a most misunderstood region of our nation.")

Carter has listed George Ball and Wilbur Cohen as people he regularly consults on public policy, but in fact has never sought their advice.

Carter concedes that he made an "inadvertent error" in overstating the relationship. He has, in fact, asked both men if he could consult them but so far neither he nor his staff has done so. (In London, George Ball confirmed that he had made "a genuine offer to advise and counsel Carter on foreign policy" after the two had a long discussion last autumn. Ball said the offer still stands.)

Carter has claimed that he was influential in developing a voluntary school busing plan to achieve racial integration in Atlanta, but played no role at all.

"What I did, primarily, was let my staff attend and monitor the meetings at which the plan evolved," Carter explains. "I issued a public expression of full support for whatever plan would be evolved. I pledged the state's participation in the costs. At a critical stage in the negotiations, I went as Governor to give my reassurance." (In Atlanta, three of the major participants in the negotiations confirmed Carter's version.)

Carter skillfully exploited the abortion issue in Iowa to retain both pro-and anti-abortion support.

Publicly, Carter said In Iowa that he could not support any of the current anti-abortion constitutional amendments, though he suggested vaguely he could support a "national statute" that might limit abortion, a position which misled some voters and which he has since abandoned. He concedes that he told one woman at an Iowa meeting that he could possibly back some other, unspecified type of anti-abortion amendment. He told TIME that he is against abortion except in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, a period in which "I would not want to interfere with the right of a woman to make that decision."

Overall, Carter's rebuttal to his critics sounds reasonable--or at least within the reasonable bounds of political expediency. His 1970 endorsement of Maddox may have been warmer than the situation required. On the abortion issue in Iowa, Carter seems to have been more contriving than he admits; at the least, he failed to make his position as clear as those on both sides of the issue have a right to expect from a presidential candidate.

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