Doing a Job on Jimmy

As a candidate who promises to tell no lies, says he is not really a politician and exudes confidence occasionally bordering on arrogance, Jimmy Carter invites close scrutiny. As one of the more successful candidates so far in a jam-packed field for the Democratic presidential nomination--and as an outsider in the view of the Democratic establishment--he is getting it. But he seems to be getting it with such vengeance that the attacks on the former Georgia Governor are themselves becoming an extraordinary phenomenon.

Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak have blasted him for "fibbing." Manhattan's Village Voice has lambasted him in two pieces, implying that he is, among other things, a closet racist. The New Republic, which liked him in April, decided in January that "up to now, Carter has been unjustifiably considered part of the liberal pack." Politicians, especially, have seized opportunities to undercut Carter: when he recently referred in public to Hubert Humphrey's "record as a loser," Democrats of divergent political plumage leaped to Humphrey's defense. But when Edwin Muskie made a similar comment a week or so later, no one complained. In fact, Democrats seem so clearly to have declared an open season on Carter, writes Jack Germond, the Washington Star's chief political reporter, that the attacks by press and politicians are "perhaps unmatched in harshness and intensity in any presidential campaign of the postwar period."

Germond's comparison is extravagant, but he is correct in noting that anti-Carter sentiment is widespread.

The latest example is an article in the March issue of Harper's magazine, which its editors delicately titled "Jimmy Carter's Pathetic Lies." The 6,000-word story reviews many of the charges that Carter has already rebutted (TIME, Feb. 2). They include the implication that he courted segregationists during his 1970 gubernatorial campaign (he did woo the "redneck" vote, but early in the campaign he also guaranteed "equal treatment to all of our people"); that he supported Lester Maddox for Lieutenant Governor in 1970 and George Wallace for Vice President in 1972 (Maddox complained that Carter actually "worked almost as hard against [me] as he did against his Republican opponent," while Wallace once called Carter a "southern-fried McGovern"); and that he hedged on the abortion issue (unquestionably, Carter is guilty of the charge--as are other candidates).

Several new accusations are also unveiled. Some are absurdly trivial: the article notes that Carter says he opens all the campaign mail sent to his Plains, Ga., home but really does not; Carter says he or his wife does. Other charges are somewhat more substantial: that Carter led anti-McGovern forces in 1972, ran a dirty tricks gubernatorial campaign in 1970 and withheld materials that point up inconsistencies in his record from the Georgia State Department of Archives and History. Some of the assertions are true, most notably the one about McGovern. Many of the other charges are open to serious question. As for the specific charge that Carter used certain television commercials during the 1970 Georgia campaign to attack his opponent's financial integrity. Carter insists that no such commercials exist. And though the article contains direct quotes from a "veteran archivist," Carroll Hart, director of the state archives department, said that the archives staff failed "to recognize their words or statements in [the Harper's] article." A dozen other points in the piece are challenged by sources in Georgia and elsewhere.

The author of the Harper's harpooning is Steven Brill, 25, a freelancer out of Yale and the Yale Law School who was once an assistant to former New York Mayor John V. Lindsay. Last March Brill wrote a scathing piece for New York magazine called "George Wallace Is Even Worse Than You Think He Is." Brill swears that he interviewed George Wallace; Wallace and members of his staff deny that an interview ever took place. Brill also conducted a ten-month study for Americans for Democratic Action to prove that Senator Henry Jackson is not a liberal on domestic issues. At a press conference held to publicize his 21-page report, Brill himself conceded that it was "not meant to be an objective analysis of Henry Jackson's record." Most reporters took him at his word and ignored the broadside.

As early as last November, reporters heard rumors that Brill was out to do a hatchet job on Jimmy Carter. Brill maintains, "I expected it to be a positive piece, but it didn't turn out that way." Says Clay Felker, editor of New York magazine, where Brill is a contributing editor: "He's a fantastic reporter, a trained lawyer who is not afraid to look at documents for the facts." A Washington-based political correspondent has another opinion. "Brill is a hit man," he says with concern. "He's the liberal enforcer."

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