Carter Faces the 'Fuzziness' Issue

The best jokes coming out of a campaign notably lacking in humor center on Jimmy Carter's alleged fuzziness on the issues. Samples:

> In a bridge game, after an opponent has raised the contract to three spades, Jimmy says, "Well, then I'll bid four." Four what? "I'll tell you after the convention."

> When his father asked young Jimmy if he chopped down the family's beloved peach tree, the lad responded, "Well, perhaps."

> Then there's Comic Pat Paulsen's line, "They wanted to put Carter on Mount Rushmore -- but they didn't have room for two more faces."

Some people may be getting laughs out of the situation, but there is no doubt that the candidate has a serious problem with fuzziness. TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud, who has covered Carter since late last year reports:

In the weeks leading up to last Tuesday's primary, Michigan voters saw TV commercials purporting to show the two faces of Carter. Caricatures, alternately smiling and scowling, were flashed on a split screen while an announcer reported that Carter has persistently taken different positions on various issues -- from abortion to breaking up the oil companies. The commercials exhorted people to vote for Carter's leading liberal opponent, Udall. His narrow loss to the heavily favored Carter suggests that Udall's ads may have hit home.

Meanwhile, in Maryland, Jerry Brown had also accused Carter of straddling the issues. Post-election polls showed that even people who voted for Carter were not certain about his stands. Soundings over the past several months indicate that liberals who support Carter tend to see him as a liberal, while conservatives view him as a conservative. For Carter's opponents, that means the Georgian has misled the voters.

Higher Standard. The problem is far from new. Critics recalled last week that after First Lieut. William Galley Jr. was convicted in the spring of 1971 of murdering at least 22 South Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, Carter warned that "the ruling will seriously demoralize our troops." He described the conviction as a message to American soldiers that "we don't approve of your actions if you carry out orders." The next day, he proclaimed American Fighting Men's Day in Georgia to honor U.S. servicemen in Viet Nam. A month or so later, Carter modified his stand. He explained that he had "merely tried to escalate the Calley reaction into support for our fighting men, not just Calley." Said he: "I could never condone murder or the acts of Calley" -- and suggested that his superior officers should have been held culpable too.

Now even some of Carter's severest critics concede that he is probably as specific on most issues as any of his Democratic opponents. But they insist, too, that he should be held to a higher standard because he is the clear front runner and because he has promised "never to lie" to the voters.

Part of Carter's problem lies in the unorthodox type of campaign he is conducting. Although he says he enjoys discussing issues, he also believes that the central issue this year is not jobs or detente but the feeling many Americans have that the country has lost its moral and spiritual underpinnings, its sense of purpose and direction. Carter's basic campaign speech deals almost exclusively with the "spiritual" issue. Until recently, wherever he went; he delivered the standard speech ("If we could just have a government as good as the American people are, that would be a great achievement"). Only after he was finished would he open the meeting to questions or more specific issues. Usually his answers were clear and precise.

Favorite Codeword. But he is not above tailoring his responses to his audiences, using language with extraordinary subtlety. At an appearance before a conservative businessman's club in Jacksonville last January, for example, he was asked for his opinion on what had gone wrong with U.S. foreign policy in recent years. Carter's usual answer is that excessive secrecy and an unwillingness to allow the American people to participate in policymaking are the root of the problem. This time, however, he said, "American foreign policy has been characterized since the end of World War II by a retreat into secrecy." The emphasis was on the word "retreat"--a favorite codeword among conservatives.

Before a conservative audience in Pensacola, Fla., Carter was asked to explain his policy toward South Korea. "I do not believe we should withdraw Americans from Korea," Carter said, "except on a phased basis." He had not actually misstated his position--he favors a U.S. withdrawal from South Korea over a period of about five years --but he had stated it in such a way that his audience could easily have gained a different impression. Indeed, at least one reporter came away thinking that Carter had said he wanted the U.S. military to remain in Korea.

"I never intentionally try to mislead my audiences," Carter says. "I know I don't prepare my answers in advance. But at the same time, I don't see anything inherently wrong in trying to say things in such a way that I don't irritate people, as long as I remain consistent with my basic position." It may be, as Carter's press secretary, Jody Powell, has noted, that a liberal on race, coming from what was one of the most segregated areas of the Deep South, learns intuitively to speak between the lines.

Another reason for the fuzziness charge is Carter's tendency to give long and complex answers to questions. His positions on abortion and school busing are thoughtful and clear. He is personally against both, but supports the Supreme Court's rulings on abortion and busing. His explanations are so lengthy, however, that some people suspect he is trying to hoodwink them--in part because his answers have appeal to partisans on both sides of issues. Somewhat confusingly, he opposes amnesty but would issue a full pardon to Viet Nam draft evaders during the first week of his presidency. Carter explains: "Amnesty implies what you did was right; a pardon says that whether what you did is right or wrong, we forgive you for it."

Similarly, on the problem of unemployment, Carter stresses that jobs should be created primarily through private enterprise, which pleases people who support free enterprise; at the same time, he says that in at least some instances the Government should be the employer of last resort, which placates Liberals. His supporters argue that the country would benefit from a President who can "bring together" conflicting constituencies by giving something to each of them.

On other issues Carter is maddeningly vague. He promised repeatedly to reduce the number of Government agencies from 1,900 to "no more than 200"; yet he refuses to say how he would accomplish the feat, except to stress the need for consolidation. Similarly, Carter strongly advocates both tax reform and welfare reform, but has provided few specifics. He insists that such massive reform efforts would require considerable study after he entered the White House. But many suspect that he already has more details than he is willing to admit and is simply trying to avoid being tripped up on specifics as George McGovern was in 1972 and Ronald Reagan was earlier this year.

New Version. There are those in the Carter campaign who think the fuzziness charge is beginning to hurt their candidate, and they want him to shift to a more issue-oriented campaign. Last week he did just that, though he denies that it was done to satisfy his critics. Campaigning before large crowds in Oregon the day after the Michigan and Maryland primaries, Carter unveiled a new version of his basic speech, stressing government reorganization, tax reform, welfare reform, nuclear arms reduction and the need for long-range federal planning, but offering few specifics. The reason that he is still the front runner today, he said, is because "the voters agree that my positions on the issues are theirs also."

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