Still Mr. Outside

By Hugh Sidey

These could be the days that determine whether Jimmy Carter will be a one-term President. This test of his capacity to lead has come quickly, invited by his own impatience and inexperience and an unrelenting world. But it is not unique.

In any President's stewardship there are unforgiving moments in which he is poised between forces that can sweep him on to greater favor and achievement or leave him a titleholder of little consequence. John Kennedy faced such a time at the Bay of Pigs only three months into his term. He shouldered the blame, wresting admiration finally from a dreadful mistake. In the fall and winter of 1965, Lyndon Johnson, enervated by his gallbladder removal, beset by the rising horror of Viet Nam, let himself be guided by his melancholy nature into the deception and self-pity that eventually forced his retreat to Texas. Oddly, Richard Nixon's time came in triumph. After his victory in 1972, he went to Camp David and there, in lonely anger, decided to reconstitute his Government by firing loyal workers and convinced himself that his position made him invincible to the Watergate investigators. And Jerry Ford, hardly realizing it, helped to seal his rejection in the 1976 election in the first month of his presidency by pardoning Nixon.

The showdown on energy policy that he has sought so deliberately may not be the last of these tests of Carter. But it could be if, through arrogance or ineptitude, he fails to perceive his own delicate position. His Administration has been fragmented in the first three months. Pondering the White House, an important Congressman declared that he got no clear sense of determination and direction, "whether one agrees with the President or not."

Carter seems unaware of all this. He has gone through his White House days reading his reports and memos, talking openly and even naively about his proposals and aspirations, reaching out always to his public as if he were onstage. His faith in himself has been renewed in church and prayer each week. But as yet there is a singular detachment from the act of governing as it has been understood in the past. In truth, Carter's inexperience may be so great that he has very little notion of what he has done or failed to do.

Here and there, however, there are signs that the full burden of national power is beginning to have impact. Attorney General Griffin Bell is plainly appalled these days at the monastic life he must lead to do all the work before him. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance is obviously a more cautious and thoughtful man after his encounter with the Soviets in Moscow. The White House men like Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell still stand aloof from Washington, suspicious of its protocols, staggered by its costs, confusion and hypocrisy. Now and then Carter himself seems on the verge of discouragement. Rarely is there a glimpse of the exhilaration of wielding power that has marked almost every other recent President.

In this special way. Carter and his people are isolated --not from the American TV audience, not from the events of family and community, but from the Government which they have come to run. Carter remains an outsider in Washington. He used that approach so effectively in his campaign, and perhaps he has deliberately chosen not to join the city.

That could be a profound mistake.

Splashing a little bourbon over ice with Senators like Russell Long or spending an evening cruising down the Potomac with House Speaker Tip O'Neill, listening to his Boston stories, or winking at a few pet water projects may not be what Carter had in mind when he came to the capital. But right or wrong, the ways of Government have grown up over two centuries. They are not apt to be discarded or reformed by anyone who stands disapprovingly at arm's length.

The notion that Carter can easily go to the people, sweeping aside or ignoring the intermediary institutions of Government, was always more fancy than fact. Franklin Roosevelt tried it and failed. So did Richard Nixon, in a different way. Powerful Congressmen and Senators have demonstrated time and time again that they have their own constituencies--and that Presidents rarely can dislodge them.

It is clear now that Carter is not going to be an innovator and inspirer. His ideas for change have been on the shelves for years. Johnson and Nixon tried Government reorganization. Cutting back nuclear weapons was a hope of Eisenhower's. Tax reform and energy conservation have been debated in each Congress of the past decade. What Carter offers, along with his down-home style, is the engineer's mind and manner in making up a new blueprint for the Federal Government so that it can better serve the people. It is enormously important, but it is tedious and often boring.

Until now. Carter has practiced a kind of arrogance, standing stubbornly on his sense of rectitude while talking in biblical terms about humility and service. But there is now in the wind the feeling that the President may be a wiser man. ready to come down from his lofty pulpit and contend in the corridors of power, seamy though they may be. If in the process he retains his hope, his good sense and his energy while learning about some of the darker rituals of Federal Government, it could be the way to a brighter day for everyone.

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