Jimmy One Term and Johnny One Note

By Thomas Griffith

Washington, the city of monuments, has one architectural landmark that is not widely recognized: its press corps forms the nation's largest echo chamber.

Lately that chamber has echoed with predictions that Jimmy Carter will be a one-term President. Since the thesis cannot be tested for three years, this bit of prophetic journalism deserves a closer look. For months the capital press corps had been reporting Carter's growing problems but seemed unable to get through to a public that regarded Carter as a nice guy who was trying hard. So commentators began raising their voices. The trouble is that to those who dwell in Washington's echo chamber, the amplification ot their own and their colleagues' voices easily becomes further confirmation of what they have been saying. By mid-October, Tom Wicker was asking, "Is it yet time for those whc have wished him well to press the panic button about the performance of President Carter?" Wicker answered himself: "On this score card, the answer is 'No, not yet.' "

On other cards, Carter got less charity. Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, no fans of the President, rushed to judgment: "Jimmy Carter, the miracle worker of 1976 is now marked by critics as the political incompetent of 1977 " The New York Daily News's James Wieghart saw a "concern bordering on panic ... friends and advisers feel his presidency hangs in the balance." When the polls at last did begin to show a slip in Carter's popularity, how could any Jeremiah make his alarms more alarmist?

Several columnists found a way. Pat Buchanan, Nixon's favorite tough-guy speechwriter, reported jubilantly:

"Word may not yet have reached the provinces, but in this capital, Mr. Carter is being talked of as a one-term President " The same day in the New York Times, Wicker re-examined his score card and hit the panic button: "People who think and talk about politics are beginning to ask^each other openly: Is Jimmy Carter a one-term President?'

An oldtime politician used to say, when things seem mysterious in Washington, look for someone with an interest.

Sure enough, that old fox John Connally, who'd like another chance at the White House, had earlier talked with Republicans in New Hampshire about a one-term Carter presidency. The A.P. dispatch may not have got much newspaper space, but it resonated through the capital echo chamber, which is always receptive to a new catch phrase.

What accounts for so much of Washington's sound-alike journalism? The press corps itself often laments rat-pack reporting, the result of too many people and cameras covering the same obvious event. This phenomenon does explain many of the capital's transient curiosities, hasty judgments and fast-fading enthusiasms. But the real tone o Washington opinion is set by those commentators and ru-rninators who no longer have to join the pack, who write from their studies, travel the Georgetown dinner circuit and can get through on the phone to anyone who counts. They can report what "Washington" thinks (or even, as James Reston once did, what "a bone-weary Washington" thinks).

Nixon thought these men a dangerous cabal of liberals and unleashed Spiro Agnew on them with accusations that are still widely believed. Actually, the literary pontiffs of Washington come in carefully calibrated ideologies these days and are so marketed. For example, the giant Gannett chain allows the editors of its 73 papers to pick their own political columnists and urges them to choose a broad spectrum.

The columnists are too competitive to be "orchestrated ; but they do move in the same circles and have a common need to catch the reader's eye three times a week or so. They share an environment they do not often leave.

David S. Broder, one of the capital's most esteemed reporters, recently got away--as far away as China. Re-entering the echo chamber, he chided his colleagues last week in the Washington Post: "The same people who talked last summer as if Jimmy Carter could walk on water now are just as convinced he is drowning. To the returned traveler it looks like a classic case of overreaction." Sure, there had since been Lance, the energy struggle and the Middle East But as for Carter's shortcomings, Broder added, "the criticisms being shouted now are no different than those catalogued in this space last June." Note the insider's fastidious distinction between "shouted" and "catalogued": not the message, it's the volume that disturbs.

So already the echo chamber reverberates with the new thesis: "Things are bad for Jimmy Carter, but not all that bad." Maybe they never were?

This constant correction of course happily supplies columnists with new material to write about--and keeps their commentary from becoming sinister. Prescription for reading Potomac journalism: when they're all warmly agreed about something, discount 20% for atmospheric distortion.

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