Still Searching for a Formula

By Hugh Sidey

He is wiser, more lined and grayer. World anguish is a real village in India, which he smells, sees and hears. His wife is closer to him, but less independently visible than back in the campaign. He is less the preacher and more the educator. His speeches have become more substantive, detailing policy, not promises. He is at once more flexible and firmer. He can knock back a couple of bourbons at night with a man he likes. Ruefully he has admitted to himself that Georgetown gossip can affect his leadership. He is developing personal intuition about individual congressional leaders like Danny Rostenkowski, whose virtuosity is that he can count votes.

Jimmy Carter has been on the job 15 months, and he may have about that much time left before he gets tied up in another election. He is on the one hand remarkably the same man he was when he came into power; yet, on the other hand there have been changes in both him and his presidency.

He dresses a little more neatly and wears a few more white shirts and stiff collars. His principal aide, Hamilton Jordan, appears more often in a suit and tie and leaves his boots at home. Carter weighs a steady 154, and his bowling prowess has improved to 160-165 a game. He has had more of the White House trees labeled, and he wanders among them as friend and admirer.

Carter's religion has deepened, and his attachment to Charles Trentham's First Baptist Church has grown. He sits attentively in the sixth row, aisle, right-side seat during services. He prepares his Sunday-school lessons when he is in town, sends for the new lesson books when the old ones expire. His feeling mounts when he is teaching lessons about the need to reach out to the world's abused and outcast. He was most eloquent when caught up in the story of the woman at the well and how Christ had transformed her life. Prayer is an integral part of his decisions.

The President looks back into history with more understanding now. Harry Truman has grown in his eyes. He has studied Robert Donovan's new Truman book, Conflict and Crisis, and has pressed it on his friend Charles Kirbo. His private pantheon has gained the likes of Astronomer Carl Sagan, Country Singer Larry Gatlin, House Speaker Tip O'Neill. He has sought more information about John Kennedy and James Michael Curley.

He comes near to relishing presidential perquisites, like the box at the opera, Air Force One and Camp David. He does not carry his own suit bag or his briefcase so much, sees more the need to act presidential.

Carter glories in his access to movie libraries and is wallowing in classics like the Humphrey Bogart pictures. He tramps the trails of the Catoctin Mountains cataloguing the birds. He has failed to develop a passion for chocolate mousse despite exposure to such dishes at state dinners. He carefully monitors his allergies, skirting Swiss cheese, lima beans and hops (Billy has no such trouble). He works hard at being a father and insists that the presidential schedule bend around Amy's violin recitals and special school days.

The President laughs a bit more, finds the White House confining, wants to travel out into the country with more regularity. He uses the Oval Office more, at ease now below the stern eye of George Washington, who resides above the fireplace. His globe came with him from the small study. He has learned to converse in Spanish, and his tennis game has strengthened.

Jimmy Carter may be at the most critical juncture of his presidency. The deep strains of his nature run as strong as they always have. But his mind has expanded, his outer edges softened and modulated. He is part insider and part outsider now, a man with a better feel of the power he has, but one startled by the power he does not have. He is still searching for his formula for success, told by many he is failing but convinced he is on the edge of comprehension and the beginning of a journey upward.

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