Are We "Destroying" Jimmy Carter?

By Henry Grunwald

Well-meaning defenders of Jimmy Carter have begun to say that we are making sacrificial figures of our Presidents, that we have "destroyed" Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and that we should be careful not to do the same to Carter. That is a gross oversimplification. Two very different calamities befell the two earlier Presidents; Johnson was swept aside by a deep historic groundswell against the Viet Nam War, while Nixon was engulfed by a series of misdeeds and deceptions of his own making. If Carter fails to assert stronger leadership, and to project a sense and a pattern of purpose, the premature talk about a one-term presidency may yet become pertinent. But he is a long way from political destruction or electoral defeat.

And yet, the widespread disillusionment with him and the relentless attacks on him from many quarters should give us pause.

The press is only a part of this picture, but there is a danger that the famous "adversary" relationship between the press and the White House is turning into bitter, destructive hostility--on both sides. Carter has been disappointing and in some ways inept. No denying his shortcomings: the failure to seem in charge and to set convincing priorities, the stubbornness alternating with vacillation, the moralizing alternating with often clumsy political maneuvers, the uncertain economic line, the poor staff. But there is too little recognition that much of the fault lies with the rest of us--meaning the country and the Congress.

Carter faces a unique situation that would have sorely tried any other President. This is caused not just by the widely remarked post-Watergate dis trust of the presidency and, perhaps, of all authority. It is also brought about by the lack of consensus, or at least of working majorities, on most social and economic issues, especially among the Democrats. From Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic Party, representing the country's political majority (Eisenhower was elected largely for personality reasons), knew more or less what it wanted to do in the domestic arena. Right or wrong, there was a kind of philosophy and a direction. Of course there was plenty of opposition, within and without the party. Of course Democratic Presidents, notably John Kennedy, ran into difficulties and failed to get programs accepted. But the overall, essentially New Deal thrust remained.

Lyndon Johnson was the last President to enjoy that situation.

Two things happened. First, events changed the agenda: the predominant subjects became "We can say, then, that he's Viet Nam, law and order, race, radicalism. Second, largely hidden by those more dramatic issues, serious doubts developed about whether the country could indefinitely afford the New Deal approach and whether it was working. In short, the majority assumptions--the faith and strategy--of decades were severely damaged if not destroyed.

Nobody, no politician, no political philosopher, no economist has so far been able to repair or replace them.

The alternatives offered by the Republicans, while impressing many people, have not as yet won majority support; Nixon was elected and re-elected largely because he ran against Viet Nam and radicalism. So, with the distorting convulsion of Viet Nam, the fever of the counterculture and the huge distraction of Watergate out of the way, Carter suddenly inherited all the unsolved, postponed or sidetracked problems about how to order our society, accompanied by the serious economic problems--huge energy costs, increasing social demands, slowed growth--that no industrial society has yet been able to solve. It was widely thought that the absence of acute crises would benefit him. The opposite happened, because he and the country now had to face up to far from acute, but deep-seated and intractable crises.

Carter won the Democratic nomination not just because he ran as an outsider, but because the old New Deal and McGovern wings of the party were discredited--without, however, being completely abandoned or replaced by something else.

Surely that helps to explain Carter's often contradictory attitudes, partly conservative, partly New Deal, partly managerial, partly populist. The fact that his own personality may well encompass these contradictions only reinforces the point. The narrowness of his victory was due not only to his shortcomings as a campaigner and his newness on the scene but to the basic confusion in the country about where it wanted to head. It is no accident that Jerry Brown, another "outsider," did so well in his truncated primary campaign. His appeal lay partly in the fact that, like Carter, he presented a mixture--even a confusion--of traditionally liberal and conservative views.

Carter has hurt himself badly by shifting back and forth between conflicting positions. But it is hard to conclude that this represents only inexperience and uncertainty. It also reflects an earnest desire to reconcile opposites. Opinion polls show dramatic losses for Carter among the usual Democratic constituencies--labor, liberals, blacks --and in large measure these losses must be due to his economic program. Despite the serious doubts about the old-fashioned Democratic remedies, these constituencies still by and large want bigger spending and a more, rather than less, egalitarian thrust--or at least they want the substitutes and alternatives to be painless. Instead of pushing dubious tax reforms and relying on feeble jawboning, Carter should be taking much stronger anti-inflation measures, especially budget cuts. But for all the widespread worry about inflation, it is doubtful whether these groups and their representatives in Congress would go along. A case can be made that the issue is not ideological, that Carter has simply not been very competent or consistent in economic policy. The fact remains that, in general political perception, he is too tight and conservative for one side, too lax and liberal for the other. The Washington Post's David Broder wrote the other day that Carter must come down harder on one side or the other, that he should deliberately "divide and politicize" the country to get things moving. Perhaps so. But it is at least understandable that Carter shrinks from doing so, and it is far from clear that such polarization would work.

The fight over the energy bill has been a highly instructive political drama. The deadlock of almost evenly matched forces suggests not only irreconcilable "special interests" fighting each other, but an ideological standoff between the more or less conventional Democratic prophets of controls v.

advocates of the free market, a standoff quite characteristic of the country as a whole. It is hard to remember a past legislative fight where these opposing forces were so evenly matched--and where there was so little readiness to compromise.

Since the early '60s, Americans have tended more and more to vote on issues, not by party.

In U.S. politics, decisions for the common good are typically reached through party loyalty and a willingness to deal, to split the difference. In that sense, compromise is a civic virtue. Today, an electorate that is, by and large, much better informed and quite passionate on issues seems much less willing to compromise. At the same time, and partly as a result, Congress has become highly independent--probably too independent, an agglomeration of splenetic and irresponsible factions.

This is especially apparent in foreign policy. Despite some gaffes, Carter has taken essentially the right line on the Middle East. But he has had little support from Congress, and his sensible plane package--the proposal to sell advanced fighters to the Saudis and Egyptians as well as to the Israelis--is running into furious opposition, marshaled by powerful and relentless Israeli political pressure. In the relatively minor but troublesome tribal quarrel over Cyprus, Carter seems sound in wanting to lift the arms embargo on Turkey. But Congress is mesmerized by the tiny Greek lobby. Carter certainly mishandled the neutron bomb affair, not least by exaggerating its importance. But the German complaints are pretty outrageous, given Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's political cowardice in wanting the weapon without taking responsibility for it. (In general, the Europeans are forever demanding strong U.S. leadership--until they get it, at which point they complain that they are being pushed around.)

On SALT, Carter's initial proposals to Moscow a year ago were wildly overambitious. The more realistic SALT package now being negotiated may prove to be undesirable. But Congress is far too eager to jump to this conclusion and to decide that the new agreement is worse than no treaty at all--without fully comprehending the consequences of a SALT failure.

There is a nagging, increasingly angry feeling that the Russians are getting away with too much in the world today and that, as last week's statement by the Republican Senators charged, the Carter Administration is to blame. Carter has undoubtedly made tactical errors in dealing with Moscow and may have been wrong to cancel the B-l bomber. But it is also too easily forgotten that tough talk and gestures do not amount to coping with Moscow. As far as local conflicts with the Soviets or their agents are concerned, post-Viet Nam America abhors any form of foreign intervention, and a President's means of dealing with foreign threats are sharply reduced.

Well, as Carter might say, life is unfair. Having sought and won the presidency, he must adjust to these difficulties, must find the political formula to reconstitute working majorities, must find the necessary new directions. But in saying this, we should at least be aware of the magnitude of what we are asking of him and of our own complicity in his failures.

We ask the President to break the deadlocks, to rally support for his programs (or at least for the ones we like). If chauvinists got as far as they did in trying to defeat the Panama Canal treaties, we blame Carter for not rousing the country behind his proposals. If the Midwestern growers or the Western truck farmers are unhappy with Carter's food or water policies, we blame him, not necessarily for the policies but for somehow not soothing those interests.

If the Congress acts with the independence many have urged on it, we blame him for not controlling or manipulating it well enough. The President is not only criticized for advancing this or that program, he is also criticized for not being able to engineer consent.

Fair enough, up to a point. But, if carried too far, such reasoning becomes circular and self-destructive. It exempts both the people and their representatives from the responsibility of using their minds, indeed from the responsibility of collaborating in the democratic process. It means the elevation (or lowering) of the presidency to a kind of magical dictatorship, where everything is the President's responsibility. This is often accompanied by a terrible kind of impatience, almost a sort of hysteria, where every problem, every mistake, or seeming mistake, becomes part of a self-reinforcing pattern of disaster. When Carter puts huge, long-range problems on the agenda-- shrinking Big Government, civil service reform--we say that he overpromises (which he has done in some cases), or that he is unrealistic, without conceding that in our system such problems may take a generation to solve or even to ameliorate, but that someone must make a start.

We are entitled to judge Carter quite severely. But he, and other Presidents, are entitled to be treated as Presidents--and not as superhuman figures. The danger is not so much that we will "destroy" our Presidents, but that we will destroy ourselves as citizens, by piling on our leaders all our own wants, desires faults and contradictions. --Henry Grunwald

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