A Vow to Zip His Lip

By WALTER ISAACSON

After his tactics boomerang, Carter promises to stop blitzing Reagan

"Why, if you are the right man for the job, have you and your staff lowered yourselves to slinging mud and making slanderous statements about your rival?"

That blunt question from a Nashville high school student to the President of the U.S. last week aptly summed up the conundrum of Jimmy Carter's floundering campaign. From the outset, the President and his advisers had meant to make Ronald Reagan the man the issue in the race. Instead, with only three weeks to go, it was Carter who was the issue, and he had only himself to blame. Time and again, Carter's strident personal attacks had crossed the line of propriety for a presidential campaign. When he did it again last week, charging that Reagan's election would split the nation along racial, religious and sectional lines, there was no need for the Republicans to cry foul: the chorus of condemnation from all sides was deafening.

New York Times Columnist James Reston called Carter's campaign "vicious and personal," and added that "even if he wins, it will be difficult for him to regain the support he needs to govern." Said an editorial in the Washington Post: "Jimmy Carter is campaigning like a politician gone haywire . . . Where is the President?" Commented the Boston Globe: "The President seems bent on discarding his last ace, his reputation as a decent and compassionate man."

What makes Carter campaign in so self-defeating a fashion? Only he knows for sure, but the outbursts undoubtedly reflect his frustration at running behind a challenger whom he cannot get to come out and fight on his terms. In the past it was always Carter who was the challenger, and there are those who are beginning to wonder if he knows how to run as an incumbent, especially one with a record that is complicated to defend. Then too there is no doubt that, wise or not, Carter's attacks are heartfelt, that he fervently believes Reagan would be a disaster for the country, that the Governor's lack of understanding of domestic and world problems, and his extremist past statements, do indeed raise the specter of war and domestic divisions. Says a close presidential aide: "He is so frustrated that no one else is saying these things that he feels he has to shout all the louder."

The louder Carter has shouted, the more his staff has worried about his assaults on Reagan boomeranging. At an urgent strategy session in the Watergate apartment of Campaign Chairman Robert Strauss, five top aides agreed that Carter must tone down his rhetoric. How to persuade him was the problem. Charlie Kirbo, the President's confidant from Atlanta, was deputized to put the matter to Carter as forcefully as possible.

But before Kirbo or any of the others had a chance to sit down with him, Carter was off and campaigning early Monday. At a backyard gathering in suburban Chicago, he lost no time in lambasting Reagan, saying that being "jingoistic in spirit" was "an excellent way to lead this country to war." It was that evening that he hit full voice and charged that Reagan would splinter the nation.

Even Carter, upon his return to Washington, knew that he had gone too far this time. Many of his own campaign staff were becoming dispirited. One White House staffer admitted that he could hardly bear facing the morning headlines. Said he: "It's awful over here. Just awful." Carter met with Kirbo, and later with top aides in the White House, and it was quickly agreed and announced to the press that Carter was changing tactics and would soften his attacks. Said Press Secretary Jody Powell: "We'll try to campaign in such a way that does not allow anyone to focus on the rhetoric rather than on the substance, or on how something is said rather than what is said."

But something more direct from the President seemed required. ABC's Barbara Walters had been pressing for an interview with him since the convention. Monday night, after Carter's Chicago blast, Powell called her in California. Said he: "The President wants to talk about the tone of the campaign."

The interview with Walters was held late Wednesday afternoon in the Oval Office and quickly edited for the evening's news. Carter was studiously contrite: "The tone of the campaign has departed from the way it ought to be between two candidates for the highest office in this land . . . I'll try to make sure that [it] is better in the future."

Even if Carter succeeds in reining himself in during the rest of the campaign, serious damage has already been done. Reagan has long since learned how deftly to return the President's bombs to the sender. After Carter's Chicago attack, Reagan looked at the television cameras in a Pennsylvania hotel hallway, shook his head as if he had been let down by his best friend, and confessed to being "saddened that anyone--particularly someone who has held that position-could intimate such a thing."

The first voters to sample the new Carter were the folks down home. Carter made a two-day tour of the South--time he would rather have invested elsewhere--to try to solidify his besieged base. With the exception of Virginia, the region was for Carter four years ago, giving him 40% of his electoral vote. But a poll by Atlanta's Darden Research Corp. last week of eight states in the heart of Dixie, excluding Virginia, shows Carter and Reagan running even. Says Pollster Claibourne Darden: "If Carter does not do better quickly, he's through." Concerned with the economy, national image and moral issues, many Southern whites have long been attracted to Reagan. Blacks, while still overwhelmingly pro-Carter, show signs of disaffection that could lead to a low turnout. Admits one senior Carter aide: "Southerners are not going to vote for Jimmy Carter in 1980 just because he is a Southerner."

As he hopped across Tennessee, Carter carefully but forcefully attacked Reagan's positions without hitting Reagan personally, and he noticeably recast his earlier statements to give them a more positive thrust: "I want to see the nation united, North and South united, black and white united, rural and urban united."

It was before a crowd of 4,000 at a town meeting in the cavernous new Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville that Student David Mangum asked his question about why the President had been "slinging mud." The audience applauded. Carter sucked in his breath. "Good question," he said. Then he went on to explain his resentment against the press for covering campaign techniques "and who was going to debate whom," and not focusing on Reagan's SALT II stance or questioning the Governor about his saying that an arms race was a card that could be played against the Soviet Union. "I felt motivated to speak out, and maybe I got overly enthusiastic about it," Carter said. He would keep criticizing Reagan, but "I'll try to do it in such a way that'll make you proud of me." Responded Mangum: "Thank you. I want to be."

Carter's difficulty in restraining himself was evident on Friday, when a local television interviewer in St. Petersburg, Fla., asked about Reagan's charges that the President was considering taxing Social Security benefits and tapping private pension funds to help revitalize ailing industries. Snapped Carter: "Completely false . . . It's difficult to respond to ridiculous things like this." He vented his frustration by attacking Reagan: "A lot of his advisers are afraid of what he would say in a free and open exchange of ideas . . . [his calls] for injecting American military forces into place after place around the world, when diplomatic means ought to solve these problems, indicates to me that he would not be a good President." But this time he was able to raise these legitimate points without insinuating that Reagan's election would lead to war.

While Carter had been hurting himself by popping off, Reagan had managed to avoid making any consequential verbal gaffes as he courted blue-collar and ethnic voters in the Midwest and made raids into the South. Last week he picked up the endorsement of the Teamsters Union, which has often backed Republican candidates, and the National Maritime Union, which has never done so.

But then Reagan got in two silly bits of trouble himself. First, he issued a written statement criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency for being overly stringent that concluded: "Air pollution has been substantially controlled." Asked by a reporter to explain how he could possibly believe that the air was clearing up, he said, "I don't think I've said anything of the kind." It was pointed out that the statement had been released the day before under his name. Responded Reagan: "Isn't it substantially under control? I think it is." Reporters were left to wonder not only what his position was on enforcement of the Clean Air Act, but also whether he had really read his own statement on the subject. Ironically, when he flew back to Los Angeles at week's end, his plane had to be diverted because of one of the worst smog attacks in that city's history.

In Steubenville, Ohio, Reagan said, "I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that one little mountain out there, in these last several months, has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind." In rebuttal, Environmental Protection Agency officials said automobiles are not even regulated for sulfur dioxide, because they emit very little of it; utilities, which are regulated, have spewed out 200 million tons of the gas over the past decade, compared with 400,000 tons from the volcano.

This week each campaign will try new strategies to get their messages across more forcefully to a restless and often disaffected public. On Sunday, Carter started a series of 20-minute radio speeches, the first focusing on the economy, and the G.O.P. challenger initiated a series of nationally televised Reagan Reports, five-minute discussions to be aired three times a week. In addition, Reagan and Vice Presidential Candidate George Bush are scheduling seven or eight live broadcasts of question-and-answer sessions, plus, perhaps, one of Reagan talking about issues.

One of the surest signs of how poorly the campaign has been fought was the cynical conclusion of Carter's top aides that the public is so sour about both candidates that it would automatically turn against whoever seized the lead. That theory may be compounded of wishful thinking and of a desire to rationalize the President's poor ratings, but nonetheless his advisers are urging him to lie low until the final two weeks and then throw everything into the battle. That prospect will surely be the severest test of his new determination to stick to the high road. --By Walter Isaacson Reported by Christopher Ogden with Carter and Douglas Brew with Reagan

CARTER'S CHARGE "The actions that you take [in this election] will . . . literally decide the lives of millions of people in our country and indeed throughout the world . . . You'll determine whether or not this America will be unified or, if I lose the election, whether Americans might be separated, black from white, Jew from Christian, North from South, rural from urban, whether this nation will be guided from a sense of long-range commitment to peace, whether our adversaries will be tempted to end the peace for which we all pray. "

REAGAN'S REPLY "I think he had some harsh words for the country, not necessarily for me, and I just have to say on this I can't be angry. I'm saddened that anyone--particularly someone who has held that position--could intimate such a thing and I'm not asking for an apology from him. I think he owes the country an apology. I think he's a badly misinformed and prejudiced man. Certainly he's reaching a point of hysteria that is hard to understand."

With reporting by Christopher Ogden, Douglas Brew

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