How Populist Is Carter?

Suddenly both Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan were encouraging themselves with visions of Jimmy Carter's vulnerability. All through the primaries, Carter had appeared ideologically elusive, so mixing liberal and conservative signals that the net effect was an image of enigmatic moderation, veiled by a scrim of "decency" and "love."

Now, at last, Carter seemed to have come out into the open. He chose a running mate, Senator Walter Mondale, who has a 94% approval rating from the Americans for Democratic Action, an apparent liberal's liberal. At the Democratic Convention, Carter delivered an avowedly Populist sermon that attacked the "political and economic elite," the "big-shot crooks" who never go to jail, and the "unholy, self-perpetuating alliances [that] have been formed between money and politics." Among other things, he repeated his endorsement of the idea of a national health system--an expensive proposition for an anti-Government candidate to advance in an anti-Government year. Afterward, Cartel pronounced his acceptance address deliberately Populist in tone; asked if he considered himself a Populist, he replied, "I think so."

In all this, the Republicans thought they caught the scent of a likely victim. Said Kansas Senator Robert Dole, who will act as temporary chairman of the G.O.P. convention: "Carter is a Southern-fried McGovern or a Southern-fried Humphrey." Reagan Strategist Lyn Nofzinger beamed at the choice of Mondale. "We were very happy," he said.

Had Carter suddenly lurched to the left? Not really. Since he began his political career in 1962 as a Georgia state senator, he has been a complicated political original--what FORTUNE'S Juan Cameron describes as a "cost-conscious liberal." All the Populist notes of his acceptance speech were echoes of what he has been saying for years.

In his inaugural address as Georgia Governor in 1971, Carter castigated the "powerful and privileged few," and he called for "simple justice" for "the poor, rural, weak or black." In his Law Day speech at the University of Georgia in May 1974, he lamented that "poor people ... are the only ones who serve jail sentences." When he announced his presidential candidacy in December 1974, Carter inveighed against Government that is run from "an ivory tower," against "gross tax inequities," against "a business executive who can charge off a $50 luncheon on a tax return and a truck driver who cannot deduct his $1.50 sandwich."

Rural Liberalism. Carter, the product of a family that has farmed the Georgia red dirt for 210 years, the first on his father's side of the family even to finish high school, has deep roots in the Populist tradition. Populism sprang simultaneously from the soil of the Middle West and the South in the early 1890s. The movement started with small farmers rising up against exploitative big-city manufacturers, bankers and railroad owners. In Georgia, Tom Watson, a brilliant lawyer who later became a U.S. Senator, was telling Southern yeomen that they were "the sworn foes of monopoly of power, of place, of wealth, of progress." In this, however, was the classic American doctrine of opportunity--not anticapitalism, but the insistence that, as Watson said, "the poorest, the weakest, the humblest" have a fair chance.

Populism aimed to free the small farmer from debt, and it inspired William Jennings Bryan's free-silver policy, which was designed to put more money into circulation. From Populist roots grew the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota, the Non-Partisan League in North Dakota and the Progressive Party headed by Wisconsin's Senator Robert La Follette. The movement also developed its ugly side, later serving as a power base for such back-country bigots and racist leaders as Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo, Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge and, eventually, Tom Watson. Today, however, Southern Populism is rural liberalism based on Southern culture, moral values and God.

Business Support. Jimmy Carter's introduction to politics came through his maternal grandfather Jim Jack Gordy, an avid Watson supporter. Jim Jack and Jimmy's father took him as a boy to Populist political rallies, and he absorbed their lessons. Meeting last week with TIME editors, Carter explained what Populism means to him. Said he: "My strength comes directly from the populace. Any decisions I make must, of course, be objective and fair--to redress grievances and overcome the last vestiges of the consequences of racial discrimination. In the future ... support must come from the population as a whole."

There was a distinct Populist strain in Carter's campaign for Governor in 1970. He ran against the former Governor, who got to be known--not by Jimmy--as "Cuff Links" Carl Sanders; he also ran against what he called "the economic elite and the political power brokers." One of his most effective TV spots in that campaign showed Carter walking up to the door of a country club and having it slammed in his face. He pronounced himself a people's candidate, unwelcome in the banks and board rooms. As Governor, he made some enemies among businessmen, notably by introducing a strong consumer-protection law and stern legislation to protect the environment. But businessmen generally supported his administration and applauded his government reorganization and zero-based budgeting. And they liked that he did not introduce any soak-the-rich taxes.

Last week Carter met with 52 of the nation's top corporate executives at New York's "21" Club (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS). One of the hosts was a friend from Atlanta, Coca-Cola Board Chairman J. Paul Austin. Carter strongly endorsed free enterprise--as he had to the convention--and had friendly words for multinational corporations. Said he: "I have never had a goal for Government to dominate business."

Political Analyst Richard Scammon says Carter "is more a moderate New Dealer than a true Populist." As President, he could be expected to concentrate considerable attention on the poor and minorities. In many ways, his basic instincts are quite close to those of two liberals whom he defeated in the primaries--Morris Udall and Fred Harris. (The presidential candidate whom Carter liked best was Harris, though the affection was not reciprocated.) For all his anti-Washington talk, however, Carter does not run against Big Government as such, but against inefficient Government. At bottom, he is in the process of trying to redefine liberalism so as to improve its methods while maintaining its social goals.

Moral Reservations. In that perspective, his choice of Minnesota's Fritz Mondale as his running mate was thoroughly consistent. But Mondale, like Carter, is capable of surprising. His Senate votes are usually liberal, of course. But as a member of the Senate Budget Committee, he has opposed meat-ax cuts in the defense budget. He did not support George McGovern in his fight to kill the B-1 bomber. He has had misgivings about both busing and the Humphrey-Hawkins full-employment bill. Like Carter, he has moral reservations about abortion, though he accepts the Supreme Court decision legalizing it. On the overriding liberal litmus test of Viet Nam, Mondale was late (1968) in swinging over to the antiwar side. Carter obviously feels politically compatible with Mondale. In many ways, it is difficult to say which of them is more liberal or which more conservative.

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