To Plains with the Boys in the Bus

A Greyhound bus carrying eight of Jimmy Carter's defense-policy advisers lurched down a red clay road last week and rolled to a stop near a small modern house in a pinewoods about four miles outside of Plains, Ga. Most of the passengers, men of wealth or power, were more accustomed to traveling in limousines or private planes. But when they received the Democratic candidate's call, they willingly went along with his studied style of being just an informal man of the people who had summoned members of the Establishment to brief him about world and national problems on his terms and on his turf. After all, here was a chance to influence future national policy and perhaps qualify for a high job in the Administration--if Carter wins the election.

Ostentatious Show. So the policy advisers bought tickets on commercial flights to Atlanta (economy class) and, in an additional dose of Carter humility, boarded a chartered bus for the three-hour, 135-mile trip to the house owned by Carter's mother, Miss Lillian. On the way, they lunched on cold fried chicken; like everything except the plane tickets, the lunch was paid for by the Carter campaign committee, which was apparently making an ostentatious show of frugality. First out of the bus was former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Warnke, his rumpled seersucker jacket slung over his shoulder and his face flushed in the breezeless, 101DEG heat. He was followed by two former Deputy Defense Secretaries, Paul Nitze and Cyrus Vance, former Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown, Washington Attorneys James Woolsey and Walter Slocombe, Brookings Institution Fellow Barry Blechman and Columbia University Political Scientist Lynn Davis.

There was no time for small talk or for watching the turtles and water moccasins that occasionally poked their heads above the surface of the muddy pond near the house. Seated in a circle in the living room, Carter and the experts sipped soft drinks and engaged in a free-flowing, four-hour discussion of U.S. and Soviet treaty commitments, defense spending, the prospects for the nuclear-arms-limitation talks and other military matters.

The briefing ended as a storm broke and lightning crackled all around. The one available umbrella shielded a television camera as Carter escorted the experts through 100 yards of mud to their bus. Commented Warnke, as he faced the three-hour ride back to Atlanta: "It has been very instructive, but not habit-forming."

Next day, Carter repeated the down-home scene by busing in nine well-known economic advisers. Among them: Laurence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania; Arthur Okun, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers; Charles Schultze, former budget director; Richard Cooper of Yale; Lester J Thurow of M.I.T. and Albert Jt Sommers of The Conference Board (a business-research group). They told Carter that they expect no marked changes in unemployment or inflation in the months before the election. Of the economy, Okun said that, at best, "we are limping rather than flat on our backs." Afterward, the candidate met with reporters, and Carter said his policy would be to "target" Government spending on programs in geographical areas that have been hardest hit by unemployment. In this way, according to a study done for him by one of his advisers, Economist Carolyn Shaw Bell of Wellesley College, the unemployment rate (now 7.5%) could be cut by a percentage point without increasing inflation. Just how this magical solution would come about went maddeningly unexplained; it is yet another topic on which Carter will doubtless be pressed for specifics during the campaign.

5 1/2-Hour Review. On the third day, CIA Director George Bush journeyed to Plains--aboard an Army helicopter instead of by forced busing--to give Carter a 5 1/2-hour review of the U.S.-U.S.S.R. balance of power and the situations in China, Korea, the Middle East and Rhodesia. The session helped prepare Carter for a meeting the next day with ten of his foreign-policy advisers, led by Columbia Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who came all the way from his 27-room summer home in Maine. The group included Richard Holbrooke, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine (who has joined the Carter-Mondale staff); Anthony Lake, director of International Voluntary Services, which sends technicians to the less developed nations; and Foreign Policy Scholar Milton Katz of Harvard.

Boffo Debut. At Carter's side all week was Fritz Mondale, who was boffo in his Southern debut. Several hundred Plains citizens and visitors greeted him and Wife Joan at the town's former train depot. Some in the crowd spontaneously began singing Amazing Grace ("I once was lost, but now am found,/ Was blind, but now I see").

Mondale got religion, Southern-style, first in the Sunday-school class taught by Carter at the Plains Baptist Church and later at an old Lutheran church's annual picnic of fried chicken and corn on the cob, where he swapped duck-hunting tales with some of the men. On another evening, Mondale attended a shrimp supper at the Beaufort, S.C., town dock. Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings assured the audience of blacks and whites that "this fellow could run in Beaufort County and get elected. They call my friend a flaming liberal because he wants something good for America. If that's being liberal, I'm one too."* In fact, the only mistake Mondale made all week was to eat a shrimp with the shell on, a gastronomical gaucherie on a level with Gerald Ford's wolfing down an unwrapped tamale while campaigning in Texas last spring.

* Mondale also got the wryly qualified endorsement of Alabama Governor George Wallace, who said that his reaction to the Carter-Mondale ticket was "sorta mixed--like a father seeing his daughter come home at 4 o'clock in the morning with a Gideon Bible tucked under her arm."

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