'What I'll Do': Carter Looks Ahead

INTERVIEW

In the first interview that he has given to discuss plans for his new Administration, Jimmy Carter talked with TIME Chief of Correspondents Murray Gart and Washington Correspondent Stanley Cloud:

Q. What is on your agenda of things to do immediately? What are your top priorities as you look ahead?

A. One of the commitments that I've made is to call together my own foreign policy advisers and the key leaders of Congress to spend a couple of days in an isolated place. We plan to talk about our foreign policy successes and our failures, our challenges for the future, and we are ready to discuss almost every individual nation. I want to be sure that my knowledge in this field is as great as it can be and that there be some unanimity, or at least a common understanding, of where we are going in the next four years. This would be a drastic departure from what exists now. I feel that Mr. Kissinger has only permitted Congress to become involved in the decision-making process when it was politically expedient for him to do so.

Q. Would your Secretary of State be included in this group?

A. I guess so, although I have no idea as yet who the Secretary of State might be. What I'll do is use the same general procedure to choose the major officials in Government as I used last summer for my vice-presidential nominee: careful assessment of people's qualifications, including the assessment of the qualifications [of a possible choice for the position] from others who might be considered for Secretary of State.

Q. Has that process begun?

A. Yes, but I have not participated in it personally.

Q. What is your domestic blueprint for the days ahead?

A. I plan to start working with business and labor leaders to establish a framework for voluntary wage and price restraints. I would like to move as far as I can toward this goal on a strictly voluntary basis. Perhaps that would be adequate for the whole four years. I will also work with the congressional leaders immediately, and obviously with business and labor, on rapidly expanding job opportunities, particularly in those areas which require minimum federal funding. The housing industry is one that cries out to be revitalized, and I would do everything I possibly could with homes for the elderly. We will be ready, I think, between the election and the end of the year, to evolve--again with the leaders of the entities that are concerned--a fairly comprehensive approach toward transportation and energy and welfare reform.

Q. All to be presented in the State of the Union message?

A. I hope so; and I don't want my absence of mentioning things to be exclusionary. Like health. I certainly would do health and education. I don't want anybody to feel that I've left out those problems. We've made a lot of progress already in this respect. Obviously, the major business leaders are inclined to vote Republican. They always have been, but I think that they will be eager to help me evolve the solution to these problems. And I don't have any concern about that. I'm a businessman. I talk their language.

Q. Is it your hope that the tax-reform proposals would be formulated by the time Congress opens?

A. No. I can't do that. That's going to require some additional study, and I don't want to be flip about it. I don't want to mislead anyone, but the work on it is well under way, and between now and Jan. 20 a lot of work will have been done with advisers, obviously, but also with people like Senator Russell Long and Congressman Al Ullman [respectively, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee]. I would guess that it would take several months of next year before we could come forward with specific proposals ready for a congressional hearing.

Q. Do you plan to have a bipartisan cast to your Administration, in the sense of having at least one Republican in your Cabinet?

A. My inclination would be to use people from both parties, but I hate to commit myself to a token Republican. What I'll do is assess each case on the basis of merit, and I would guess, strictly on the basis of merit, that one of twelve would likely be a Republican.

Q. Beyond what you already said, do you have anything like a first-hundred-days list of things that you want accomplished?

A. We're going to try to be ready by the time Congress convenes in January with an alternative Budget in Brief [to that which President Ford will be submitting]. We are already consulting with the leaders of the budget committees in the House and Senate, as well as other congressional leaders, so that we can move rapidly in trying to make the first budget in my Administration answer the questions that I've raised--to fulfill the promises I've made.

But it is a massive undertaking. One of the things that we intend to do is send a small task force of people into the Republican Cabinet members' offices and say, "You know, we're not here to try to run your department. We just want to learn, based on your experience, what you would do in the next four years to make your department more viable, more effective, more efficient. We hope that you'll cooperate with us." And I believe they will. This is what I did when I was elected Governor, and it worked very well. I particularly want to use the top civil service leaders to help me understand how best to make their own careers more effective and the commitment of their subordinates more effective.

Q. What do you intend to do about establishing relations with the leadership in both houses of Congress?

A. That's already been done to a major degree. I've outlined to you what I would do [to consult with Congress] in the field of foreign policy, and the same thing would be done concerning health, welfare, taxation and agriculture.

Q. Would you convene advisers in study groups?

A. Absolutely. From the outside.

Q. You've said that your approach to reorganizing the Government would be to ask Congress for executive authority to accomplish the changes, subject to congressional veto later on. How soon will you ask Congress for that authority?

A. Immediately--so that we can start ma-ing plans. I would like Congress to direct the President to reorganize the Executive Branch, subject to subsequent veto of the Congress on individual proposals. This would give tremendous substance to the whole thrust--you could go into a department and say, "This is what we want to do now. The law says it must be done, and I'm the President and I'm carrying out Congress's directives and my own commitment to the American people."

Q. How would your approach compare with the Hoover Commission? [Appointed by Congress in 1947 and headed by former President Herbert Hoover, the bipartisan group studied ways of streamlining the Government. Congress later put some of its reforms into effect, notably by setting up the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.]

A. Similar, but I'll be much more deeply involved myself.

Q. Will you have some public figure who is highly regarded helping out with it?

A. My inclination would be to have more than one. I will probably choose a panel of distinguished American citizens--six to ten people who will work full-time on it and volunteer to give their services to the nation. That's my present thinking. I reserve the right to make a change [in the recommendations], but I would like to be the chairman of a group and let us work to evolve this. It is a major undertaking, and to have a separate commission isolated from the White House, isolated from the President, really takes away from it a potential strength that should be there. Q. Wouldn't you then be committed to carry out the commission's findings?

A. Yes. I would be responsible for them. When I was Governor, I told the study group in Georgia, which worked six months full-time [on government reorganization] and had a total membership of about 120, not to worry about politics. I said, "Let's come up with a recommendation that would be best for our state. Don't you tone down your recommendation because you think it might not be feasible. If we have an argument with the legislature, we'll go directly to the people and let them make the decision." And we had extraordinary success in Georgia. If you tone down or are reticent or timid about what is proposed just because of political expediency, you rob the whole process of much of its strength. The simplicity of it, the completeness of it, the obvious advantage to the nation of the changes --these are your major selling points. And if you throw those away on political deals ahead of time, then what you offer to the American people is not nearly so attractive.

Q. Is it your judgment that you will need congressional approval for your zero-base budgeting plan? [The system requires governmental units to start from zero and justify every penny they ask for.]

A. There is no requirement that the Congress approve the President's procedure for evolving his own budget. By the way, the Congress is moving very rapidly toward a zero-based budgeting technique. Also the Sunset Law, which in effect causes every program to be reassessed for its efficacy every five years.

Q. What proportion of the 100 or so people who will be at the heart of your Administration have you already picked out in your mind?

A. None. I've deliberately avoided that. I'm not being coy about it. There are about 75 people whom I will select personally, and among those 75 positions I have not identified any person to sit in a particular position. There are, obviously, people around the country whom I would consider very seriously asking to come into the Government. Governors or mayors or perhaps a few members of Congress or per-haps leaders in different professions.

Q. How long will it take to get that process nearly completed? The first 30 days?

A. I doubt that. I would rather do it cautiously, and there's no prohibition against a future Secretary of State who hasn't yet been asked to serve participating fully in the evolution of a future foreign policy. So the actual identification of a Cabinet member is not so important as having that [person] help me in the process of transition. I don't feel a time constraint.

Q. What specifically would you hope to accomplish in policy toward South Africa, the Middle East and Asia?

A. Let me speak more in a generic sense rather than specifics. I hope to estab-lish, as best I can, a position where our country is the leader of the world, based not on military might or economic pressure or political persuasion but on the fact that we are right and decent; that we take a position with every nation as " best we can according to what is best for the people who live there. I strongly favor majority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa. I plan to let that be known to the world.

Second, I plan to appoint diplomatic officials who have superb credentials, strictly on the basis of merit, not reward people for political favors. And that's a commitment that I've made on my word of honor. I'm not going to break it.

Another thing is to treat developing nations as individuals, not as a bloc. And this would apply not only to the African nations but also to those in Latin America and in Eastern Europe as well. I'd like to try to cement, as much as I can, a good relationship on trade, cultural exchange, student exchange, tourism and foreign aid; using myself, the members of my Cabinet, maybe Governors on occasion, as special emissaries, and members of my own family, I hope to get what we call "world order" instead of power politics. World order means to me to try to establish peace.

Q. That sounds like Kissinger's policy by a different name.

A. I haven't detected any aspect of what I've just described to you that would be compatible with what Kissinger said.

Q. Keeping the peace by making countries see that peace is in their own best interests--isn't that just about what Kissinger says?

A. I think there has been in Kissinger's foreign policy an inclination to divide the world into two major power blocs and almost force nations to take a stand: "I'm for the U.S., I'm against the Soviet Union." "I'm for the Soviet Union, I'm against the U.S." I think that that is a permanently divisive attitude to take in world affairs, and what I'll do is try to get away from that position and deal with nations on an individual basis as far as what is best for their own people. Not force them to choose be-tween us [and the Soviet Union] but let them choose our country because our system works best and because their trade with us and their open feeling for us would be in their best interest.

Q. You will need to make personal con-tact with foreign leaders?

A. Yes, I will, immediately, particularly with the leaders of the major nations. I've had invitations from many of them to either come to their countries or to let them--the leaders--come to see me. But I've deliberately waited until after the election for that. I think it is best that I do this. But I will make contact with the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, the major European nations, Canada, Mexico.

Q. You've repeatedly said that you would issue a blanket pardon for all Viet Nam draft resisters in your first week in office. Is that a promise you intend to keep?

A. I intend to keep all my promises.

Q. That presumably is something that will have very high priority right after you take office?

A. That's right.

Q. Some people have expressed concern about what they see in your political philosophy as a move toward egalitarianism. How do you feel about the question of equality versus individual initiative ?

A. I have no inclination to want a homogeneous society in which someone who is strong or able or brilliant or even fortunate is punished, and his substance--speaking about his financial substance, now--is taken away from him and distributed among those who are less highly motivated. I would not have a punitive tax rate at the upper levels, but I will continue to explore ways to make sure that those who are downtrodden, who are chronically unemployed, whose families have been required to suffer from past discriminations, are involved in the processes of Government and private life.

The ones who make decisions in Government and those that have been blessed with influence--I think they very seldom suffer when the Government makes a mistake. I want to make sure that we get away from that, and I believe that the powerful are eager to see that done as well. It is not a deliberate thing: that the big-shot crooks go free--they never go to jail--and that the average American who violates a law has a much greater chance of going to jail. That's not right. It is not fair, and it is not decent.

Unfair differences still exist. They still exist in the tax structure. They still exist in job opportunities, in employment opportunities, in housing opportunities. Even when the Congress passes a law that is designed specifically to help the poor, quite often those tax monies tend to move out toward the more wealthy people; the ones who are better organized, more articulate, who understand the complexities of the laws more fully, who are versed in grantsmanship. I want to make sure that that kind of trend is reversed. I believe I can evoke my concerns adequately to the American people with fireside chats and so forth, and there would be a broad support for a change.

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