The Route to the Top

THE WINNER

Jimmy Carter won with a combination of grit, driving ambition, daring if flawed political planning and a generous measure of good luck. As a campaigner, he struck many voters as more enigmatic than charismatic, as more of a trimmer than a visionary--and perhaps not really likable enough. In the end, he did not so much win the presidency as avoid losing it.

For a while it looked as if he would win by a landslide. After eight years of Republican rule--which included, along with many accomplishments, Viet Nam, Watergate, the recession--Americans seemed tired of the old political faces and became mistrustful of almost anyone with ties to Washington, symbol of all that had been going wrong.

All told, then, Gerald Ford was working under severe handicaps. Besides, he was an inept campaigner, prone to embarrassing mistakes and woefully unable to convince voters that he was truly "presidential." In retrospect, the narrowness of Carter's win was even more startling because it followed a masterly primary campaign in which he had outorganized and outworked nearly a dozen serious rivals and rocketed from obscurity to the nomination.

Carter began laying the foundation for his campaign four years ago, when he and his astute campaign director, Hamilton Jordan (see box page 34), drafted an uncannily prescient strategy for the primaries. About a year later, as Democratic congressional campaign chairman for the 1974 election, Carter traveled all over, meeting party officials and power brokers, observing politics outside the South, learning firsthand the issues that bothered voters.

Adopting a "run everywhere" strategy for the nomination, Carter entered every state caucus and all but one of the 31 primaries (West Virginia was the exception--and that only because his slate of delegates failed to qualify). In the early days, he recalled later, "I doubt if one out of a thousand of you had ever heard my name. We went into factory shift lines, shopping centers, country courthouses and city halls, livestock sale barns and farmers' markets--to talk a little and listen a lot."

Some opponents charged that he was trying to be all things to all people, tailoring his positions to suit his audiences. There was mistrust, some ridicule of his strong religious note and his self- righteousness. Yet there was also obviously some appeal in the basic "trust me" approach adopted by the softspoken peanut farmer from Plains, Ga.

Despite all the "A.B.C." (Anybody But Carter) talk and some eleventh-hour feints by Hubert Humphrey, Carter had all but sealed his triumph by April 27, when he won Pennsylvania. Democratic power brokers like Chicago's Mayor Richard Daley, AFL-CIO President George Meany, and others who had seen Carter as an upstart and an outsider, rushed to back him. Last aboard the bandwagon were the liberals. Carter won them over by choosing Minnesota's Senator Walter (Fritz) Mondale as his running mate and by delivering an acceptance speech that amounted to a populist vision of social reform. After the convention, with some polls giving him a lopsided 62%-to-29% lead over Ford, Carter seemed supremely confident of victory. During those precious summer days at home in Plains, he spent more time working out what he would do once in the White House than what he would do to get there. Surprisingly, the Wunderkind who conquered the party in the spring with a nearly flawless strategy did not have a similarly well-thought-out master plan for the battle against Gerald Ford.

Moreover, Carter shunned the Democratic Party's horde of experienced organizers and brain-trusters. Apparently not fully trusting anyone but the Georgians who had helped him win the nomination, he stuck with them, even though they had little experience with national campaigns.

When Carter began full-time campaigning after Labor Day, he immediately ran into trouble. Because private opinion polls showed that many voters feared he might be too liberal, Carter swung around; he tried to sound more conservative and only lent credence to Republican charges that he flip-flopped on the issues. He staked out three slightly differing positions on grain embargoes; he spoke of ambitious new programs and of balancing the budget; he painted an almost Depression-like picture of the U.S. economy that many people perceived as unreal. In a year of skepticism about politicians, he was beginning to sound like any other exaggerating, overpromising old pol.

Several matters--relatively trivial but taken as clues to his character--became major news events and cost him support. Perhaps most damaging were his comments to Playboy about lust and his description of Lyndon Johnson as a liar and cheater, for which he publicly apologized to Lady Bird Johnson.

After losing (in most of the public's judgment) the first televised debate, partly because he was too deferential, Carter tried to recoup by taking a harsher approach to Gerald Ford. Said Carter: "Ford is a good automobile. It is not doing too well in the White House--stuck in the mud, four flat tires, out of gas, gears locked in reverse." The stridency of his attack offended many voters. At the same time, Carter was growing more peevish with the press, and he began to withdraw.

After a September nadir, Carter's luck changed, and it was Ford's turn to hit the skids--Earl Butz, the misstatement on Eastern Europe, the brief investigation into his campaign finances as a Congressman. Refocusing his campaign, Carter revived the spiritual themes of trust, competence and a need for "a Government as good and decent as are the American people." His speaking style, effective on TV but never very good before large crowds, improved noticeably. In the last week of the campaign Carter hit 24 cities in twelve states, emphasizing inflation and unemployment. Having cultivated the "outsider" image at the start of his long campaign, he now sought help from party bosses and labor leaders; the efforts by these insiders to turn out a vote may have given him the election.

In the end, reported TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud, who covered Carter all through the campaign, the race was decided on personality and character, plus a desire for new leadership, even if it meant electing a relative unknown like Jimmy Carter. By capturing the Democratic nomination, Carter laid claim to an almost natural succession: Not since Harry Truman has either party held the Presidency for more than eight years. But Carter remained a mystery to many voters, and they opted for him less because of the "intimate relationship" that he claimed to have with them than because he offered the promise of a fresh start.

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