PICKING THE TEAM WITH HAM & FRITZ

As Jimmy Carter labored over his Cabinet choices, TIME National Political Correspondent Robert Ajemian followed the selection process by watching Carter's two top transition aides, Vice President-elect Walter Mondale and Hamilton Jordan, at work. Ajemian's report:

Jimmy Carter was in a talking mood. Sitting in the wood-paneled den of his house in Plains, wearing a long, yellow, velour sweater and white sneakers, Carter had his feet crossed on top of his desk. Beside him, balancing thick black notebooks full of Cabinet profiles on his lap, was his young aide, Hamilton Jordan, in a sports shirt and safari jacket, looking just as casual as his boss. Jordan slid his red canvas chair next to Carter and handed over one of the books, reading along with him so closely that his head was almost touching Carter's shoulder. For two hours, looking a little like a father and son discussing homework problems, the two of them ran through the list of candidates for every top Cabinet job in the Government. From time to time Carter raised some worries: they still had too few top women, too few good names on the Treasury list. Carter pulled out his own log, a red notebook in which he had recorded all his telephone calls and interview notes. He read some of them aloud to Jordan.

Outside, darkness had fallen fast. Rosalynn Carter, in slacks and a white ribbed sweater, stood over the sink in the nearby kitchen, peeling some squash for dinner. Several times she stepped back inside the den just to hear the names. Amy Carter burst into her father's study at one point, and Carter, with great delight, showed her his new white speaker telephone that plugged directly into the White House switchboard. She immediately called a neighborhood friend on the phone, and Carter and Jordan watched with amusement as she pretended she needed a school assignment.

Rosalynn brought in some tea, and as Carter began chewing on the lemon at the bottom of his mug, he told Jordan that after all these months he still didn't really have any idea whether Congressman Andy Young wanted a Cabinet job.

Did Jordan know? No, Jordan didn't either. Carter talked about Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. On the symbolic level she was an outstanding choice, but was she a good manager? He agreed with the suggestion that a select dozen prospects, most of them candidates for Defense and Treasury, come to Atlanta that Tuesday for personal interviews. As Jordan finally prepared to leave, Carter called to him, "I'll phone Fritz tonight and see if he agrees with our list."

Though Carter was calling all the shots himself, he was keeping Fritz Mondale and Jordan with him at the center of the selection process. The three men had started their work just before Thanksgiving, when they sat alone for three hours in one of the huge formal living rooms of Blair House. Each man ticked off names for various departments. When Jordan declared at one point that a certain businessman would make a good No. 2 man in a big department, Carter broke in: "No, let me decide that." He would obviously keep tight control.

From that meeting on, Mondale and Jordan moved together. The transition had been delayed for a couple of weeks by the power struggle between Jordan and the former transition chief, Jack Watson. A lot of people had been complaining about the holdup, and Carter was getting impatient. Men like Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh, John Gardner of Common Cause. Lawyers Clark Clifford and Ted Sorensen--all of whom Watson had visited with for many hours--had to be interviewed again by Jordan and his staff. A new list was drawn up, with a decidedly more political cast. Jordan's staff--politicians like Dick Moe and Anne Wexler and Tim Kraft--checked out the names that were offered. Jordan spent one whole afternoon talking to Du Pont Chairman Irving Shapiro, seeking Treasury candidates.

He visited Henry Owen of the Brookings Institution, Averell Harriman, Cy Vance. During one conversation with Vance, Jordan recalled his own snide public remark that if Vance ended up in the Cabinet, Carter would have failed to get new people in the top posts. Joked Jordan to Vance: "I'm going to have to block you to keep my own job." After he finished the call, he admitted that his early remark had been stupid and he was going to find the right time to apologize to Vance face-to-face.

Within a week after the Blair House meeting, Mondale and Jordan had ordered up summary books listing candidates for every department. The weekend after Thanksgiving, Jordan lugged them to Plains. There Carter and Jordan narrowed the list from several hundred names to 70. A particular Commerce candidate, Carter and Jordan agreed, was too pompous. A top Agriculture candidate dropped down on the list because he had spurned Carter during the election campaign. A woman candidate for HEW was judged to be too caustic to work with. Once again Carter phoned Mondale and reviewed the boiled-down list. At the same time he asked his Vice President to deliver his own final Cabinet lineup when he flew to Plains the next Wednesday. Mondale did.

Back in Washington, Jordan made one of his regular journeys to Mondale's Senate office. In his Navy pea jacket and worn brown boots, carrying a tattered folder crammed with names, Jordan loped down the Senate halls, looking like the country boy he tries hard to remain. "Do you hear these walls trembling?" he said, mocking himself. He walked into Mondale's office and kept up the banter. "Tell the Vice President I'm here with his instructions for the day," he joked. Mondale is just as breezy. He uses Jordan as a sounding board about his new boss, Carter. Said Mondale of Jordan: "We work well together. He's smart and loose." In Mondale's office they tested the final lists before assigning in-depth profiles on the 70.

Next morning, in the black before dawn, the two of them were off once more to Plains to see the boss. On Mondale's DC-9 they pored over the black books--Mondale puffing on a thick Cuban cigar and Jordan sitting opposite in a torn shirt, popping green Chiclets into his mouth. They were an unsolemn pair, the young man who likes his rube image and the impeccably dressed man who looked more like a smooth character actor than a politician of enormous influence.

In Plains they went directly to Carter's familiar den and sat for four hours. Carter again pulled out his red logbook, and Mondale and Jordan were both pleased when they realized Carter's information was beginning to match their own. Carter dragged out a memo that listed all his campaign pledges. That made them all somewhat anxious again about the final number of women, blacks and Hispanics they would choose. As Carter opened two cans of crab soup and put together some meat and tomato sandwiches for lunch, the three continued talking in the kitchen. Should James Schlesinger be returned to Government? Carter was extremely high on him but was also aware of interview reports that Schlesinger was too impatient and not a team player. Should the outspoken but gifted George Ball be made an ambassador-at-large to the European countries? Carter often challenged Mondale and Jordan, playing the lawyer, testing their biases.

Flying home to Washington that night, with new Secretary of State-designate Cyrus Vance sitting beside him as a passenger, Mondale talked about the selection process--and his own eventual job as Vice President. He was worried about the need for new young blood in Government, for more women and minorities. "We've got to take some educated chances in these top jobs," he said. "A lot of the women candidates we have, for example, have no management track records to be judged on. So they keep being passed over." Mondale observed that it was often more difficult to find top women managers than black ones. He turned to foreign affairs. "There's a whole generation gap between this man," he said, pointing to Vance, "and the younger fellows like Tony Lake and Dick Holbrooke. We've got to open up these big jobs. The symbolism is important."

One job the new Vice President hopes will open up and not keep its empty symbolism is his own. Because there are Congressmen on the Hill who are still uneasy about Carter, Mondale expects that he will receive many of the inevitable complaints about the new President. "I intend to speak up," he said. "If I start telling the President only what he wants to hear, I'll be all through. I'd rather have him shut the door on me than change myself. I've told Jimmy that."

Meanwhile the names kept coming, many from office seekers themselves. Carter himself sent a daily stream of manila envelopes to Jordan. Carter asked Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss to seek nominations from Governors and party people around the country. One day Strauss told Jordan, "Ham, I've got an important Senator who wants to be interviewed for Interior--but he doesn't want the job." Jordan roared. He said, "A lot of other people want a job--but don't want the interview."

One Cabinet area that was giving Carter trouble was Justice. His close counselor, Charles Kirbo, headed the search for an Attorney General. The trouble was that the familiar Establishment names, the people who had the proven legal and management skills, often lacked the inspirational or symbolic touch Carter wanted. By last weekend it was clear that the larger departments would probably be headed by white men, however long the search went on. So Carter was faced with the decision of whether to overlook the legal credentials needed for Justice and pick someone like Patricia Harris, a black lawyer from Washington, or Barbara Jordan, or perhaps a black federal judge from Pennsylvania, Leon Higgenbotham, who has extensive legal experience but little management background. The FBI choice posed a different challenge. Mondale, especially, urged that the FBI have a director from outside Justice, a man with few ties to Carter or his staff. Said Mondale: "We need a tough, hardheaded civilian to rehabilitate that place."

At week's end Carter headed back to the voluntary isolation of Plains--back to the den and the speaker telephone and his own red logbook. He would study further the profiles that Mondale and Jordan had ordered up and continue his own interviews. But he would do it alone. It always came to that: the choices were his. And Carter clearly relished his isolation. Even his secretary was located ten miles away in Americus. During the three days when Rosalynn was in Mexico two weeks ago, Carter did his own cooking and a maid came by only once to clean the house. He only occasionally makes the trip down the street to Plains anymore. When Jordan arrived last weekend with more black books, Carter was up on a flat part of the roof raking off leaves. A man with heavier days and heavier choices ahead of him, Carter was hanging on to the pieces of his past that he treasured most, the home and people he will be leaving behind, the place where he feels closest to himself.

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