Shakedown Cruise for the Carter Crew
THE TRANSITION
Shakedown Cruise for the Carter Crew
It was a kind of shakedown cruise--shakier at times, perhaps, than Jimmy Carter might have wished. But it accomplished the general purposes the President-elect had in mind. For the first time, Carter last week assembled his top aides, Cabinet nominees and other upper-echelon appointees, giving them a chance to get to know each other and to begin wrestling with the problems they will inherit on Jan. 20.
Tax Cuts. The setting for the gathering was a world apart from the now familiar rusticity of Plains: Musgrove Plantation, an 1,800-acre estate on St. Simons Island, just off the Georgia coast. The opulent spread is owned by Smith Bagley, an heir to the Reynolds tobacco fortune and a longtime friend of the President-elect. Carter has been there before, and, as in the past, he observed the political propriety of paying Bagley $300 a day. Most of the entourage stayed at the Cloister Hotel on nearby Sea Island (their bills, like Carter's, were paid from the $2 million transition fund).
The main talks were held in a Tudor-style home nestled in dense tropical foliage overlooking marshland, where Carter slipped away to do some fishing. As the discussions went on, the Georgian stressed his intention to reorganize the Government. He told his nominees that no bureaucracy is sacrosanct and that they "should not become seduced by what exists" in their departments. The group also considered the package of jobs legislation and tax cuts that Carter will soon propose to stimulate the economy. On Capitol Hill, House Democrats were already planning to introduce a bill increasing the current $2 billion public works program to $4 billion. An extra $2 billion could create upwards of 300,000 jobs.
The sessions behind the closed doors went smoothly enough, but Carter and his choices to run the Government caused some confusion when they met with the press. The most troublesome and bewildering problem revolved around Carter's campaign pledge that he would cut $5 billion to $7 billion from the defense budget by reducing waste and inefficiency. Even some of the reporters who had followed him closely got the idea that what Carter meant was that he would reduce the Pentagon's budget right away and in absolute terms--that under his control, the military would spend up to $7 billion less than it did under the Ford Administration.
But Defense Secretary--designate Harold Brown told reporters that military requirements could push the budget above Ford's--even without figuring in the added cost of inflation. As for cuts, Brown said that they would take time and that "we may be working up to [such cuts] without reducing the effectiveness of the military." Carter himself said that he had never meant that spending could be cut in absolute terms but that he would trim as much as $7 billion in waste from overall defense spending--leaving open the possibility that the overall budget could actually increase.
In the narrowest sense, Carter is correct in insisting that he promised nothing more than that during the campaign. But without question he did leave many voters, including highly sophisticated ones, with the impression that he had promised an absolute reduction in defense spending--and was now reneging.
More confusion centered on Carter's plans for welfare reform. As a candidate, Carter flatly promised to improve the cumbersome system during his first year in office. Yet Joseph Califano, who is in line to become HEW Secretary, told correspondents that "it may be a while" before the changes could be achieved, and that they may depend upon the economy reviving enough to produce the taxes to finance the restructuring. Other developments:
>Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev said that he would welcome a summit meeting with the new President provided that suitable progress was made between their two countries, apparently referring to arms control. Carter has already said that he would like to meet with Brezhnev if the Soviets showed a clear interest in easing world tensions.
>Carter vowed that his Administration would not let New York City go into bankruptcy. Meeting with Mayor Abraham Beame and New York's Governor Hugh Carey, the President-elect did not spell out what rescue plans he had in mind, but his assurances were expected to encourage banks and unions to help refinance some of the city's onerous debt. Asked for a reaction to the meeting, Carey beamed: "Peachy."
> Carter previewed a code of ethics for members of his Administration that, in his words, "will require complete divestiture of any kind of financial relationship that might constitute a conflict of interest, and a complete revelation of any economic holdings." All the Cabinet-level appointees have agreed to conform to the code, the toughest ever imposed by an incoming President.
> Carter indicated that he would endorse former Maine Governor Kenneth B. Curtis to succeed Robert S. Strauss as Democratic National chairman.
Complaints that Carter had few new faces in his Cabinet were dying down, but he was still being criticized for naming Griffin Bell as his Attorney General. Carter claimed that the Atlanta lawyer and former federal judge was being unfairly attacked for belonging to restricted clubs (see box).
After two of his other Cabinet nominees had seemed to contradict his earlier pledges. Carter made a point of reminding the men and women gathered on St. Simons that he considers them "equally responsible" with him "for carrying out my campaign promises." Clearly the President-elect faces a difficult problem in reconciling his expansive campaign pledges with the hard facts of political reality. Indeed, Jimmy Carter himself made a significant hedge last week. During his spectacular rise to the presidency, he often followed up a campaign pledge with the confident declaration, "and you can depend on it." Trying to define the changes he hopes to make in the defense budget, Carter said at Musgrove Plantation, "I think you can depend on it."
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