Simplicity or Mediocrity?

By Hugh Sidey

THE PRESIDENCY HUGH SIDEY

Betty Beale, a spunky Washington Star Boswell to the capital's power society, declared recently that in her affluent and respectable precincts there was consternation over Jimmy Carter's dress and his insistence on carrying his suit bag. "If the American people had wanted their President to be a bellhop," she decreed, "they could have found one without all that concern about issues."

Bravo, whispered the traditionalists behind their white gloves. But from somewhere "out there," as they say in the drawing rooms, came an avalanche of letters to the Washington Star supporting Carter. Miss Beale was even upbraided by phone callers, which convinced her more than ever that Carter was a threat to propriety and excellence.

Jimmy Carter's approach to leadership so far is the most important thing about him. His ideas, while often good, are not new. His promises, while sensible, are not revolutionary. His administrative progress is modest. George Gallup, the pollster, in assessing personal responses from 1,600 adults across the country, found the American people liked Carter's energy policy and his economic program. But there is no Carter energy policy yet, and not a single unemployed person has been put back to work through Carter's programs. Gallup's experts figure Carter's 71% approval has to do with how and what Jimmy says and that sweater he wears. "It is kind of like Ike," says a Gallup man, suggesting that Jimmy may become a folk hero in his own special way.

When he went to see the King Tut exhibit fortnight ago, Carter did not even wear a tie. His retinue of white-shirted ambassadors, National Gallery factotums and Secret Service agents looked faintly uneasy. Jimmy was like the tourists, who gave up neckties a long time ago.

Generally, Presidents have accepted the traditions of the office, moving from their own backgrounds into the prescribed ritual and style with minor adjustments here and there. Thomas Jefferson dressed simply and did walk to and from his Inaugural, but he adopted classic architecture and Louis XVI furniture. He eschewed the pomp of Kings, but he enjoyed regal dinners, which Carter does not. History suggests no correlation between the adoption of presidential tradition and success. Abraham Lincoln wore a stovepipe hat and saved the nation. Herbert Hoover often wore his tux to dinner--and nearly lost the country.

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Hamilton Jordan is a pizza proponent. He shuns the Sans Souci, a favorite Washington restaurant, thereby reaping contempt from a small but spirited group who consider the crabe en chemise (washed with a Sancerre '72) to be one of civilization's finer creations. Rosalynn Carter has taken the French off White House menus. She has a similar attitude toward fashion, refusing to consider it a high art form.

In Moline, Ill., the other night, a lady asked whether Carter's manner was more a return to simplicity or mediocrity. It is a delicate distinction. The wearing of neckties on certain occasions evolved out of respect for others. Trumpets were used for centuries in tribute to people and deeds. True, all those renditions of Hail to the Chief never made Richard Nixon a good or great man. But, damn it, whispers a military historian, Hail to the Chiefis an old rouser going back to the 19th century, which is used to lift spirits and tell people the President is there. The history of those honor guards that Carter is curtailing--Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin rated only a four-man color guard--goes back to the Bible; in the U.S. they have been lined up for 200 years according to the manual of Baron von Steuben. There is protest that a patriotic message that has reverberated through every city and hamlet is being muted.

Jimmy Carter gets a chuckle out of the argument. As a man steeped in the virtues of "Sunday clothes" and educated in a military academy, he is not unmindful of tradition or innocent of the doubts he has stirred. But his long march across the nation to the presidency led him to believe there is a new drumbeat out there and he is more in step than a lot of others.

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