Sowing 'Seeds of Real Conflict'

Fewer than 100 days after his Inauguration, Jimmy Carter is still riding on a flood tide of popularity: a Harris poll released last week showed that 67% of adult Americans are behind him. Simultaneously, however, there were growing signs that Carter was in trouble with a startling array of prominent Americans, covering a wide spectrum of backgrounds and interests. The paradox is a fascinating and perplexing aspect of the new Administration. While winning such obvious broad support among Americans as a whole, Carter's style and policies may also be alienating the leaders whose help he may need to reach the ambitious goals that he has set for himself and the country.

Labor leaders are outraged because Carter does not consult with them more often on economic policies and seems more worried about inflation than unemployment. They are also upset about his refusal to boost tariffs to protect the shoe industry. Farm groups are angry over his penny-pinching proposals to hold down increases in price supports for their crops. On the other hand, businessmen fear that his plans for stimulating the economy, chiefly through a $50 tax rebate for most Americans, will not help the economy and may spur inflation. To add to the worries of the business community, the Labor Department last week announced that wholesale prices leaped 1.1% in March, the steepest increase since October 1975.

Rev Up. Businessmen also suspect that they will be asked to bear the chief burden of Carter's anti-inflation policies, due out this week (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS), and his energy conservation program, which is expected to be announced next week. These fears are partly responsible for tumbling stock prices and the sluggishness of capital investment. The businessmen want Carter to press Congress harder for an increase in the investment-tax credit to rev up the economy.

Carter's economic-stimulus package has passed the House but is stalled in the Senate, chiefly because Democrats are still furious over Carter's threat to cancel 30 "wasteful" dams and other water projects (TIME, April 4). Members of the foreign policy Establishment are in an uproar over Carter's dealings with the Soviets; some critics argue that an overemphasis on human rights and naive negotiating tactics were the chief reasons that Moscow rejected his proposals on SALT (see THE WORLD). Finally, leaders of feminist and minority groups complain that Carter has not appointed enough women or blacks to high posts in his Administration.

Interviews by TIME correspondents show that Americans are not overly worried about these issues: they like the image of the man as a whole. Says Charles Bowser, chairman of the Philadelphia Party, a predominantly black Democratic faction: "Carter has changed the tone for the better. He is making the presidency relate to the people again." Adds Republican Farmer Dennis Richters of Utica, Neb.: "The sincerity is still there. He may be showing some signs of being naive, and people may be questioning some of his gestures, but there is no great unhappiness with him." Polls in California show that Carter now has the highest popularity of any modern President.

Still, as Carter makes hard decisions in the future, his popularity is sure to fall, just as it has for other Presidents who started out with strong backing from the public. Thus many of Carter's political foes, as well as his political friends, cannot understand why he almost seems to go out of his way to antagonize Washington's traditional powerbrokers. Says Robert Hughes, the canny Republican chairman of the Cleveland area: "He's on good ground now, but if he gets in trouble with the people, Congress is really going to kick him around."

Carter got a similar message from Senate Democratic leaders last week. In a meeting at the White House, the President argued that inflation was the pub-He's greatest concern. He urged the Democrats to get behind his economic program and not dwell on "extraneous matters" like the water projects. But Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd brushed aside that reasoning. Said he: "This is a battle that you can do without. It's going to boil over into other problem areas that are really more important to you. As of today, the [$50 tax] rebate would lose badly. But it is potentially winnable, if the water project irritant can be removed." Carter coolly replied, "I don't think that as President of the United States, this is the time for me to go bartering votes on the tax package for dams."

Edmund Muskie, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, complained that the Administration was making congressional Democrats look like wild spenders in other avoidable ways. He argued that the White House, by overestimating revenues, had made it appear that its proposed budget for fiscal 1978 was $6.5 billion less than the one Congress had in mind. In fact, claimed Muskie, the Administration's budget was only $1 billion less than the Hill's. Said the Senator: "We'd appreciate more accuracy so we won't look so bad. We should both have the same estimates."

Finally, Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey lectured Carter about the Administration's generally conservative approach to the economy. Said he: "If you want to do something about inflation, you've got to do something about unemployment." Again Carter did not budge. After the meeting a House leader told TIME Correspondent Neil Mac-Neil, "In my judgment, there are the seeds of real conflict in that encounter. One has the feeling that the President is trying to set Congress up as a whipping boy on spending."

Too Soon. Some old hands in Washington argue that Carter's problems stem partly from a tactical error of trying to do too much too soon. They believe he should have moved one step at a time, concentrating at first on a single overriding problem, such as energy conservation, while converting his popularity into support for solid programs.

The record shows that Carter, once he has power, tends to use it--and use it forcefully. As the Governor of Georgia, he refused to back off when he met resistance. On several occasions he overcame state legislators' opposition to his plans by people-to-people appeals to their constituents, just as he has threatened to do if Congress tries to block his programs. Recalls an unforgiving critic in Georgia's statehouse: "There was only one way to do anything--Jimmy's way. Anybody who didn't agree just had to be wrong because Jimmy never was." Largely because of Carter's bullnecked ways, his relations with the legislature steadily deteriorated. In the last two years of his four-year term, his veto was overturned a record six times.

Now that he is in the White House, where the stakes are far higher and the penalties for failure more severe, Jimmy Carter has still not shown that he finds bargaining with opponents any easier. He may need to compromise to get through his major programs on energy, welfare and taxes.

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