The President's Boys

In the long drive to get their man elected President, William Hamilton Jordan, 32, and Joseph Lester Powell Jr., 33, broke most of the rules of politics. Now that Jimmy Carter has reached the White House, the two young men --just call 'em Ham and Jody--are still breaking the rules.

Jordan, the top White House aide, and Powell, the press secretary, dress as they please, ridicule pretense, joke incessantly, talk back to the boss, shun lunch at Sans Souci and rarely turn up at social functions; Jordan wears a black tie as if it were a noose. The pair are the wonder and dismay of Establishment Washington. They are country boys who have come so far, so fast, that the red clay of their native Georgia still clings, as it were, to their shoes, their accents and their lifestyles. They relish politics more for the pleasure than the power, more for the gambol than the glory. They are almost indecently at ease in the White House; nobody has told them what a somber place it is supposed to be. Though they may not reflect the substance of the Carter presidency, they are the living image of its down-home style.

Many of our Presidents have had one man to keep them informed and another to keep them laughing; one for work, the other for relaxation. Harry Truman talked policy with Clark Clifford and played poker with General Harry Vaughan; Dwight Eisenhower had Sherman Adams for the heavy duty and George Allen for the lighter moments; John Kennedy learned from Ted Sorensen and kidded with Dave Powers.

In Carter's case, the crony and the counselor are rolled into one--or rather, two. With their infectious spirits, Jordan and Powell express a frolicsome side of the President that he tends to keep under very stern control. Yet they have also been an indispensable part of the presidential quest from the beginning (Jordan first worked for Carter in 1966, Powell in 1969). Now that their man has achieved his goal, they fill several vital functions--confidants, sounding boards and "no-men"--at annual salaries of $56,000 apiece.

Does this mean, as some observers marvel, that two kids from rural Georgia are "running the country," or are "the second and third most powerful figures in the Government"? No. For all their breezy irreverence, despite their almost unlimited license to tell the President what they think, their actual powers are circumscribed--another illustration of Carter's canny use of people.

The pair have not been given the concentrated authority of those in similar positions under previous Presidents. They have an input in formulating policy, but no more than that. They have the ear of the President whenever they ask for it, but he heeds many other voices too. Carter insists on keeping open several lines of communication, and no H.R. Haldeman stands imperiously at his door.

Jordan and Powell are fix-its, tinkerers, image builders, political tacticians, princes of fellows--but not substantive policymakers. They know this and are not ashamed of it. Pragmatism is their pride. "I probably had a political philosophy at one point," says Jordan, "but I don't think much about political philosophy any more." The idea of a single political rationale strikes Powell as positively dangerous. Says he: "The greatest damage has been done by people who were less eclectic philosophically. I reject the idea that there is some undeniably true system of political or social ideals."

The pair have had little experience in Washington; that was indeed Carter's campaign boast. Their knowledge of foreign affairs is practically nil. They have scarcely begun to grapple with the complexities of such major domestic issues as energy, welfare and taxation. Yet, despite the bumpkin, good-ole-boy pose they both affect, they are quick studies. They are also better educated than they appear to be. Powell reads extensively in history and politics; it goes without saying that he has devoured Machiavelli. Jordan, like his boss, listens to classical music and has a fine collection of limited-edition prints and lithographs by modern artists in his Capitol Hill town house.

The two share certain striking similarities. They exude self-confidence, yet both gnaw their fingernails to the quick. They fight cleanly; they do not need to cut someone down to size to add to their own stature. They have coltish spirits, conspiratorial smiles, a perpetual air of mischief.

Yet their differences are no less striking. Powell has the proverbial lean and hungry look. He has the appearance of a tousled, frazzled, sunken-cheeked scarecrow as he tries to fend off the buzzards of the press. The apple-cheeked Jordan looks chunkier and better fed. He has a cotton-bale build and legs that, as his dad puts it, "seem hooked on wrong." Powell tends to be more reflective and studious; he can be coolly detached. Jordan is more relaxed and instinctive; his ribaldry is nonstop. A White House staffer thinks that the pair reflect different aspects of Carter's personality: "Jody relates to the managerial, impersonal side; Hamilton to the compassionate, humane side." Oddly, some people reverse the comparisons.

Ham Jordan (his Georgia friends call him Hamilton, not Ham, and pronounce his last name Jerdan) is the city slicker of the two, relatively speaking. He grew up in a comfortable middle-class home in Albany, Ga. (pop. 76,700), the largest city in the southwestern part of the state. His father Richard was a prosperous insurance agent, who is now making a successful recovery from cancer; his mother Adelaide suffers from multiple sclerosis. Young Ham was a friendly, likable kid, but gave no sign of great promise. Recalls Tina Harden, who lived in the same neighborhood: "He was no high school hunk or the romantic type every girl was after. He was just the boy next door. He was your chum." Ham got gentleman's C's at Albany High School because, says his Latin teacher Bessie Dobbins, "he had too many fingers in too many pies."

Jordan was especially close to his younger sister Helen, who was hospitalized with polio for more than a year and almost died. Ham, who was born with severely bowed legs, had to sleep with braces until he was eleven. He was flat-footed and, to his chagrin, could not play football very well. Instead he scored verbal touchdowns. Says Rosalind Thomas, who lived across the street and now works as special assistant to the director of the women's bureau in the Labor Department: "He was always serpent-like. He would sit and watch and listen to you, waiting until he had a feel for you. Then he would leap out and strike you at a weak moment with his sharp tongue."

At the University of Georgia, Jordan concentrated on having a good time and by all accounts succeeded.

Recalls his college roommate Jay Beck: "We were the class of American Graffiti, and we were shielded from an understanding of the significant issues of the day. I guess you might say our generation was a bridge between James Dean and the hostilities of the late 1960s. Frankly, we didn't think seriously about much during college."

After graduation Jordan joined the International Voluntary Services, a private Peace Corps-type organization, and spent ten months as a social worker in Viet Nam. He was repelled by the war but equally hostile to the antiwar protesters. On the issues of the '60s he was ambivalent, neither fully sharing nor rejecting the mores of his home town. But the tumult of the times led him to a deeper examination of his own and society's values; he saw in Carter a kindred spirit who could lead the South in a progressive if moderate direction.

As a student he had worked in Carter's unsuccessful 1966 campaign for the governorship; in 1970 he joined up again and was named campaign manager. When Carter was elected, Jordan became executive secretary and a top adviser.

Two years later, when Carter was a lame-duck Governor with apparently no place to go, Jordan produced a precisely detailed, 72-page memo mapping out how Carter could win the presidency. Little was overlooked. Cultivate a Kennedy smile, urged Jordan. Get friendly with the powers of the Eastern Establishment press. Assure the two Georgia Senators that you have no intention of seeking their seats. Let others know that you might run for the Senate so that you will not frighten presidential candidates into the race ahead of you.

The Jordan blueprint was followed almost to the letter --with the stunning results that are now a matter of history. Jordan played his own role with cunning and verve. When Carter wangled the chairmanship of the Democratic campaign committee in 1973, Jordan joined the national committee in Washington. There he quietly collected all the names and data that he would need for the looming presidential fight. One day he accidentally left the Carter campaign plan in plain view at headquarters, and it was scrutinized by other officials. But no one apparently took it--or Carter--very seriously. Later, committee staffers good-naturedly referred to Jordan as "the Trojan peanut."

Today the Trojan peanut does his horsing around in a spacious White House office, down the hall from Carter's, which usually resembles a fraternity house on Saturday night. In the very room where Haldeman once reigned with iron discipline, Jordan props his boots on his desk, yawns, scratches, chortles, guffaws, dips into a candy jar, snaps open another Tab, whistles along with the 1812 Overture or Dvorak's The New World Symphony on the stereo system. A tune strikes his fancy; he jumps up and lifts the tone arm: Play it again, Ham. In one corner of the room is an old used tire presented to him by Evan Dobelle, chief of protocol. Dobelle suggested that he might have used it to run over a Washington gossip columnist who scooped the world with her report that Jordan did not wear underwear.

All day long a procession of people moves through the office--a scene witnessed by TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud. Frank Moore, the congressional liaison chief, drops by. So does Charles Kirbo, Carter's longtime adviser from Atlanta. Kirbo stares out of the window, then turns and tells Moore, "You've got Congress eating out of your hand." Quite a few Congressmen would dispute that assessment. Someone else, noting the cast on Moore's right hand from a fall last winter, comments that it is more likely a member of Congress bit him. Jordan phones Ralph Nader. "Ralph," he begins, "how are you, sir? I just wanted you to know that I mentioned consumer protection to the President this morning, as I said I would. He promised to raise the issue tomorrow at the congressional breakfast. He'll push hard for it." In the late afternoon he takes time out for a tennis match with the President. "You know what kind of a competitor he is?" says Jordan. "When he beats me, the entire world should know. When I beat him, it's a national secret."

Jordan is a troubleshooter who pretty much picks his own targets. Says an aide: "I would describe Hamilton's power in about the same way Jesuits define God. He is everywhere because of his access to the President. He is nowhere because he has no line of responsibility and can put himself in or take himself out as he--and the President--want." When Cabinet officials got into a battle over the energy program, it was Jordan, on his own, who brought them together for a 3 1/2-hour session with the President to work out a compromise.

The Jordan view of everything is essentially political: Is it good for Carter? When he had disapproved of a certain presidential action, he wrote Carter a memo that began: "I assume you like the job [of being President] and want to keep it beyond 1980." The President responded: "It's fair. There is no chance for promotion." For Jordan, "Politics is people and the need to understand their emotions. The emotional part must be taken into account." He can be as charmingly cajoling as Tom Sawyer in search of a whitewash crew, as chummy as the club pro giving a backhand lesson. He can also be cutting when the need arises. "It's like a laser beam," says a White House staffer. "There's no blood, but all of a sudden you can't walk."

Jordan shuns the title of chief of staff, and in any case, Carter seems to have no intention of giving it to him--or anybody else. Jordan admits he is a poor administrator. He would prefer to be a free agent, looking ahead down the political road. "I'm no good at advising on details of a program," he insists. "What I'm good at is conceptualizing the process by which goals are met. I have to have time to think and plan and not get bogged down in management of a staff. I look for good people and give them autonomy to do their jobs." Though Jordan protests--perhaps too much--that he is not an "issues man," he is getting more involved in the shaping of policies; he has made sure that the flow of paper on important subjects is routed across his desk at an initial stage.

Despite himself, Jordan's duties are inevitably piling up. Carter put him in charge of reorganizing the Executive Office of the President, a pet program that was heavily emphasized during the campaign. He has been instructed to trim the professional political staff by at least one-third. Yet the White House staff is 560 today, compared with 540 when Gerald Ford first took office. When White House and Office of Management and Budget aides presented a reorganization blueprint to Jordan, they voiced doubts that the staff numbers could be kept down once the next election neared. Perhaps, they suggested, the President might concede that the totals could rise again. Replied Jordan as he chewed on the ice from his umpteenth glass of Tab: "Carter is constitutionally incapable of making a statement like that." Jordan has also balked at putting any more people under his own control. "I'd do better if there was just Landon Butler and me and two secretaries, instead of even the six or seven people I have now. Then I would have time to think and reflect on the things I want to focus on."

Foreign affairs are absorbing more of Jordan's time as he tries to master an unfamiliar area. "The dynamics of politics in Washington are very similar to those in Georgia, just on a larger scale," he says. "But foreign policy is an exception."

For most of his youth, Jody Powell lived and worked on a 500-acre cotton and peanut farm in Vienna, Ga. (pronounced Vy-anna), that had been in the family for five generations. Before Jody, Vienna's most notable native son was Democratic Senator Walter George, who held his seat for 34 years; Powell has a hand-me-down shotgun that George once owned.

Powell read avidly, acting out his favorite Civil War battles or painting posters of them that are still stored in the family attic. "His imagination was one of his best friends," says his mother June, 58. It pretty well had to be. Recalls a boyhood chum, Lee Guerry: "Mostly we went to a movie, got a hamburger and then rode around in our cars watching other people ride around." The outside world intruded when the schools were ordered integrated in 1970. Mrs. Powell, a teacher for 30 years, was one of the few whites to stay in the public school system, and her family stood behind her. Powell's father Joe, incurably ill with cancer, committed suicide two years ago. "Joe was so proud of Jody." Mrs. Powell told TIME'S Larry Woods. "One of the greatest disappointments of our lives is that he wasn't around to see Carter's victory."

A top student and football star, Powell followed a deep Southern tradition by deciding on a military career. In 1961 he was admitted to the Air Force Academy in Colorado, only to be expelled six months before graduation for cheating on a history exam (he glanced at a course outline during a break). "You don't know what loneliness is," he says, "until you drive into your driveway at home, in the Deep South, on Christmas Eve, having just had your ass booted out of a military academy." He went on to Georgia State University, where he earned a degree in political science in 1966.

Many people thought it was just as well Jody did not go into the service. Says his mother: "I realize now that military life would have sent him up the wall. He's always been such a cluttered person. He constantly topped the list of those paying for lost library books." Powell learned to joke about his academy expulsion. "After getting kicked out for cheating," he says, "politics seemed like the next best thing."

While working on a doctorate on populism at Emory University in 1969, Powell wrote to Carter suggesting that Jimmy was the right candidate to bridge the gap between urban and rural Georgians. "He was wrong," recalls Jordan, who thought that Carter's hopes lay mostly in rural areas, "but it was a good letter anyway." On the strength of it, Powell was invited to attend a meeting of student volunteers at Miss Lillian's pond house near Plains. "Jody stood out right away," says Jordan. "He was the only old man among all those kids." Then 26, Powell signed on as Carter's driver.

Jody soon became Carter's constant companion, crisscrossing dreary, dusty stretches of Georgia in search of voters. Familiarity bred candor. Jody began sending Carter notes almost every day suggesting what the candidate was doing wrong. Jimmy bristled at first, then began paying closer attention: Jody was often right. "Jimmy doesn't like to be hit head-on with something," says a White House insider. "Jody is a master at approaching from oblique angles."

When Carter was elected Governor, Jody became his press secretary and then moved on to be a key figure in the presidential campaign. Once again hitting the road with limited funds, they often shared the same motel room at night. One morning Powell awoke to find Carter's pillows piled up on his bed. Carter explained that Jody had been snoring too loudly. "I found out that every time I hit you with a pillow, you hushed up for a while." Nevertheless the relationship developed to the point where Carter once remarked that only his wife Rosalynn was closer to him than Powell. After the November election, Jody became Carter's first appointee.

Powell has never been a newsman, which may be an advantage to a White House press secretary. He does not have to worry about compromising his journalistic integrity by stoutly defending his boss; he has always been on the other side of the reporting game. At one point, he considered eliminating the daily White House briefings since they had degenerated into bitter shouting matches in previous Administrations. But then he changed his mind. His refreshing rationale: "When I saw the confining life that correspondents in the White House lead, I decided that they have a right to take a shot at an official spokesman every day, even if there isn't anything to say."

Part of the reason Powell is seldom harassed at the daily sessions is that reporters know they can get information from other sources in the Administration, a freedom often denied them under past Presidents. One of Powell's chief assets to newsmen is his closeness to the President; he can be trusted to interpret accurately Carter's mind and moods. "Among the reasons I feel relaxed in the job," he says, "is the confidence I have in the moral judgments of the man I work for. I can't conceive of myself, except in the most theatrical sense, being in the position of a Jerald terHorst." President Ford's first press secretary, terHorst felt obliged to resign after only a month when he was not told in advance by Ford of Richard Nixon's pardon.

Another of Powell's assets is his unfailing humor, usually one-liners that serve to calm tempers, deflect angry queries and wrench guffaws from the 150 or so regular attendees. When separate stories reported that pygmies had joined the fighting in Zaire and that the U.S. had been asked to rush Coca-Cola to the combat zone, Powell began his briefing: "I am specifically authorized to deny that the elite pygmy corps was high on Coke." When asked whether the President would retaliate after an Associated Press reporter was thrown out of Moscow, Jody retorted: "We did discuss something along those lines. It was our feeling that if the Russians got to kick an A. P. correspondent out of Moscow, we ought to get to kick an A.P. correspondent out of here."

But Powell cannot be said to have mastered his job yet. He is perpetually disorganized and chronically late. He promises to look up facts and somehow rarely does. He constantly writes himself notes and then loses them. He tries to return all phone calls -- but then forgets. He is also capable of succumbing to the common press secretary's habit of overreacting to critics. When the New York Times's James T. Wooten wrote a story claiming Carter was retreating into isolation and browbeating his staff, Powell delivered a 20-minute broadside. Replies Wooten: "Powell is not a man to back away from a story or a reporter who he feels is challenging what he holds sacred, which of course is Carter. But this incident was out of character for him."

Powell's capacities have yet to be tested by the kind of crisis that inevitably engulfs the White House and spills out into the briefing room. He feels he is most vulnerable with the press when questions cannot be directly answered because of national security considerations. Watergate memories are all too fresh, and national security was the excuse to hide numerous illegal activities in the Nixon White House. But there are occasions when national security should be legitimately invoked. "My roughest moments involve intelligence matters," says Powell. "There is no way to prove yourself. The situation is made for discord and distrust. It costs me more in terms of my credibility than any other situation. It all boils down to: Trust me, folks."

TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey sums up Powell's performance this way: "If he is a success so far, it is because Carter runs an open White House. Certainly Powell adds a dimension of humor and quick comeback. But if Carter should ever decide that he wants to close things down a bit, then all those jokes from Jody and his engaging ways would not mean a thing. He would probably be even more reviled for trying to con reporters out of facts by being funny."

Powell is a fatalist who knows that hard knocks are never very far away. "To expect the worst is not to be disappointed," he says. Considering himself close to his peak of popularity, he intends to "make the downhill slide as slow as possible." In a speech at the National Press Club last month, he tried to put out some brushfires before they flare up. "What happens at the White House," he said, "is not always as serious as we think it is. We need to relax a little bit, all of us, and get a sense of perspective about each other. Sometimes, when something goes wrong, it's not the result of a conspiracy but merely stupidity. We ought to recall that none of us is held in very high esteem in the country right now."

As White House aides, Jordan and Powell fall somewhere between policymakers and breakers like Clark Clifford and Ted Sorensen, and mere doorkeepers like Kenneth O'Donnell and Marvin Watson. Even in this semi-exalted position, however, hubris remains a problem for the pair: they have gained so much power so soon. It could turn the heads of people twice their age. Another problem is that in the process of growing up politically at the White House, Jordan and Powell are bound to make mistakes--and at a high level.

The two make a studied effort to deflate pretentiousness. Says Powell: "During the campaign, every time we got cocky, we got kicked on our ass." They also disavow any ravenous hunger for political prestige. "The last thing I want to do," says Jordan, "is spend the second half of my life reminiscing about my days of power in Washington."

Both try to protect what is left of their private lives. "One of the most ridiculous aspects of modern society," says Powell, "is the idea that everybody ought to inflict his deepest personal problems on everybody else. I think most people would be happier if they kept more to themselves." Once known as cutups who could down beers with the best of 'em, Jordan and Powell have become homebodies, of necessity. There is little time for cavorting. Though the two are thrown together regularly in the White House and on the tennis courts, they rarely see one another after hours--what few afterhours their jobs leave them. Their wives, both named Nancy, are ambivalent about their new life in Washington. Nancy Powell, for example, was outraged by scandal-sniffing reporters from the National Enquirer who were rummaging through the garbage outside their Foxhall Road home for clues to their living habits. Last week the Powells, with their daughter Emily, 10, moved into a $115,000 house in the same neighborhood. Jody at least sees more of his family than he used to during the campaign, when he would be gone for long stretches. Now, when he tools off in his battered 1966 Volkswagen before 8 a.m., they figure he will be gone only 14 hours or so.

Neither Powell nor Jordan has promised Carter he will finish out the first term with him, much less a possible second one--though it would surprise even their intimates if they left the White House before their boss did. In the past several years Jimmy Carter has consumed most of their waking hours--and many of their sleeping ones. Says a staffer who is close to both aides: "Working for Carter precludes thinking about what you will do next or anything else but him. We have never been personalities. We have truly felt that to do the job, you have to stay in the background."

If he is ever released from his self-imposed servitude, says Jordan, he would consider teaching or writing--or becoming an ambassador, just to "shake 'em up." Powell says he wants to raise hunting dogs: "I'm going to be the shrewdest damn political observer that has ever raised dogs in Vienna, Ga." Could it be? An ambassador who loathes neckties and a quipster with no audience for his one-liners but a pack of droopy-eared hounds? With Ham and Jody, as Washington is learning, anything is possible.

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