Why Jimmy Stays Loyal

Shortly after Franklin Roosevelt defeated Wendell Willkie for the presidency in 1940, the loser visited F.D.R. in the White House and asked bluntly why the President kept on as his closest aide such a controversial figure as Harry Hopkins. Roosevelt told Willkie that if he were ever to become President, "You'll be looking through that door and knowing that practically everybody who walks through it wants something out of you. You'll learn what a lonely job this is, and you'll discover the need for somebody like Harry Hopkins, who asks for nothing except to serve you."

The reciprocal loyalty between a President and a few inner-circle intimates has been demonstrated repeatedly. Harry Truman doggedly defended Major General Harry Vaughan, his military aide, despite the fact that Vaughan had accepted freezers from a perfume company seeking petty favors from the Government. Dwight Eisenhower stood by Sherman Adams, when his chief of staff was accused of similarly accepting gifts, though Adams finally resigned.

Jimmy Carter's warm embrace of the embattled Bert Lance is not quite comparable. No one has accused Lance of abusing his current post for personal gain. It is his past conduct as a freewheeling money man that is at issue. But the fact remains that Carter has carried his loyalty to the point where his own image is in danger of being tarnished.

Why? It is conceivable, of course, that Carter is hanging tough on Lance for purely tactical reasons--that he believes this is the best way to ride out the storm. Yet it seems far more likely that Carter's sense of loyalty to those who gambled their own careers on his long shot at reaching the top is the real reason he is risking so much to protect his most personally compatible colleague. Carter's spectacular political rise was achieved almost wholly by his own efforts and those of his fellow Georgians. To turn his back on any of them would be, in a sense, a refutation of his own origins.

Yet there is something quite special about the Carter-Lance relationship. The two did not even become close friends until after Carter was elected Governor of Georgia in 1970. Lance not only helped to reorganize the state government but also made the scandal-ridden Georgia highway department one of the most efficient agencies in the state.

The two men grew closer partly out of their common religious convictions. Each, moreover, admired the way the other had risen spectacularly from a small Southern town. Some Carter associates believe the two probably share the feeling that some corners had to be cut in breaking out of their similar backgrounds. Among the legion of Georgians whom Carter has brought to Washington, Lance may well be the only crony with whom the President can kick off his shoes at the end of a bruising day and talk in total candor.

Some observers see an inherent stubbornness in the Carter personality; hence Jimmy's almost defiant defense of an embattled aide. Others suggest a further element: simple geography, as with Jack Kennedy's Massachusetts (and Harvard) Mafia and Lyndon Johnson's Texas herd. Some black leaders note that Carter is more at ease with Southern blacks --as in the case of U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young--than with any Northerners, black or white.

While many Presidents have brought home-grown cliques to Washington, Carter's is more narrowly based and larger than most. One count shows 51 Georgians on the White House staff, 18 at the Office of Management and Budget and another 100 scattered throughout the Executive Branch. Observes a Carter campaign associate of the Georgians: "They are a breed unto themselves, close-knit, playing all their cards close to the vest." At week's end, the closest card of all was still being played by Jimmy Carter, who had made no known move to resolve his most pressing personnel--and personal--problem: what to do about Friend Bert.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.