What It Takes to Do the Job

By Hugh Sidey

Years ago, somebody asked James Rowe, the forner administrative assistant to Franklin Roosevelt, whether his boss really understood all those complex Depression nostrums he was proposing. Rowe considered the question a few seconds, then replied: "I don't know--probably not, but Roosevelt sure knew how to be President."

"Being President" is the question before Jimmy Carter. His goals are noble, his ideals laudable, his dedication total, his knowledge expanding. But he still is a distance from "being President."

This mystery of leadership has been pondered since our beginnings as a nation, but we are still not sure of the ingredients. Why did Herbert Hoover, a brilliant engineer and a humanitarian of inflexible integrity, fail, while Roosevelt, imprecise and conspiratorial, succeeded so well in "being President"?

For one thing, it may have been easier to be President when a huge crisis faced the nation, focusing attention, resources and sympathy. People thought Jimmy Carter was lucky to take office at a time when no crisis of magnitude loomed. But it meant that Carter's early months were to be a time of debating, persuading, educating, tinkering and posing, all tasks that have grown immensely more difficult in the past few years.

Instead of giving to people as Roosevelt did, Carter often must take away. Instead of building industrial capacity, Carter must frequently change its emphasis and clean up its mess. Instead of urging consumption, in some areas Carter must administer scarcity. These are negative chores.

Arrayed against him at the same time is the most formidable army of doubters and special-interest representatives ever to face a President. There are now an estimated 1,000 lobby groups at work in the capital. They are staffed by experts, often ex-bureaucrats and former Congressmen. They have more money to spend than ever before. Last Thursday morning Carter came face to face with a full-page ad in the Washington Post headlined DEMAGOGUERY AT THE WHITE HOUSE, an assault on Carter's political offensive against oil companies. Forty-one economists signed the ad, and the National Taxpayers Union shelled out $11,124 to pay for it.

The independence of Congress and its defiance of the President are established and growing phenomena. Perhaps Viet Nam and Watergate injured the presidency even more than we thought. Reverence for the office is diminished. Personal disdain is often open, as when Senator James Abourezk suggested during the natural gas filibuster that Carter had lied. Ever increasing staffs of experts have bolstered the self-confidence of the men on the Hill--some of whom had ample self-confidence to begin with. The aides often know as much or more about the subjects than the newcomers in the White House and can stun the Carter spear carriers with questions.

The stage is now crowded with Governors and mayors who have grown increasingly skillful at competing for the attention of the White House--and at making political hay by attacking its chief occupant. There is a further irony in Washington's giving funds to citizen groups so they may challenge the Government; many of those challenges end up on the White House doorstep.

It is plain that television, long considered more of a weapon for a President than for his adversaries, is double-edged. Dissent on almost any level ricochets instantly from the far reaches of the nation to the Oval Office. Presidential TV Aide Rick Neustadt says that in the old days a President could make a controversial announcement in the afternoon and know there could be no public answers on television until the next day: to set up cameras and process and edit film took too long to make the evening news. But new technology has made instant response a fact. Carter can make a statement on energy or the Panama Canal, and by nightfall be outshouted by his critics.

The President offered a striking illustration last week of how quickly TV can move his world. When he left the podium after his Thursday press conference, he told reporters clustered around him that he planned to spend Christmas in Plains. He had just learned about that decision, he said, from a TV talk show on which Rosalynn appeared.

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