How Much Less Is Moore?

Carter's own representative on the Hill has had a rough year

"It won't happen again." That contrite promise has become a kind of unofficial motto for Frank Moore, assistant to the President for congressional liaison. Repeatedly during the past year, he has had to apologize for failures on the part of the White House to consult, inform or massage the egos of the increasingly assertive men and women on Capitol Hill about something Jimmy Carter is doing or wants done.

The Administration was only a few weeks old when Moore had earned a reputation for not returning Congressmen's phone calls. In October he was criticized for not warning key congressional backers of Israel that a joint U.S.-Soviet declaration on the Middle East was in the works. At about the same time he neglected to tell Representative Herman Badillo in advance that Carter planned to make a much-publicized walking tour of the South Bronx, the urban disaster area in Badillo's district. Last week House Democrats chided Moore and his White House colleagues for not putting up a solid enough front against compromise in the Senate of the Administration's energy bill.

An accumulation of such slights and oversights has opened Moore to more complaints from Congress than any other Administration official --except perhaps Carter himself. "Moore's done nothing to sensitize the White House to the fact that there's another branch of Government up here," grouses a top aide to the House Democratic leadership.

Moore concedes that the Carter team initially underestimated the importance of congressional relations. But, he insisted to TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud, "people around here are more and more aware that a big part of the game in this town is on the Hill." Besides, Moore argues, some friction between the White House and Congress is inevitable during the transition from a Republican to a Democratic Administration. "Every Democrat on the Hill had a backlog of people he wanted jobs for," Moore says. His office still gets 1,000 calls a day (down from 2,000 nine months ago) for everything from jobs to appointments with the President. He has had to learn by experience which ones he must personally return or risk bruising powerful egos. "I'm getting to know the people on the Hill and what motivates them," he says, and criticism of him is softening. "Frank's a bright guy, and he's learned quickly," says one of Moore's detractors-turned-defenders, Arizona Representative Morris Udall.

Moore's allies in the White House believe his very job makes him a scapegoat. Says Press Secretary Jody Powell: "Most of the things he gets blamed for are someone else's fault." Including, in some cases, Carter's. The President views liaison with Congress on vital issues as his own responsibility--one he has discharged with uneven success. As a result, he has sometimes failed to keep Moore sufficiently informed to be effective. For instance, the U.S.-Soviet statement on the Middle East caught Moore as much by surprise as it did his Hill contacts. Another factor is Carter's unwillingness to appoint a single top aide with clear-cut responsibility for coordinating the often disparate elements of the White House bureaucracy.

Whatever share of the blame Moore deserves, he is in no apparent danger of losing his job. He has known Carter longer than anyone else on the White House staff. They first met in the early 1960s and worked together in 1966 on a Georgia planning commission. Moore, 42, joined Carter's gubernatorial staff in 1970 and in 1972 replaced Hamilton Jordan as Carter's executive secretary and legislative liaison when Jordan went to work for the Democratic National Committee in Washington.

Moore is shy and, understandably, a bit defensive. His style is certainly not that of a big-time manipulator. With a bulging middle, sleepy eyes, a soft-spoken manner and a good-ole-boy drawl, Moore seems much like the University of Georgia fraternity man he once was. The blue carpet in his White House office is decorated with a red mat emblazoned with his alma mater's mascot, a growling bulldog, and the slogan GO, YOU HAIRY DOGS. On a table is a phonograph for his four children--ages six, eight, ten and twelve --and Amy Carter to play if they happen to come by in the afternoon. On the turntable last week was a 45 r.p.m. record of a satirical country-and-western song titled I'll Pump the Gas, Jimmy (You Run the Country).

Is Carter trying too hard to run the country on his own? Certainly Moore's role contrasts dramatically, and disadvantageously, with that of Lawrence O'Brien, the almost legendary congressional fix-it man for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Although also criticized for snubbing faithful party pols, O'Brien had a virtual proxy from both his bosses to bargain for votes and decide which initiatives to pursue and which to discard.

"The Boss," as Moore calls Carter, has had a rough first year, but Moore is convinced that the legislative performance--including his own--has been better than the reviews. Says he: "We've had a damned good year." Among 203 bills signed into law since January, Moore is particularly proud of the $21 billion economic stimulus package, the creation of the new Department of Energy, the minimum wage bill and the ban on the purchase of Rhodesian chrome. His preoccupation of the moment is the energy bill, for which he lobbied in a series of private sessions last week with House and Senate conferees. "There's a good chance we'll get a bill before Christmas," he predicts.

One of Moore's New Year's resolutions is to spend more time lobbying in the corridors and cloakrooms of the Capitol. Administrative duties in the White House have allowed him only two or three personal visits a week to the Hill. "I like to hang around up there," he says gamely. "I love it, just love it." He added some much needed professionalism to his 21-person staff last spring by hiring veteran Congressional Insider William Cable as his deputy. The addition of Cable, former staff director of the House Administration Committee, says Mo Udall, has "helped the operation immensely." With Cable's assistance, better coordination within the White House and a bit more on-the-job training, Carter's own representative in Congress might just be able to spend next year influencing Senators and Representatives more --and apologizing to them less. qed

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