Tribulations of Harried Ham

With the exception of Bert Lance, none of the Georgia political chums Jimmy Carter brought with him to Washington has found himself the subject of more attention, flattering or otherwise, than Hamilton Jordan, the young (33), feet-up presidential pal and political strategist who is the White House's closest equivalent to a chief of staff. Last week was particularly grim for Jordan, both personally and professionally. Late in the week, he was hurriedly summoned home to Albany, Ga., after his father, Richard Jordan, 69, a retired insurance agent and former Army major, suffered a stroke (he died the following day). Earlier, Jordan and the White House as a whole had had to slog through yet another of Ham's unwanted and unwinnable bouts with the gossip columnists.

The locus this time was Sarsfield's, a bar half a mile west of the White House that sports a Gay Nineties decor and a clientele that can range, on a given evening, from Washington office workers to White House staffers, along with political powers like House Majority Leader Tip O'Neill. As Columnist Rudy Maxa told it in a short but vivid item in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Jordan turned up one Friday evening with some friends, introduced himself to a young woman as Harvey Phillips and tried to strike up a conversation. When the woman, identified only as "an attractive advertising copywriter," ignored him, Maxa wrote, Jordan angrily spat some of his drink down her blouse and then demanded that she leave.

What was more surprising than the thinly substantiated Post tidbit (Maxa said that the girl was a personal friend of his) was the stunning White House reaction. After seeing Maxa's item, Press Secretary Jody Powell counterattacked with an 8,000-word, 33-page denial that must be one of the more bizarre official documents ever to emerge from the White House. Among the supporting evidence was the transcript of a lengthy deposition taken by a White House lawyer from the saloon's barkeep, Daniel V. Marshall III. Marshall's recollection was that Jordan had been besieged: "Girls [were] coming up to Hamilton and woowoo, you know what I mean?" Eventually, the bartender said, Jordan "did say something to the point where enough's enough. I think one of the girls got insulted." But Marshall was sure there had been no spitting of Jordan's drink, Amaretto and cream: that "would have been quite a mess, and she certainly wasn't wet."

The White House broadside not only kept the Sarsfield's incident alive but drew guffaws from Washington pols. Illinois Republican Robert Michel chortled in a House speech that in one year the Carter Administration had gone from "great expectations to great expectorations."

At the least, the episode suggested either oversensitivity to minor criticism in the White House or concern about Jordan --or possibly both. Although Jordan has long professed to be uninterested in his press notices--he says that the President is the "one constituent I have to please" --he can be defensive. Claimed Jordan in the Powell salvo on the Sarsfield's episode: "I very seldom go out in Washington to public places because I am often bothered by well-meaning people who do not respect my privacy." Until the Amaretto incident, Jordan's roughest single encounter with the gossip columns came after the now celebrated dinner given by Barbara Walters at which Jordan--or so the Washington Post's top tattler, Sally Quinn, told it--tugged at the bodice of the Egyptian ambassador's wife while saying, "I've always wanted to see the Pyramids." Jordan did make the crude remark, but in a private jest to someone else; he did not tug at the lady's bodice. Nonetheless, the Quinn version of the incident quickly became a part of the Jordan legend.

A month later, Jordan suffered a severe blow when Nancy, his wife of seven years, demanded a separation--the result, say friends, of Jordan's roving eye, as well as the strain of long hours and late nights on the campaign trail and in the White House. Jordan was rocked hard by the separation. After calling up Friend Jody Powell--then with President Carter in Warsaw--to discuss the rupture, he flew over to join the Carter entourage in Saudi Arabia. The President's reaction was to increase Jordan's responsibilities somewhat: he has been made coordinator of all staff activities and an adviser on the domestic political impact of foreign policies.

Jordan of course remains Carter's chief all-round troubleshooter, a role that he prefers to any more formal post. At one time or another, he has advised the President on energy, the Panama Canal treaties and the Middle East negotiations. More liberal than his redneck routine suggests, Jordan is said to have had a decisive influence on the Administration's affirmative-action stand in the Bakke reverse-discrimination case. Says Jordan: "The work that I do is not based on my social graces or my alleged lack of social graces."

Maybe not. But the question is whether his effectiveness is becoming increasingly impaired, especially given Carter's almost Wilsonian public emphasis on personal morality and rectitude.

The President made only a brief, joking reference to Jordan about the Sarsfield's affair. In the past, he has been equally tolerant of his young aide. After the breakup of Jordan's marriage, Carter told Robert Strauss, his chief trade negotiator: "He's a little depressed. He gets discouraged at times, especially with the way he's treated by the press." Jordan himself scoffs, though not always convincingly, at any notion that his scuffles with the press may be getting the better of him. Says he: "If the gossip columnists don't get me, I'll be around for one more year."

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