In the Fog, a Man Searching

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

There are those--and Robert Strauss is one of them--who wake up each morning in the full and firm conviction that inflation is a greater threat to the pursuit of happiness than the Red Army. Jimmy Carter made Strauss his generalissimo of the counterattack, a deadly serious business that Strauss manages to infuse with his durable humor and energy.

"So far," Strauss observed last week, "it is inflation 100, Strauss 0.' For an old pol like Strauss, who used to grab arms and twist them, trying to track down something like inflation is infuriating. "It's a lot of ghosts," he said. "It's like fog I like to be able to shake something, to hit it, to denounce somebody."

His search is relentless. He has followed the trail to the chamber of Senator Russell Long, where he exchanged a few bad jokes with the Kingfish's son and then listened to advice about cutting spending. "I'm running this inflation fight with a roll of dimes for the phone and a pencil and pad," Strauss said about his own example of restraint. He has looked across at General Motors Chairman Thomas Murphy and preached a little about corporate citizenship. Murphy, it turned out, got there before Strauss did. "We will meet the President's program on price deceleration," the GM head promised. Strauss has also gone over to talk with the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s George Meany, who holds forth across Lafayette Square from the White House.

The other day Strauss's heart leaped when he walked into a Watergate penthouse and was instantly convinced he had encountered inflation face to face. Inflation was a handsome fellow in a neat blue shirt, a fine dark suit and wingtips. Inflation had a little bulge over the belt, some eye bags and was mixing his third vodka martini (Smirnoff, 5 to 1). He was savoring the aroma of ribs barbecuing in the kitchen. "By God, it was me!" cried Strauss. "And you," he added to anybody within shouting distance. "I paid $6 for those ribs, and that is a hell of a lot more than I paid just a few weeks ago. Everybody's got to get into this fight. It is a chipping operation." That may be the critical point.

"At every meeting," he said, "I get two-thirds of the answer to inflation." Business blames labor and Government. Labor blames business and Government. And Government blames business and labor. Strauss is thinking of stealing from Pogo and plastering in every office in America this motto: "I have met the inflater, and he is me."

Such jollity is the sugar coating for bitter medicine that somehow must be administered. Strauss has discovered the self-generating nature of inflation. When prices rise, national concern rises, which instantly breeds new wage demands and pressure on the markets, which produce more price increases. "Then everybody is grabbing to get theirs," he sighed.

Through back-room cajolery, a few public threats and even a martini lunch or two, Bob Strauss has never failed at a public challenge yet. Even with the inflation odds running against him, he is an optimist and just recently he got hold of something in the fog. One morning Strauss told Carter that he was convinced the President's public threats to veto the emergency farm bill had led to the bill's strangulation in Congress, and this gave moneymen hope that Carter was going to be tough, and then this helped rally the stock market. Carter grinned, turned to others and said, "Bob has already learned what makes the stock market go up and down." Strauss is not sure he has learned that, but he thinks that like a good hunting dog he can sniff out inflation--even in a doctor's office. "If we can get the hospital-cost containment bill out of Congress, we can do some good," he declared.

Last Saturday, rather than scolding and nagging, he took a few hours to pay tribute to what he claimed is "the only institution I know in the world that has not contributed to inflation." He journeyed to the Kentucky Derby and laid down a few bucks on Affirmed at the same $2 window he has been visiting for 45 years.

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