The Crux of Leadership

By Hugh Sidey

One of Jimmy Carter's advisers insists that there is a new and different fervor now in the presidential eye when he talks about inflation. "He will listen to you on almost any subject," this man says, "but on inflation he will talk back." The special spark may have been struck, believes this Carter friend, on a spring morning when Speaker Tip O'Neill rumbled in to break fast and snorted, "All the people in my district want to talk about is prices. We are going to have to do something."

To one of Carter's top economists, what has happened is a textbook case of basic decisions emerging from a confluence of forces. He believes that not only did the economic figures push the President into action, but it suddenly became clear that Carter's political survival depended on an all-out effort to control inflation.

Yet a third Carter intimate likens the President to a man who for almost two years was watching a play through a partially opened curtain. "Those two years were hazy," he declares, "but now the curtain has been opened all the way, and Carter sees the whole stage. He is a natural for this battle."

Whatever the causes, the change that appears to be occurring in Carter presidency now of such a magnitude that nobody can accurately calibrate it just now --perhaps not until 1980. He has changed emphasis from spending to saving, switched priorities from treating unemployment to imposing economic restraint. He has engaged the entire structure of his Administration in the issue.

Inflation looms like a giant thunderhead on his horizon. His concern shades almost the other consideration (with the exception of defense), focusing the President's energies as never before and relegating some of his evangelism on such things as tax reform and Government reorganization to the dim corners, it not oblivion. Carter has been compelled to choose, the very crux of leadership. He has declared inflation the principal adversary of America. He has chosen the battleground and marshaled all of his considerable energy and talent for the effort.

In a sense Carter seems at last to have experienced "his Bay of Pigs," the kind of crisis that historians tell us bares the true stuff of Presidents, forcing them to search out the bedrock of their own convictions, to urge the nation toward the same conclusions, to make decisions that totally involve the presidential mind and heart; decisions that, if waffled later, could produce national trauma and personal political eclipse.

A lot as being written these days on leadership by such experts as Rutgers Emmet thread Hughes and Williams' James MacGregor Burns. A common thread that binds their thoughtful expositions is that successful leadership is a state of mind Leadership a speech; it is a hundred decisions, not a single act. Leadership is a march down a long road, not always in a straight line, but always directed to ward some distant landmark. Finally, leadership involves total belief and commitment.

The lack of belief and commitment in his own words and proposals severely his Carter for nearly two years, and that record still hampers his command But at the White House last week almost every nerve and smew was engaged in budget cutting, and men like Chairman Charles Schultze of the Council of Economic Advisers could say that Carter's commitment ' is 100%, even if across Lafayette Park in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters and elsewhere they were waiting for proof of the new resolution. The cold facts are that up until now, Jimmy Carter has not made this kind of fundamental decision and pervasive commitment on such an important issue.

Carter's long-suffering trade counselor, Robert Strauss, believes that the Carter inflation fight will be a Camp David performance raised to the tenth power. The moment for action, the seasoning of Carter, his special qualities of determination attention to detail and tenacity have combined, says Strauss, for a successful assault on public enemy No. 1-- inflation. The proof that Carter can successfully lead the conquest of inflation lies ahead. But the early signs are encouraging.

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