"Selling True Grit

It all happened in a minute, and not a word was spoken. As Jimmy Carter prepared to leave a high-thermostatted White House reception shortly after his Cabinet shakeup, his shoulders slumped, his tired head bowed. Instantly, Rosalynn Carter's hand reached out, possessively supporting his back, and her steely eyes glared out at the watching guests like those of a guardian lioness. Then they walked out together.

Last week Rosalynn took her mission on the road, traveling 5,500 miles to nine stops and back to Washington in four days, from Chicago to Pine Bluff, Ark. (100DEG), to Dallas and Harlingen, Texas (103DEG), to Fresno, Calif. (106DEG). Scheduled weeks ago, the tour was originally intended to tout such pet projects as a self-help volunteer fair and a community health center and to raise funds for her husband's reelection. But after the recent maelstrom, reported TIME Correspondent Johanna McGeary, the trip turned into a roving revival meeting intended to restore America's lapsed faith in Carter. "He's healthy, he's happy, he's confident," Rosalynn declared in one encounter after another. "He's a great President, and I'm proud of him. And he's optimistic about the future." Her rosy view also extended to the rest of the country. "America is good," she told her audiences. "Its people are strong. If we just join together we can solve our problems. We can even sacrifice if we have to. It's a wonderful time, an exciting opportunity to restore our spirit."

Sincere though she may have been, her own blind faith won few converts. In Chicago, her first stop, her address to the National Urban League included a long litany of Carter's black appointees, each name followed by the refrain "he [or she] happens to be black." The derisive jokes muttered by delegates who found the speech patronizing were capped when Vernon Jordan began his keynote speech by saying, "I'm president of the National Urban League and I happen to be black." When she insisted to 500 guests at a fund raiser in Dallas that "Jimmy is the best person to lead us through the energy crisis and the confidence crisis," the party faithful seemed skeptical. Said Harlingen City Commissioner Jim Werner: "The people should not be blamed for the energy crisis, but instead the man and his ill-assorted cronies." And at a fund raiser among the rich in Palo Alto, Calif, one guest remarked, "She's a little too evangelical for this audience."

To be sure, her itinerary took her through territory that Carter had alienated. "In 1977 the Texas Farmworkers Union went to Washington, and Carter would not receive us," said Union Leader Antonio Orendain. "If next year weren't an election year, she never would have come." Said Dancy Buttery of Harlingen: "This is a last-ditch attempt to save face. Carter has had three years to make a difference. It's been a waste."

Despite the obstacles, however, Rosalynn's drive and devotion shone through. Said Liz Carpenter, a Lady Bird Johnson aide who was at the Dallas dinner: "She's out selling with true grit a President in trouble. She says, 'I believe in Jimmy and I know you'll believe in Jimmy,' and by God she's good at it! The force of her conviction comes through." Said Dallas Political Consultant Judy Bonner Amps: "You can't help but like the woman. She's attractive, charming, intelligent and totally committed to Jimmy. People eat up that sort of thing." In the grueling midday sun she toured places like a Harlingen health clinic, where she was given a Nuestra Hermana en Salud (Our Sister in Health) award, and she inspected a Fort Worth Y.M.C.A. camp with programs for the handicapped, where she took her turn on the obstacle course. Said a bystander in Los Angeles: "Now why couldn't she be the President?"

Aboard her jet, Rosalynn answered questions about her mission.

"What I would like the people of this country to do," she told reporters, "is every time they turn out a light, every time they ride a bicycle or car pool, to think about Jimmy and that they are doing this for the country." But Rosalynn was not merely carrying the President's message and bringing his greetings. No less important, she was listening for the President. Said she: "I can get closer to the people than he can, and then I can go back and talk to him about their hopes and dreams." As Carter has often said, Rosalynn is his closest adviser and confidante. And as she herself once observed: "I have always been more political than he is." Said one pundit: "She's the Mom of the Mom and Pop presidency."

In some ways her importance resembles that of Eleanor Roosevelt, the most influential First Lady since Edith Wilson took control of the White House for more than a year during her husband Woodrow's illness. Mrs. Roosevelt acted as a traveling observer for her crippled husband as well as a partner in policymaking. She was, however, much more of an independent force than Rosalynn Carter is, publicly crusading for her own causes and making her own name. Lady Bird Johnson was also much involved in her husband's political life. "She was a partner," says Liz Carpenter. "Like Mrs. Carter, she was a sounding board, there to give the 'level view.' "

The Carters have always been close, but Rosalynn's role as a political adviser is only now becoming clearer. She and she alone was consulted on every move in Carter's bid to revitalize his presidency this past month. The doleful documentation of national dispirit reported by Presidential Pollster Pat Caddell in his April memo deeply affected her, and she expressed her concern to her husband. Said one top aide: "She sensed that something had to be done before he did, and that had a huge impact on his thinking." So she launched with the President a personal study of American attitudes and malaise, reading sociology and philosophy books, holding dinner-table discussions with small groups of thinkers.

The concepts they were discussing were translated into action when Carter showed Rosalynn a draft of his scheduled July 5 energy speech. Said she: "What's new? It's just more programs and proposals. I don't think anyone is going to listen." Carter promptly placed the conference call to stunned advisers, ordering the abrupt cancellation of his speech. Amid the uproar, it was Rosalynn who saw the opportunity to seize the occasion. Says she: "We realized that we really had the attention of the country. So we decided we could talk about the real problems."

During the twelve days of Camp David consultations, Rosalynn rarely left her husband's side except to slip into Washington for a couple of private sessions with Hamilton Jordan, Stuart Eizenstat and Jody Powell. She took copious notes, gently prodded Carter's memory when he forgot a point, softly added clarifications when he bogged down in detail, remaining generally reticent but close at hand. At the smaller staff meetings, however, she was much more outspoken, giving ruthless assessments of personalities and strengths, undiluted by her husband's tendency to let sentiment interfere. It was she who urged him to act quickly when it came time to make the Cabinet changes. As she explained on her trip: "I just--uh, we--uh, Jimmy thought, and I agreed, that it was better to do it fast, and then we could go forward. The nation has so many problems that Jimmy had to have a good, tight Cabinet to work together. He accomplished that in the best possible way, cleanly and quickly."

She is still basically the quiet small-town Southern girl whom Jimmy met and married in 1946 in Plains, Ga. She maintains a wifely modesty about her role at Camp David. "I was there, I was involved, I listened... And then we," she pauses to correct herself again, "and then he made the decisions. I'm a wife. I don't say do this or do that. We just discuss things."

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