Change in the Set of the Jaw

By Hugh Sidey

President Carter looks different. Older, gaunter, grayer, tireder. All that is true. But it is something else.

Men and women who have worked with the President have looked up at the man across from them and seen something physically new, beyond the natural changes of aging. They have asked themselves exactly what it is--the intensity in the eyes, or the mouth line, or the fractional shift in his jaw set? No one seems quite sure. It could be as much what he says and how he says it. But from both the White House and beyond there is testimony that he is more of a President.

"He is challenged from within and from without," says one of his counselors. "That has changed him. He was always at his worst in those cerebral exercises of choosing the middle ground. He cannot do that now."

And so he ended months of dithering and sent arms to an ally in Morocco, agreed to modernize nuclear weapons in Europe and stood behind the higher interest rates invoked by the Federal Reserve.

This is curious commentary but one that leads back to earlier speculation. When it was noted that Carter had taken over a peaceful and prosperous nation, some historians suggested that it might be difficult for a man of so limited experience to learn very much in such a tranquil introduction to power. That does not seem so farfetched now.

Carter is in personal political crisis. The weight of Soviet power can be felt and seen. Economic stress is intense. Take the urgency generated by these dark developments and add three years of learning and it changes the profile.

A Carter speechwriter believes there was more of an internal metamorphosis at Camp David last summer than many understood. Carter has a deeper historical perspective, this aide says, a special feeling for the office. "I'm honestly persuaded now that he can be a President," says another of Carter's advisers. "If he could just start at the beginning with what he has learned in these past 34 months, he would be a very good President."

Drifting through the back corridors of the White House one picks up a fascinating catalogue of tiny refinements, adjustments and changes that Carter's people declare he has made in himself. Some of them: accepting the fact that others often know more than he does, sensing the impact of eloquence in the spoken word, understanding that there need be no conflict between morality and great power, acknowledging that people of wealth and position can help the nation, learning that litigating endlessly and sounding nice is not leadership and that preaching can often do more harm than good.

It is all a bit tardy. Even people who really admire and sustain Carter believe he is hanging by a slender political thread. With a provident combination of luck, hard work and fervent prayer, the President may, in the words of a friend, "just make it" back into office.

One can ponder why Carter's new maturity and depth did not arrive until his standing in the national opinion polls fell into the basement and his own warm political body was threatened. In that is an echo of the modern curse of personality politics. But that is less important if through some alchemy of these past weeks Jimmy Carter has joined the presidential club, likes it in there and wants to stay there badly enough to change himself. We all benefit.

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