Balloons, Bands and Oratory

Carter encounters Reagan, and once again nobody wins

High Noon on High Street, the press and TV called it. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan at rival rallies just five blocks from each other along a main drag of Columbus. Balloons, bands, banners and high-flown oratory. A dress rehearsal for the fall campaign and an invitation to pundits to read large significance into which candidate's crowd was bigger, which more enthusiastic.

In fact, it was largely a media event staged by the Carter forces to create some hoopla for the President's first avowedly political foray of the year, a twelve-hour swing through Ohio last Thursday. Ostensibly the purpose of the trip was to win votes in the Ohio primary this Tuesday, one of nine that once looked like the exciting windup of the nomination campaign. But all the drama had gone out of that contest, since Carter, after winning primaries in Arkansas, Kentucky and Nevada last week, was by his own count only four delegates short of the 1,666 needed to renominate him at the Democratic Convention in New York City in August. So his strategists tried to upstage a long-scheduled Reagan rally on the steps of the Ohio state capitol in Columbus by having the President address a gathering in the plaza in front of the nearby Nationwide Life Insurance building.

The contest predictably turned into a duel of advancemen. Carter's aides drafted volunteers to drive free shuttle buses to the rally site from around the city, and they blanketed Columbus with flyers reading: COME, SEE, HEAR THE PRESIDENT. They won, Democrats said, since they turned out a crowd of about 7,000, a bit bigger than Reagan's. The Ohioans gave the shirtsleeved President a warm ovation as he stepped into bright sunshine. Carter tested out some themes that he will use in the fall campaign. He asserted that his Administration is "turning the tide" on the nation's problems, predicting that the inflation rate will go down beginning this summer and claiming, very dubiously, that he had started an energy program "more ambitious than the space program, the Marshall Plan, and the interstate highway program combined." But his unexciting delivery moved the audience to only tepid applause, and once his 17-minute talk was over, the people rapidly dispersed.

Reagan's crowd, perhaps 6,000, seemed more enthusiastic. The candidate, who had been assured of the Republican nomination three days earlier when his only remaining rival, George Bush, dropped out of the race, was relaxed and in fine voice. Though his speech was merely a slightly retooled version of his standard attack on inflation, taxes, unemployment and Administration foreign policy, he enlivened it by some personal digs at Carter. He told the crowd that it could easily tell the two motorcades apart --Carter's, he said, "turns left at every corner."

If neither candidate lit a fire, that was a fitting next-to-last chapter to the long, dreary pre-convention campaign. The face that started in the snows preceding the Iowa precinct caucuses of Jan. 21 had drawn a crowded field of candidates and in the early going, some surprising turnouts by the voters. But the voters proved remarkably hard to predict. On the Democratic side, Ted Kennedy won the blue-collar and the black vote by a heavy margin in Philadelphia but lost both on April 22 in Pittsburgh, on the opposite side of Pennsylvania. In New York, voters disenchanted with Carter gave a victory to Kennedy, while in Wisconsin they streamed across party lines to vote for Reagan, the man ex-President Ford said could not win.

Many of the twists and turns indicated that the voters were not greatly enamored of any of the choices placed before them. Though--and maybe because --Carter and Reagan won big enough early enough to settle matters quickly, the campaign wound down in a mood of sullen discontent. Turnouts have dwindled to as low as 11% of the registered voters in the Michigan Republican primary two weeks ago, a shocking figure by any standards. "Uncommitted" polled a third of the votes in the Nevada Democratic primary last week. More than half the voters are telling pollsters that they wish there were some other choice than Carter and Reagan. Though John Anderson has proclaimed himself that other choice, more than 50% tell pollsters that he has no chance.

Among the Democrats there is still a little passion left. As Carter and Reagan were talking past each other in Columbus, Ted Kennedy was in Cleveland issuing a wan challenge to Carter to debate him before the convention. If Carter would do so, Kennedy said, he would release his delegates and ask Carter to do the same, to produce a truly open convention. The chances of that happening, as Kennedy well knows, are about equal to the odds that a heavy snowfall will envelop Madison Square Garden when the Democrats meet on Aug. 11. Carter has agreed to debate Reagan in the fall, but last' week he refused to include Anderson. "Why should I debate two Republicans simultaneously?" Carter said in a TV interview. In fact, he is afraid of giving Anderson added status. Reagan promptly offered to debate Anderson as well as Carter, and Kennedy scoffed that it was "absurd to pretend" Anderson is not a serious candidate.

Squabbles over debates aside, it will be difficult to read this week's Democratic primaries, whichever way they go, as providing anything but a further indication of voter disenchantment. In California, for example, late polls showed Carter and Kennedy tied at 33% each, but the real significance was that both had dropped from April, when Kennedy had 42% and Carter 39%; the only gains have been scored by "uncommitted." Says Pollster Mervin Field: "There will be no enthusiasm for the victor, no matter who wins."

Still, Kennedy will go into the convention with about a third of the delegates. Victories in California and New Jersey this week would demonstrate Carter weakness in the big industrial states that a Democrat must carry to capture the White House; Kennedy is openly appealing to Democrats, not so much to vote for him as to register a protest against Carter's leadership. That strategy could enable him to force some of his liberal ideas into the platform and thus claim that his long campaign had accomplished something. Acknowledging that Kennedy has "one of the highest percentages of support for my programs of anyone who serves in the Senate," Carter said he expected to work harmoniously with his rival in preparing a party platform. The Senator could also be thinking of another run in 1984; aides who once said that he had to make it this year or not at all are beginning to discuss the possibility.

In contrast to Carter, Reagan can devote his full time over the next few weeks to preparing for the fall campaign. Bush relieved him of any remaining worries about this week's primaries and the July convention in Detroit by throwing in the towel on Memorial Day. After traveling 342,000 miles and spending $16.2 million in a two-year campaign, Bush had won less than 300 delegates; Reagan by some counts was already over the 998 needed to nominate.

Reagan will continue to do some pre-convention campaigning, partly to prevent the Democrats from getting all the publicity, partly to cement party unity; he is addressing a series of dinners aimed at raising money to pay off the campaign debts of his beaten rivals. But his main problem is choosing a vice-presidential running mate. The two obvious candidates, Bush and Senate Minority Leader Howard Baker, both have drawbacks: Bush is considered a weak campaigner by some Reaganites, and Baker is vigorously opposed by fervent conservatives displeased by his votes to provide federal financing for poor women's abortions and his support of the Panama Canal treaties. Other possibilities include a host of Republican Governors and Senators and, some Reagan staffers insist, former President Gerald Ford--though that seems a very long shot indeed.

Comfortable though Reagan is at the moment, he, like Carter, is the target of widespread public dissatisfaction. Some of the frustrated voters may go to Anderson, but many more may end up not voting at all. The primaries finally end this week--with a whimper, not a bang--but the 1980 presidential campaign still has a long way to go.

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