Carter's Columnist Critics

By Thomas Griffith

Newswatch

It's almost impossible to find any Washington columnist who is really for Jimmy Carter. Down in Carter's Georgia, Hal Gulliver, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, suspects that columnists like David Broder and Joe Kraft wake up mornings feeling fine for 30 seconds until they remember who is President, and then their day is ruined. Gulliver puts it down to anti-Southern prejudice, but of course that's just a rebel yell, not a sensible argument.

The sympathy that many columnists once felt for Carter has turned in some cases to active dislike, in others to acute disappointment. As Anthony Lewis says, "Those of us who admired Jimmy Carter from the start are in a quandary now. He is a highly intelligent man, with good values, but somehow . . ." On Martin Agronsky's Washington TV show, Columnist Carl Rowan often seems to be defending Carter, but he insists he is simply giving the President a fair shake against "ridiculous criticism." The 90% of blacks who voted for Carter in 1976 believed his promise of more jobs, says Rowan, only to find black unemployment now worse: "Carter turned out to be not a populist but a smalltown businessman." But after surveying the presidential field, Rowan concludes, "I'm not supporting any of these turkeys."

Columnist Jack Anderson, who specializes in unearthing governmental misdeeds, grades the Carter Administration "a little below normal--less corrupt than Nixon, of course, but more corrupt than Ford, L.B. J. or J.F.K. Perhaps Carter doesn't know any better, maybe it's the way they play politics in Georgia." From the outset Joe Kraft has been unimpressed with Carter, regarding him as an "unstructured mind" incapable of consistent policymaking. In Kraft's view, Carter lacks a political base, which he makes up for by assembling 7% of this group, 14% of another--a "remainder candidate," driven to cutting back and forth to make his majority. But, sighs Kraft, "he'll probably win again." Rowland Evans, of the columning team of Evans and Novak, says, "We're not for anybody, but you don't have to be highly perceptive to know we're not crazy about Carter."

In former days, any President had to assume some partisanly hostile reporting. But he could also count on writers who out of conviction or self-interest hastened to defend him and could be rewarded with inside tips or White House favors. For a variety of reasons, there's much less of that kind of exchange these days. The interesting phenomenon is that Washington commentators sympathetic to Carter became disillusioned with him before much of the rest of the country did. Was this a case of claustrophobic Potomac groupthink or of closer knowledge? Some of both. Reporters recognized Carter's genuine concern about the Iranian hostages but disliked the way he used the situation to his political advantage. The liberal Mary McGrory also thinks that reporters spotted a mean streak in Carter long before the public read what she calls his "tacky and unseemly" remarks about Cyrus Vance following Vance's resignation.

Whatever the cause, there's now a decided imbalance in Washington columnists' attitudes toward Carter. Normally, that should matter in an election year. Kraft thinks he and his colleagues have so far failed to give Ronald Reagan the "warts-and-all media scrutiny" they applied successively to Connally, Kennedy, Bush and Anderson. The New York Times's James Reston doesn't fault Reagan if at this point he fends off potentially unfriendly interviewers, like Reston, but thinks Reagan won't be able to duck so easily once the nomination is his and 200 reporters begin following him around.

Washington's "opinion molders" may also have a nagging feeling that their influence over candidates has declined now that politics has become such an exercise in TV merchandising. William J. Casey, Reagan's campaign manager, says that the ex-movie star will be projected this fall as an "adaptable, flexible Chief Executive," and "something of an intellectual." It's no longer what the candidate thinks or says that counts; it's how he's projected and perceived. No wonder McGrory believes that the comic strip Doonesbury has captured better than old-fashioned reporting "the essential nuttiness of this year's campaign."

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