In Search of a Theme

A bumpy week as Carter struggles to find an upbeat approach

Even for this peculiar presidential election, it was a week of bizarre happenings. At a $125-a-plate fund-raising dinner in San Francisco, Independent John Anderson sat stunned as sequin-clad Gary Poole led his disco dance troupe through a series of exotic routines. A male dancer hauled a woman, clad in a white jumpsuit, around the stage on a leash. After the dance was over, Anderson remarked to the 400 partygoers: "I'm guilty of a certain Midwestern naivete. I've never seen anything quite like this before."

In Los Angeles, Ronald Reagan tried to lay to rest the issue of his age (69) in one of the strangest interviews of the political season. He told the New York Times that he is as alert now as he was 20 years ago, is not forgetful and does not suffer from "blue" periods. Six doctors who have examined the Californian in recent years assured the newspaper that he is physically and mentally fit. Reagan promised that if he becomes President, he will resign at the first hint of senility. Said he: "I would walk away."

And for Jimmy Carter, who wanted to adopt a supremely presidential style, it was a bumpy week indeed. Carter had long been grumbling to associates that his campaign strategy needed to be overhauled. At a 2 1/2-hr. shirtsleeved meeting with his top political aides on Sunday, he decided to give the task to his closest adviser, White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan. Jordan accordingly joined the re-election committee as deputy to Chairman Robert Strauss. As Jordan's successor in the White House, Carter named Jack Watson, 41, the former Atlanta lawyer who managed the President's transition team in 1976 and since then has served as presidential assistant for intergovernmental relations and secretary to the Cabinet.

Jordan's first duty is to design an upbeat theme for the campaign (see following story). As a step in that direction, Carter backed down from his refusal to debate Anderson, which had drawn heavy criticism from many Democrats as well as Republicans. The President said he is willing to share a podium with Anderson as long as he still can have at least one head-to-head debate with Reagan.

Despite Carter's search for a positive campaign theme, he spent much of the week defending his record and his refusal to include large new spending programs in the federal budget for 1981, which Congress pegged last week at $613.6 billion. The budget is balanced on paper, though most economists expect the recession to result in a 1981 deficit of at least $20 billion.

On Monday morning, members of the Congressional Black Caucus emerged from a meeting with Carter at the White House clearly disappointed with his unemployment and urban policies. Illinois Democrat Cardiss Collins complained that Carter's policies are causing "a great deal of distress--financially and spiritually."

Carter delayed his response until that afternoon, when he spoke in Miami Beach at a convention of the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, an inner-city job training organization that operates in 41 states. "Keep the faith," he told his mostly black audience of 800. "We will not solve the problems of energy, inflation and economic stagnation by imposing sacrifices on the poor." He made only one commitment: that the Government would help find jobs for the 100,000 young people now in federal training programs.

Carter got a more forceful demonstration of black sentiment at his next stop, in Miami's riot-scarred Liberty City ghetto. When Carter's Cadillac limousine pulled up at the James E. Scott Community Association Center, a white concrete blockhouse, angry blacks in the crowd of several hundred people waved placards that read HAIL TO THE CHIEF RACIST and HEY, PEANUT MAN, WE NEED MORE THAN PEANUTS. Inside the building, Carter told a score of community leaders that it was up to them to devise a plan to restore the neighborhoods that were devastated by last month's rioting. Said he: "I didn't come here to solve the problems --I'm here to help. It should be a fifty-fifty partnership between Miami and the Government."

As Carter left, the crowd booed and hooted. Nonplused, he briefly grinned and waved before entering his car. Just as his limousine began to pull away, some demonstrators started throwing bottles, cans and rocks. A Heineken beer bottle bounced off the roof of the President's car. "Go! Go! Go!" shouted a Secret Service man, and the presidential limousine roared away. A bottle struck a photographer; other missiles broke the windows of a staff car and a bus in the President's entourage.

Next stop was Seattle, where the President was briefed at the Olympic Hotel on the Federal Government's plans to send $3 million in initial aid to help rebuild the homes and businesses devastated by the explosion of Mount St. Helens. Then the President descended one floor to the Grand Ballroom to address some 300 mayors at the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors. They already had heard from John Anderson, who had proposed sending the cities $8 billion in new federal aid, from existing excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco, to rehabilitate mass transit lines, streets and sewer systems. A small group of mayors, most of them Republicans, had also met with Ronald Reagan, who has suggested increasing federal revenue sharing with states and cities as part of his plan to transfer to them some of Washington's functions, starting with welfare and education.

Senator Edward Kennedy was ready to promise them $12 billion, mostly for jobs and housing programs. But at the last minute the mayors withdrew their invitation to Kennedy because he wanted to speak on the same day as Carter. The White House suggested that the President would cancel his own appearance rather than share the forum--and the news coverage --with Kennedy. Sticking with the probable Democratic nominee, the mayors, two-thirds of whom are Democrats, gave in to the President. Kennedy delivered his speech anyway, to a convention of public employees in Anaheim, Calif.

In Seattle, Carter made no new promises at all. Instead, he delivered a bland 34-min. defense of his economic and job policies. He was interrupted by applause only once, when he gibed at Reagan, who was never mentioned by name, for proposing a 30% cut in federal income tax rates and rollbacks in Government programs. The President called those "facile quick fixes." Finally, in a line written into his speech at the last minute, Carter assured the mayors that if the recession deepens and unemployment worsens, "I will work closely with you, and we will take other steps which may be necessary."

He did not specify the steps, to the disgruntlement of many mayors who were hoping that he would promise them more federal aid. Complained Mayor Ernest Proulx of Holyoke, Mass.: "He keeps complaining that he can't get his programs through Congress. What kind of defense is that? That's like a mayor crying that he can't get a program past a city council." Mayor Kenneth Gibson of Newark gave Carter more credit. Said Gibson: "Considering what he's had to work with, he's done a commendable job."

All in all, it had been a difficult week for the President. So, it was perhaps with a sense of relief that he choppered off to Camp David at week's end, laden with black vinyl-jacketed briefing books, to prepare for his trip to Europe this week. Accompanied by Rosalynn and Amy, he will stop off in Rome for a state visit, call on Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, and then fly to Venice for two days of economic talks with U.S. allies.

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