Perils in the Halls of Power

By Hugh Sidey

The forces at work within the White House have always been hard to reconcile. Secrecy is essential in some crises, but secrecy can also become a refuge for incompetence or special favor. Loyalty and the desire to protect the President are ingredients of any effective White House staff, but sometimes withholding blunt truths is the worst service that can be rendered.

Family and favored friends of a President form a special arsenal of service and persuasion, but if not sparingly used and tightly supervised, these people sometimes confuse their own interests with those of the nation.

Jimmy Carter stands this week victimized by just about all those crosscurrents. He is not a Watergate, which was caused by corruption at the center that radiated out into Government. But he has been afflicted by carelessness and bad judgment on the fringes of the Oval Office, and the failings have further strained his uncertain leadership.

There is about all this just the faintest whiff of the White House power mentality that has wounded so many other Presidents. The danger occurs among the President's people; they come to believe that their position and their dedication to the national good justify action that might be rejected in a more open environment. In the cloistered and tranquil corridors of the White House, where most problems are reduced to paper or discussed with a few polite visitors, difficulties all seem manageable.

Jimmy Carter's eagerness to turn to Billy last winter during the hostage crisis, despite the suspect status of his brother's relationship with the Libyans, was yet another display of what under different circumstances would be a commendable quality of family fealty. But when a man is President, the national interest must of course come first. Jimmy Carter still seems unable to sort that out. The President of the U.S. does not need anyone else to help him set up a meeting with a second-level diplomat.

When one reads between Zbigniew Brzezinski's odd lines in this drama, there appears to be an overeagerness to please the boss (and his wife) and maybe to enhance his own inner position. In June, when Billy came round to talk about his troubles with the Justice Department, Brzezinski seemed to confuse the good of Billy with the good of the U.S. Government. Brzezinski called in White House Lawyer Lloyd Cutler. It is probably too much to hope that some day someone with Brzezinski's ambitions will stand up in the presence of a Billy and show him the door, then go to the Oval Office to warn the President.

Cutler saw the danger almost instantly when he was summoned by Brzezinski to hear Billy's sad case. Cutler is fascinated by power, driven by a sense of duty to his country and to the man he serves. He also is a man who understands that power is made up by gathering fragments that lie loose around the White House. The script we have on the Billy affair now suggests that Cutler felt the inner compulsion to move into the problem rather than stay away, a decision obviously based on his skill as an attorney and bolstered by the feeling that such minor human adversities can be managed and controlled.

This is all part of the special--and dangerous--magic of the office. If a President and his people listened always to their cautions and hesitations, nothing would get done. The isolation and the legends of power are inherent factors in the White House that can produce greatness in Government. But when carried too far, they can also lead to disaster or, as is probably the case with Brother Billy, produce foolishness that looks substantially worse than it really is.

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