View from the Carter Bunker

By Robert Ajemian

An exclusive look at the winner's operatives in action

THE PRESIDENT'S MEN

Getting there was only half the fun for Carter's political operatives. Once established in New York City, they confronted the mission impossible of making everything seem to work to the advantage of their boss--and to have everything that did work happen in prime time.

Inside the tiny, cramped trailer, the two managers of Jimmy Carter's campaign sat huddled together, tense but confident that they had control over the nearby convention floor. This was Monday evening and the fight over delegate rules would settle things once and for all. Robert Strauss and Hamilton Jordan sat on the brown vinyl couches, half a dozen phones on the table in front of them, sending floor whips and Cabinet officers into the hall to brace wavering delegates.

Jordan wore a pinstripe suit, and whenever he stepped out of the trailer he fastidiously covered his bottle of beer with a brown paper bag. Strauss, in white shirtsleeves, leaned forward on the couch, a phone to his ear. A call had just come from the Maine delegates threatening to abandon Carter unless they received a statement from their favorite son, Ed Muskie, the Secretary of State, that he definitely would not run. Jordan quickly picked up another phone, dialed the President at Camp David and asked him to get Muskie to make the call.

For all their differences in personality and background, Strauss and Jordan get along well and are ideally matched. Strauss, 61, the wily, experienced tactician, is indispensable to the Georgians, who are still inept in the use of political power. The ebullient Strauss is virtually their only bridge to the real world of politics, and they trust him. Jordan, 35, the brilliant and impetuous young planner, tends to keep himself isolated. Neither man has much use for Ted Kennedy personally, but they both know how tough his opposition was. Earlier that day Strauss felt a surge of optimism that the pressure from Kennedy was about to be relieved. He had received word that Kennedy wanted to meet him secretly at the Plaza Hotel, and Strauss immediately called the President. "These conventions are like a cake," he told Carter. "They all have a moment to set, and I think it may be now." Responded Carter, who was more skeptical: "It seems more like an omelette to me." When Strauss arrived at the hotel, he was informed that Kennedy had changed his mind. Strauss was furious. The cake had not set.

Now, back inside the narrow trailer, he roll call over rules was under way. Four TV sets, all turned on, were stacked on top of one another in one corner, and he two men sat knee to knee watching closely. Carter Aides Jody Powell and Tim Kraft pushed their way into the rickety command center. Alabama was solid for Carter, but when California passed, Jordan thought he saw a strategy. "Kennedy is holding back the big states to make the others uneasy," he said. When Colorado lost a few Carter delegates, the group moved restlessly, but there was no real concern. Maine took the microphone, and Jordan sat up, wondering if the President had reached Muskie in time. He had, and Carter's down-East votes stuck with him. Needled Jordan: "I hope Massachusetts puts us over."

A floor whip rushed in and told Strauss that a couple of Wyoming delegates were slipping away. Would Strauss call them? "Yeah, give me that phone," he said. Strauss got his man, purred into the phone about needing every vote and talked about returning to Wyoming to hunt with the delegate. Strauss's face broke into a grin as he put down the receiver. "We got those two back," he told Jordan. Strauss is a man who knows the value of a swap. He had raised money for many of the politicians here, done them countless favors, and now he was collecting for his side in return.

The big states like California and Illinois held strongly for Carter, and when Pennsylvania put Carter over the top, Strauss was on his feet. "Let's go, Hamilton, start calling those names!" he said in a shout. Jordan answered that he was going to go congratulate the Carter workers. "Not them, goddam it!" Strauss barked at him. "I mean the guys we just beat. We own the others."

A Carter aide came into the room to say there was a move on the convention podium to make the rules vote unanimous. "No, no, tell them to leave it alone!" decided Jordan. Like Strauss, he was anxious not to bruise Kennedy further. A few minutes later the report of Kennedy's withdrawal came over the TV sets, and the Carter men let out another roar. The size of their victory, 545.8 votes, clearly lifted the President's aides. From his mountaintop at Camp David, the President had a different view. He told Strauss later in the evening that Kennedy had telephoned him. The Senator had not sounded all that conciliatory, said the wary Carter, and there could still be real trouble. "We haven't got a great victory here," warned the President.

The skepticism about Kennedy was even more evident the next morning when the President's closest advisers--Charlie Kirbo, Stu Eizenstat, Jordan and Powell --gathered at 9 o'clock in Strauss's three-room hotel suite. Strauss informed them that he had called Kennedy early that morning only to be told the Senator was too busy to talk about their differences on the platform. Jordan had a similar story to report. His counterpart on the Kennedy side, Paul Kirk, had not returned his calls either. "They're not going to play ball," said Strauss. The group spent the next 30 minutes deciding what to recommend to the President.

Jordan telephoned Camp David to explain their fears. "Mr. President," Jordan began, "we need to know how much you'll give up on the platform." Carter's answer: yield a little but absolutely not on wage and price controls. Then Strauss took the phone. "We're going to take a pasting today, Mr. President," he said, reporting that Kennedy seemed to be shutting them off. "He's going to be very tough. Get ready for it." Carter reminded Strauss that he had picked that up in Kennedy's voice the previous evening.

The Carter managers were determined not to align the President with a platform that called for big spending programs. They gathered their forces together in a small open area amid the five Carter trailers, which were circled like frontier wagons. Jordan called about 50 of the floor whips, wearing bright green vests, to collect around him. Standing on a wooden box, he exhorted the group. "The worst thing in the world for President Carter is to be just sitting here while this platform is rewritten," he said. "We've got to fight every one of these economic reports." Then Strauss climbed up and gave another push. "The country is not with Senator Kennedy on these issues," he said. "Remind these delegates about the fight against inflation." But like Strauss and Jordan, Delegate Chief Tom Donilon, standing at the edge of the group, knew the fight was already lost. "These votes are going to come right after Kennedy's speech," Donilon said glumly.

The Carter leaders moved back inside the trailer to listen to Kennedy. They were not expecting much from the speech itself; during the campaign they had become used to watching him stumble at big moments. But this was not the usual bellowing Kennedy. Right from the start the speech had a different ring. Immediately, the men in the trailer turned anxious. Strauss and Jordan were silent, holding advance copies of the speech in their hands, following the words closely. Black Leader Jesse Jackson squeezed into the corner of the trailer and stared hard at the screen. "What do you think, Jesse?" Jordan said, looking over at him. Jackson never took his eyes off Kennedy. "It's pretty damn good," he muttered. Jordan just had to say something. "It's helping Carter," he said defiantly to the silent group.

The tiny room was so jammed with people that Strauss had to stand in the doorway, stretching his neck to see the screen. Except for Kennedy's voice, there was no sound in the trailer. Jody Powell broke the stillness with a crack about the Senator's being in an easy position to suggest things, and the group grunted approval. Jerry Rafshoon piped up: "You tell them, Teddy," voicing the resentment in the room.

The instant Kennedy was through, the noisy demonstration of support from the floor filled the trailer. A call came in from Carl Wagner, a top Kennedy aide, and Tim Kraft cupped his hand to his ear and listened to an offer from the Senator. From the couch, Strauss watched intently. As Kraft repeated the terms out loud--Kennedy would abandon the agreed-upon roll call votes if Carter would concede three economic planks calling for wage and price controls, a jobs program and giving priority to fighting unemployment--Strauss got to his feet and let loose. "The hell with that," he said. "No deal. Get Hamilton in here." A few minutes later, Jordan bounded into the trailer. He had just talked to Wagner himself. "You hear that goddam offer," Jordan said angrily. "I told him to go to hell." Then he stopped and said, "I probably shouldn't have said it." Strauss assured him he had said exactly the right thing, that the proposal was foolish.

Then Party Chairman John White called from the podium with news of a second Kennedy offer. This time the Senator would yield on the minority report calling for wage and price controls if he could carry the other two. Jordan liked the sound of that and asked Strauss what he thought. "I say take it, take it right now," said Strauss. Jordan agreed, and Strauss grabbed the phone to tell Convention Chairman Tip O'Neill on the podium.

By that time O'Neill and White had a jubilant army of Kennedy delegates on their hands. White was even wondering whether they could calm down the floor enough to bring the reports to roll call votes. "Tip," Strauss shouted into the phone, and O'Neill hunched over to hear the words. "Keep that goddam music going. Walk around, keep this thing stalled.

We need time to talk to our people on the floor." Strauss had another piece of advice for the men on the platform. "For Christ's sake," he hollered, "smile a little bit up there. You look like a bunch of undertakers."

Strauss and Jordan got on the phones immediately to key Carter delegations -- Illinois, Ohio, the Southern states -- outlining the new position, namely to yield on the planks on job subsidies and fighting unemployment. Some delegations, like Ohio, bitterly resented the decision. Several others called the trailer to object. "It's tough," said Strauss to Jordan. "A lot of these guys broke their backs for us." Finally the time had run out, the Kennedy fever on the floor was holding at a peak. Strauss and Jordan had no time to call the President to ask for directions; they had to move on their own.

Strauss reached for the phone again and called O'Neill. "Tip, we're ready now," he said. "We're going to take one, and give them two and three." He repeated the instructions twice more in the din, and the loyal O'Neill had his orders. He quickly gaveled the decisions through on voice votes, obviously being guided not at all by the comparative volume of the ayes and nays. When O'Neill declared the President the victor on the plank on wage and price controls despite the fact that the Kennedy forces were almost surely in the majority, the Carter team in the trailer howled with laughter. "That Tip," said Strauss, watching in admiration. "He told me not to worry, that he'd do it in 30 seconds. Look at him go."

The deed was done. The powerful Kennedy presence would still linger for the last two days of the convention, but it was not until the final evening that the underlying tensions surfaced sharply once again. When Kennedy was the last to arrive on the platform, barely concealing his discomfort, the President's men were livid. Kennedy's strained be havior caused among Carter's crew a whole new surge of anger against him. Now Carter's managers knew there was no real reconciliation, if one had ever been possible. They could expect only token support in the fall. But the fight that Strauss and Jordan had waged from their trailer had shored up the candidacy of a President whose own party obviously had little heart for him. --

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