But Jimmy, We Hardly Knew Ye

By Thomas Griffith

A lot of people are having trouble finding out who Jimmy Carter is and what he stands for, but nowhere is the problem more acute than in Washington, and among its journalists. There, Carter seems to suffer less from being unknown than from being an outsider.

Carter asked for it in running against Washington. This tactic very early offended, among others, James Reston of the New York Times, long the most respected reporter in town. Reston, a man whose calls are always returned, a man not lightly placed on hold, so dominates the local scene that he writes possessively of Washington in a pronominally collective style that might be called Capital We. In February, Reston denounced all three outside presidential candidates--Carter, Reagan and Wallace--for running against the capital: "Washington is agitated and irritated by all these campaign maneuvers ... It has made fundamental blunders and acknowledges them, but in the last two generations, it has rescued the nation from social and economic disruption."

Carter's outsideness is a particular embarrassment to Washington journalists whose intimate knowledge of Washington politicians is an essential part of their expertise. Those columnists and commentators elevated enough to have shared late-night confidences with Henry and Hubert, to have sat around Georgetown dinner tables with Senators (and their wives), don't know Carter that way. Richard Reeves of New York magazine accepted Carter's breakfast invitation more than a year ago, but "I thought he was wasting his time (and mine) and I can't remember a word he said." Carter in turn seems to regard the Georgetown-Chevy Chase dinner set as others regard the military-industrial complex: something mysterious, powerful and probably sinister.

There have been several recent bridge-building occasions, including one at the home of Columnist Clayton Fritchey. The Washington Post's Sally Quinn reported that on one such occasion Carter looked on sympathetically at the Kennedy, McCarthy and Humphrey loyalists and said, "You know, you're a scarred group of people." Washington journalists, knowledgeable in the nation's problems and the contrariness of politics, have a hard time believing that anyone not in Washington residence can really be well informed. Not knowing Carter, bewildered by his reserve, they have redoubled their efforts to smoke him out.

That is journalism's business, the public is served, and Carter can hardly complain. Tom Wicker examines Carter's evasions and finds him only "candidly ambiguous"; Joe Kraft hunches that he won't go all the way, but will be the vice-presidential nominee. There are antagonists too, naturally: Rowland Evans and Robert Novak from their outpost closer to Jackson's camp lob unfriendly questions at "the smiling peanut farmer from Georgia." David Broder cannot decide whether Carter "is the most promising political figure to emerge in the 1970s or the most skillful demagogue."

When Carter, moving at last into a more familiar Washington orbit, got the speechwriting help of such O.K. types as Columbia University Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Lawyer Cyrus Vance for a Chicago foreign policy address, Reston was strangely censorious: "He has made great progress by being dead honest, but in Chicago he was pretending, and if he pretends he may lose everything." Reston is usually more generous about politicians and notes that Lincoln, too, "did not argue the particular issues that divided the American people, but avoided these divisions and appealed to their common ideals."

After once arguing that outsiders cannot possibly know and front runners usually disappear, capital gurus are now taking seriously the idea that Jimmy Carter may get the nomination. Their reservations to date are proper. Yet their swiftly changing attitude toward "Wee Jimmy" (Reston's phrase) recalls at least the first phase of how Parisian journalists treated Napoleon in the 20 days after he escaped from Elba and landed in France: "The monster has escaped from his place of exile." "The Corsican werewolf has landed at Cannes." "The tyrant has reached Lyon." "The usurper has dared to advance within 150 miles of the capital." "Tomorrow Napoleon will be at our gates." "His Majesty is at Fontainebleau."

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