Jimmy Behind Closed Doors

By Hugh Sidey

A few nights ago, Washington passed through one of those implausible hours that are both its curse and its exhilaration. In the White House the leaders of Latin America and the U.S. dined on lobster and roast veal and hoisted scores of glasses of Blanc de Blancs champagne in warm tribute to the spirit of the new Panama Canal treaty signed earlier.

Outside, as these melodic strains were filling the cool evening, there was the jarring counterpoint of a growing political crisis. From Capitol Hill to Foggy Bottom, Congressmen, bureaucrats, journalists and their groupies hovered in offices near phones for new fragments from the Bert Lance affair.

Just about then a fictional replay of the Nixon tragedy--Washington: Behind Closed Doors-- was holding 50 million Americans in front of their TV screens. The best line of the day came out of this electronic novel. Andy Griffith, playing a retiring President patterned on Lyndon Johnson, cast a wise eye on Jason Robards, the fictional Nixon, and advised, "It's plenty hard to lose the affection and trust of those people. But let me tell you something, lose it once by God you never get it back!"

That does not seem to be a very difficult truth to perceive. And if it has penetrated to the Hollywood scriptwriters, then it would not seem illogical to assume that the fellow in the Oval Office should have some understanding of that basic rule of leadership. Yet it was this very disaster with which Jimmy Carter flirted last week.

The Bert Lance problem was at first nothing more than a minor personal crisis for Lance. A jovial, energetic friend of the President's was suddenly found to be something less than the financial wizard and fixture of probity that everyone had been led to believe he was.

In almost every difficulty that comes this close to the Chief Executive, there is a moment when the problem can be solved with minor discomfort for the presidency and the people. But also at that critical juncture there is the danger that the President, by design or from carelessness, will transform the issue into a presidential test. That is a deep and dangerous morass. Carter put one foot in that morass on the afternoon of Aug. 18 when he choppered down from Camp David to give Lance his "Bert, I'm proud of you" vote of confidence. In those few seconds what Bert Lance had done or not done became of secondary importance. Jimmy Carter, followed by the supportive chorus of his naive aides, tried to tell the American people that what Bert Lance had done as a banker was quite normal and that Bert represented the Administration's highest code of conduct.

That is an insult to almost everyone's intelligence. Whether Lance's actions are illegal is not the critical question. Common sense tells most of the nation that Lance's actions are so far from the norm as to be bizarre. Thus as Carter and his people have argued Lance's case, they have painted themselves to be either slightly dishonest or grossly uncomprehending. In either environment trust wilts.

It was inevitable, of course, that the old memories of Johnson and Nixon surfaced. Though Carter's troubles were only a tiny fraction of those of the other two Presidents, the pattern of response was distressingly familiar. L.B.J. thought it would ease his burden a bit to deceive the people slightly about Viet Nam. The people, as they almost always do in this age, found out, and their fury against these distortions was as great as against the war. Nixon's belief that somehow the public would not know he was covering up about Watergate was the greatest miscalculation in his sordid ledger.

And, sure enough, even as Carter was contemplating new findings about Lance, Pollster Lou Harris arrived in town with a new poll showing Carter down seven points in his standing in the nation. And that poll was taken before the last few days that went so badly for Bert Lance. Harris predicted that the people would continue to lose faith in Carter as long as he stubbornly refused to be candid with them.

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