The Rise of Robert Strauss

The big winner last week was Carter's special trade representative, Robert Strauss. TIME Washington Correspondent Stanley Cloud reports:

"I'm the best damn appointment Jimmy Carter has made," drawled Bob Strauss not long before the President gave him the additional job of ambassador-with-jawbone to Big Business and labor in the battle to check inflation. Immodesty is part of the ebullient Texan's style. So, too, are profanity, sensitivity, a dislike for pretense, a taste for good whisky, and deft persuasiveness in almost any matter involving politics and politicians.

During the past few months, Strauss has used the telephone on his large French-provincial desk (adorned with a plaque asserting IT CAN BE DONE) to carry out many presidential missions. He has helped in pressuring coal companies to accept union demands during the recent miners' strike, promoting approval of the first Panama Canal treaty and persuading Senators to clear the nomination of G. William Miller as Federal Reserve chairman. The day after the committee swung behind Miller, Strauss told him: "Mondale and I worked that Banking Committee from A to Z yesterday. Now you can go to work."

A self-made millionaire lawyer-businessman, Strauss, 59, mixes Machiavellian tactics with mirth, backslapping with cool competence. As chief U.S. trade negotiator, a job he will retain, he demonstrated his unusual bargaining techniques in Tokyo earlier this year when he grabbed his Japanese counterpart, Nobuhiko Ushiba, in a Texas bear hug and bellowed, "Brother Ushiba, you're crazy as hell!"

He may not behave that effusively with, say, the chairman of U.S. Steel, whom he helped persuade to roll back a steel price increase earlier this month. But what kind of jawboner will Strauss be? He replies that he intends not only to "name the sinners" but "find some heroes out there. Americans like heroes." Says Presidential Press Secretary Jody Powell: "Strauss's responsibility is to stay on top of the private sector's compliance with the President's inflation goals. About the only lever we have is public condemnation if the goals are violated, and I think Strauss is a goddam good condemner. You really need a good pol to do this right. Mike Blumenthal could be that if he really wanted to, but I don't think he does."

Strauss knows the ingredients of winning politics--people, loyalty, egos, energy--as did his Texas mentors, Lyndon Johnson and John Connally. For him, politics is people, not issues; winning, not scoring debating points; having fun, not studying position papers. As chairman of the Democratic Party from 1972 to 1976, he stitched together warring Democrats after George McGovern's defeat and handed Jimmy Carter a unified party. During the fall campaign, Strauss grumbled privately that Carter and his aides were not paying enough attention to him. There is still some residual mistrust, but relations steadily improved after he took the job as chief trade negotiator and began to flash political talents, which are in short supply in the Administration.

He may be just a little too slick for many businessmen, though in general they warmly greeted his appointment. Like Strauss, they recognize that he cannot accomplish much unless the President puts his own power and prestige on the line to fight inflation.

Strauss says, not altogether convincingly, that he will remain in the Administration only another year or so: "I'm going to tell the President that Helen [his wife] and I want to go back to the Riviera." He returned from a holiday there last week to take the title of Mr. Anti-Inflation. His first assignment: meeting Blumenthal over a light lunch to massage his bruised ego. Strauss felt that his persuasion had worked again. Said he afterward: "I'm a good partner. Mike is ready to work with me now, as I am with him."

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