Come Rain or Come Shine

Carter weathers a tour of four hostile states--and even finds some friends

Sunlight broke through the dark, rolling thunderheads last week as Jimmy Carter's presidential motorcade headed toward a desolate plateau near Golden, Colo. He was on his way to deliver a speech marking Sun Day. Then, suddenly, it began to rain and hail.

The incident was an inauspicious beginning for Carter's three-day fence-mending tour of four Western states and seemed typical of his fitful fortunes recently. Indeed, all kinds of trouble were raining down on the President as he left Washington. The 38 Republican Senators issued a 29-page attack on his foreign policy, describing it as "inept" and raising the curtain on a major G.O.P. issue in this year's congressional races.

Carter faced serious difficulties over his efforts to get Congress to lift the three-year-old embargo on sales of weapons to NATO ally Turkey. He considers repeal essential to strengthen the Atlantic Alliance; his opponents on the issue are led by the small but well-organized Greek lobby, still outraged by Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus. Last week the House International Relations Committee backed Carter's position by a single vote.

At the same time, Israeli Premier Menachem Begin was off on an eight-day, four-city campaign among American Jews to shore up support for his policies and build opposition to Carter's plans to sell advanced fighter planes to Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as Israel.

The President was further hampered by rapidly sinking public support. His approval rating with voters, according to the Harris poll, has sunk by 17 percentage points, to 30%, in the past four months. A Gallup poll to be released this week shows that if registered Democrats were now given a choice between Carter and Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy as their 1980 presidential nominee, Kennedy would win, 53% to 40%.

Carter is particularly unpopular in the West. All four of the states that he visited last week--Colorado, California, Oregon and Washington--voted for Gerald Ford in 1976. Since then, Carter has outraged water-short Westerners by trying to eliminate 19 proposed dams, half of them in the West. Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus has stirred up further hostility trying to carry out a 1976 court decision requiring the Government to enforce the Federal Reclamation Act of 1902, which has been largely ignored in recent years. The law, which applies chiefly to 1 million acres in 18 Western states, sets limits on the amount of federally irrigated land that can be owned by a farmer. Andrus has proposed redistributing the land and limiting owners to 960 acres each--a direct blow at the holdings of large corporate farmers. Many Western farmers also oppose Carter's determination to hold down agricultural subsidies. West Coast lumbermen fault him for not easing restrictions on their operations in federal lands. Observed Democratic Governor Richard Lamm of Colorado: "This whole region is just neurotic on the subject of the Carter Administration."

Faced with these liabilities, the President expected no large returns from the three days, during which he alternated between trying to placate his critics and being tough with them. His first stop, Golden, was the most troublesome. Democratic Freshman Senator Floyd Haskell complained loudly beforehand when he discovered that the President was bringing along Andrus and Secretary of Agriculture Bob Bergland. Haskell called them "symbols of the two mosthated Carter Administration policies in the West [on water and farm subsidies]." Said a more diplomatic Lamm to reporters: "I don't want to be a poor host. Just say the West, like the President, believes in the power of redemption."

At Golden, Carter was in a mollifying mood. He stood in a downpour before a crowd of about 200 people and announced that an extra $100 million in Government research and development funds would be available for solar and other nonfossil-fuel projects in 1979. Said he: "The question is how to cut costs so that solar power will set a cap on rising oil prices." The money would raise total federal spending on solar power next year to more than $500 million.

In Denver, Carter further soothed Colorado voters by announcing a five-year federal program of $675 million in grants and $500 million in loan guarantees to help resource-rich states (like Colorado) deal with the problems of economic growth caused by the energy boom.

Next day, in Los Angeles, the President stopped trying to sound conciliatory and took up the aggressive image that he has been trying to project lately. In a speech before the Los Angeles Bar Association, he returned to a theme that he has sounded from time to time throughout his political career; he sharply criticized the nation's lawyers largely for opposing necessary social changes and ignoring the needs of poor Americans. Said he: "We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on earth, but I am not sure we have more justice. Ninety percent of our lawyers serve 10% of our people. We must look beyond these comfortable insulations of privilege." Carter's audience reacted coolly to his exhortations, applauding infrequently and perfunctorily. On the dais, California Governor Jerry Brown, a 1980 presidential hopeful, turned his back and talked with another guest as the President finished his address. Only when Carter walked over did Brown spin around and warmly shake his hand.

After the speech, Carter reverted to fence mending--this time in Los Angeles' black community. Support for the President among blacks, which was an important ingredient of his 1976 victory, has sagged severely, with black leaders charging that the President has neglected their constituents. Carter made a handshaking tour of a community service center in the Watts ghetto and reaffirmed his support for black social and economic goals.

Later that day, at a press conference in Portland, Ore., Carter defended himself against suggestions that he might be a political liability for Western Democrats. Said he: "I don't think that I'm a handicap for Democrats. If any of them think so, then their proximity to me is a voluntary matter."

After staying overnight in a private home, Carter emerged feisty once again. Talking to reporters, he extended his critique of lawyers to include doctors. Said he: "I think doctors care very deeply about their patients, but when they organize into the American Medical Association, their responsibility is to the welfare of doctors." He elaborated on this theme at a town-hall meeting in Spokane, Wash., charging that organized medicine is the chief stumbling block to congressional passage of national health insurance.

Carter also dedicated a riverfront park in Spokane. This time the sun beamed down upon him, and 50,000 onlookers gave him the kind of friendly welcome his aides had been hoping for all week.

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