Selling Jimmy

An adman joins Carter's staff

According to a recent poll, Jimmy Carter gets an anemic 30% approval rating for his handling of unemployment. Yet the jobless rate has fallen further and faster than anyone expected--from 7.3% when Carter took office to 6% as of April. Stung by the discrepancy between the negative ratings and the positive statistics, Presidential Press Secretary Jody Powell declared last week: "Something's wrong. I have to assume that I have not discharged my responsibility to let the American people know what we have done."

As Powell sees it, the President's low grade on unemployment is just one example of a White House "communication" problem, a failure to convey the Administration's accomplishments and goals to the voters. In an effort to solve the problem, Powell last week announced the appointment of an experienced image polisher, Gerald Rafshoon, 44, as Assistant to the President for Communications. Rafshoon, who has worked in every Carter campaign since 1966, produced the effective TV commercials that helped put Carter in the White House. Sample slogan: "For America's third century, why not the best?"

Born in New York, Rafshoon studied journalism at the University of Texas. After a three-year hitch in the Navy and promotion jobs for 20th Century-Fox in Atlanta and New York, he opened an Atlanta advertising agency in 1963. The agency launched a Washington branch office after Carter's victory and took on other political assignments, including the unsuccessful mayoral primary bid of New York Democrat Mario Cuomo.

Starting in his new job July 1, Rafshoon will be a member of the President's senior staff with a salary of $56,000 ("a substantial pay cut," according to Spokesman Powell). Charged with "long-range planning" of Carter publicity, Rafshoon will also supervise White House speech-writers and photographers, as well as oversee Carter's liaison to TV networks and advance press arrangements for presidential trips.

These are all duties that previously fell to Powell. Last year Powell announced that he would rely more on his top deputy, Rex Granum, to handle the day-to-day dealing with the cantankerous White House press corps, freeing Jody to handle longer-range projects and problems. But Powell discovered that he could not escape the daily crises and false alarms and had little time for anything else. During the recent presidential visit to several Western states, for example, Carter had hoped to make a major point of civil service reform. "But," says a senior White House aide, "we never quite got around to it. We need someone to plan these things and find ways to get them done."

Though Powell will be relinquishing a number of responsibilities, there is no indication that his fortunes have declined; Powell himself prompted the Rafshoon appointment. One who could wind up a loser in the change, however, is Media Adviser Barry Jagoda, a former TV news producer who has never been very popular with the senior White House staff. Jagoda will now report to Rafshoon instead of Powell. As a longtime Carter intimate, Rafshoon is expected to work more closely with the President than Jagoda has been able to do. "We needed someone who could hit the ground running in the sense of having the President's confidence," said Powell.

Inevitably, Rafshoon's appointment raises the question of whether the Carter Administration will now concentrate on packaging and huckstering. Rafshoon quite naturally insists that this will not be the case. "Sure, I packaged Carter during the campaign," says he. "But there was nothing dishonest about it. I presented him as he is, as the kind of man I know him to be." Rafshoon did that very effectively for Candidate Carter. Selling President Carter--and his programs --may prove even more of a challenge.

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