When TIME's Laurence Barrett began covering the White House last May, he knew about the two rites of passage that awaited him. The first was perfunctory: despite past assignments at the Pentagon, he was fingerprinted and photographed immediately by the Secret Service, then issued a pass at the White House gates for each visit until he received a final security clearance. The second was a pleasure: a welcoming chat with Jimmy Carter. Since his arrival, Barrett has filed reports on a whirlwind of major stories that include the vote on whether or not to sell warplanes to Israel, and our in-depth study: "Jimmy Carter, the Leadership Question." This week his reporting provides the backbone of our Nation story about the President's edgy relations with Congress.

As a new White House correspondent, Barrett naturally spends a certain amount of time trying to fill in his blank "dance card" with high-level sources in the Carter camp. But the broad terms of the job are as familiar to him as the keys on a typewriter. For 20 years, Barrett has made U.S. politics his beat. A graduate of Columbia's School of Journalism, he joined the New York Herald Tribune in 1957. Soon he became the Tribune's city hall bureau chief, with a regular column, "City Hall Beat," and wrote The Mayor of New York, a then futuristic political novel about urban pathology. After helping to cover the White House for the Tribune during the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies, Barrett in 1965 joined TIME, where he worked in the Nation section and wrote 24 cover stories. Eventually, he served as a senior editor, then became chief of the magazine's New York bureau.

On returning to Washington, he was most struck by two changes since the Johnson era. The presidency has lost important leverage, he observes. And at least partly because of that, Jimmy Carter seems unable to keep a hold on the public's imagination. Says Barrett: "It's as if the electorate, which is still in an ambivalent and cranky mood, liked the down-home candidate Carter, but wants something quite different from President Carter."

Will the President gain his lost ground? In the months to come, Barrett will be the man best placed to help us answer that question for TIME'S readers.

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