The Truth Must Out

One of the many reasons evasion of the truth is not a good idea in the presidency these days is that it does not work.

Duplicity lay at the heart of both our modern political tragedies--Viet Nam and Watergate. It came in many forms. There was Richard Nixon's audacious attempt to fool 70 million television viewers about his role in the political scandal, and there was Lyndon Johnson's budgetary sleight of hand to disguise $10 billion in war costs. In between there were fibs and fudges, convenient losses of memory, tampering with records, feigned confusion and phony definitions of words and phrases. One way or another, it was all designed to obscure the truth. One way or another, it was all done in the name of the greater national interest. But in the end, it all came down in the American mind to a short, blunt outrage--lying.

For four years we arrested thoughtful consideration of what we ought to be doing in the world while we rooted out the facts of these repellent intrigues and devised means to prevent them from recurring. We learned during this national catharsis that there is no Fail-Safe system to guarantee that truth will out. So it is the most natural thing in the world that the U.S. sensitivity to truth--or the lack of it--in the presidency is about as finely tuned as any national instinct. For the man in the White House, there is no escape from the facts.

Why Jimmy Carter, a political product of our search for honor, has allowed these old shadows of doubt to flicker again is incomprehensible. But last week the stories of the Carter peanut-warehouse loan and the appointment of a "special counsel" to investigate generated new concerns about truth at the top.

There are only a few unforgiving people in Washington who believe that there is a Watergate pattern in this Lance-Carter affair that reaches into the Oval Office. Most people are convinced that Carter is as honest a President as we have had in modern times. But almost everyone in this capital believes that if Carter does not move quickly and decisively to manifest his innocence, his silence will ripen into another great national doubt about presidential honor.

Almost from the start of his Administration, there have been reminders of years gone by. His flexible policies, his easy use of hyperbole, his variable definitions of statements have sometimes suggested a man so bent on capturing friends that language became too casual. In his eagerness to cast himself in the best light, he occasionally appears to bend the facts to fit the moment. His skein of contradictory statements about the reasons for firing U.S. Attorney David Marston, who was probing political corruption in Pennsylvania, was most likely one of those convenient misunderstandings, probably a tiny incident in Carter's mind to get him over a small embarrassment.

In those early months of his Administration, his appreciation of the difference between the importance of such acts in the White House and the tolerant Southern view of human frailty afforded family and longtime friends was not fully developed. When his confidant Bert Lance got into trouble, Carter could not divorce himself from one he knew so well. Yet these lapses have been minor. Carter's basic integrity has remained intact.

His special love of wayward Brother Billy is perfectly understandable, but his reluctance to place the presidency and the national interest before family has spawned some doubt about his motives in the current environment. The trauma of the past few years can consume him just as surely as the others before him, if clear and complete explanations are not produced--and soon.

Taking temporary refuge in legalities is not enough in the presidency. This goes beyond the technicalities of the law. Jody Powell's "welcoming" the appointment of the special counsel to "provide reassurance" is a distressingly familiar refrain from a dark past.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.