Carter: A Song of Woe

Nobody loves you when you 're down and out

Who's the legitimate ruler here?"Senator Pat Moynihan asked aloud at a press conference last week. It was an impish inquiry, since Legitimate Ruler Jimmy Carter was alive and well at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, but Moynihan's question reflected Washington's increasing sense of dissatisfaction and disarray. Indeed, as the week's end brought some expert claims that the U.S. has already entered a recession even though the Consumer Price Index rose in April at an annual rate of 14%, Carter himself may have felt like a man on the wrong side of the walls of Jericho.

Most of the trumpet calls came from Carter's own party. The House Democratic Caucus repudiated Carter's oil decontrol plan, and House liberals joined Republicans to vote down the proposed federal budget (a vote that was rescinded the next day). Five Democratic Congressmen publicly announced they would not support Carter's renomination and charged that he had "abandoned the promises and hopes of his own campaign." Four of them announced support for the drafting of Senator Edward Kennedy, an idea that Kennedy is doing increasingly little to discourage. A poll released last week showed him beating Carter by a shocking 70% to 20% in a head-on confrontation in California.

Then came the news from Atlanta that a grand jury had finally indicted Carter's close friend and former budget director, Bert Lance. As a black thundercloud loomed over the White House one afternoon, a Carter staffer remarked, "With our luck, it's going to snow."

The President tried to take the week's cudgelings in stride. Ten minutes after the White House was formally informed of the impending Lance indictment, Carter donned his jogging togs and ran four miles on the South Lawn. But privately he was infuriated. Said an intimate: "I've heard him use more profanity in the last four days than in the last four years."

Even in public, Carter joked bitterly about his problems. During a broadcast interview with members of the National Cable Television Association, which was meeting in Las Vegas, Carter said, "I am sure some of you are riding a better streak at the casinos than I am in Congress. For one thing, the odds are obviously better where you are."

A storm may be brewing. Reflected a presidential aide: "Forbearance doesn't elicit a more cooperative Congress." Still smarting from the House vote on gas rationing, Carter dashed off sharp notes to Congressmen. To New York Democrat James Hanley, who had explained his vote in a letter described by a White House official as "snotty and insulting," the President answered, "What should I do, put my head in the sand, ignore the problems, or look for a scapegoat?"

The conflict may prefigure an election like that of 1948, in which a President runs against Congress. (Truman, however, attacked a Republican-led legislature.) "I don't like this talk about campaigning against Congress," a Democratic congressional leader told a top White House staffer. Replied the staffer: "The President may find that Congress is running against him."

Some Congressmen agree. Said one:

"He doesn't have any loyalists around here. We all ran ahead of him in the last election. Now, when he's weak in the polls, members feel free to put space between him and them." That sense of political weakness extends far beyond the polls. Said one Democratic politico after a White House meeting: "I don't know where they think their electoral base is.

There is no white Southern vote, no labor vote, no farm vote as there was in 1976. Where will he find support?"

Carter appears undaunted. "I have never backed down from a fight," he told the Democratic National Committee last Friday. "In spite of our problems, I look forward to the future--including 1980."

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