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JIMMY CARTER REVEALED: He's a Republican

by Christopher Lydon

It has dawned on the liberals of his party that chairman of the trustees of the Rockefeller Founda­ is not entirely one of them. tion); Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal; De­ Some people knew that all along-David fense Secretary Harold Brown; National Security Council Director Brzezinski and the NSC's analyst of Rockefeller, for instance, who now has a friend Soviet intentions, Samuel P. Huntington; also then at the . In the following pages, a senator, now Vice President, Walter F. Mondale; and political reporter inquires into Carter's a formerly obscure but promising Georgia governor, ideological loyalties, and an economic now President, Jimmy Carter-if, as I say fancifully, columnist explores the importance of Carter's some indisputable record had been preserved from "Trilateral Connection." three or four years ago of these men signing blood oaths to remember and honor their fellowship if and when one of them came to power, most editors, commentators, and indeed politicians would have clucked disparagingly that only nuts think power t sounds too simple, I grant you, but just for the works that way in America. Maybe they are right. In sake of argument, try thinking of Jimmy Carter any event we will not get into conspiracy theories here, I as a . It is hardly more or into any. diagram of power mechanics that might simplistic than "populist," ·.','.New South," "evangeli­ suggest a literal explanation of Carter's rise. This is cal," and su:-idry other h.andlt;s that have been tried more nearly a game of categories, a parlor exercise in out on Carter; it fits more. snugly than any of the thinking about who Jimmy Carter is and where, meta­ others do, and for me it's held firm for more than a phorically, he came from. year now. I stumbled blindly on the Rockefeller clue in the No, alas, this is not an argument that David Rocke­ spring of 1976 and I admit I didn't know what to do feller first invented Jimmy Carter around 1971, · with it when I found it. The first crucial observation arranged for . to train him in was that Jimmy Carter, altogether the smartest strate­ global . politics, and then rigged his nomination and gist and most compelling campaigner in a poor pri­ election. Nor do I believe what some Reaganites have mary field, had no base in the Democratic party and suggested: that a piqued -dumped little prospect of getting one. He was a former right­ from the Republican ticket in favor of Senator Bob to-work governor in a labor-bossed party, from a state Dole, a Reagan designee--contrived last fall to make that hadn't voted Democratic for President in sixteen Jimmy Caner the vessel of his revenge on the GOP. years; a rural southern WASP in a party {presiden­ On the contrary, I observe here the ban on conspiracy tially speaking) of northern urban ethnics; and a stran­ theories in mainstream American journalism and ger, it seemed, to the several power establishments­ political discussion. So unfashionable are conspiracy representing Jews, the congressional barons, foreign theories that if indeed a photograph had been pre­ policy types, liberals, and the rest-that even in served from 1973 or 1974 of tl\~ · several American revised manuals were supposed to count for a lot. He members and aides of Pa~d ,Rockefeller's Trilateral bragged, of course, that he was indeed an uninitiated Commission-such men as , now New Boy and that his outsiderhood would attract a an assistant ; , new and unconventional base. It didn't take Dick the undersecretary of state; their immediate superior, Tracy, though, or even a confirmed cynic, to figure out {who had been, among other things, that presidential politics was no place for outsiders. I 50 J How did anyone still suppose that the power of the deflated campaigns of Fred Harris, , White House could be exercised, \i:nuch less ex­ and , were illusions of television changed, outside of the oligarchical harnesses that reporting; his defeats, as in Massachusetts and New confined other areas of American life? York, were abysmal. He was short in categories that In October of 1975 I had remarked to Jimmy defined the core Democratic vote: working-class Carter, after greatly admiring his to that whites, blacks, browns, Jews, Catholics, union-organ­ point, that had -he devoted comparable resources ized and not. Yet people, especially media people, (roughly a year of his own and his family's time, the were taking Jimmy Carter seriously. What was going full-time assistance of perhaps twenty people, and on here? about $1 million) toward capturing a dominant posi­ tion in industry, he wouldn't have made a small dent against General Motors, say, in the automobile busi- very clever, coldhearted, main-chance opera­ -· ness, or even against Gillette in the razor 'blade busi­ tive in Democratic politics was jumping ness. Would market shares be any less protected, I E aboard the Carter opportunity, but that wondered aloud, in the Democratic party?-protected didn't explain what made it work. Some more funda- not only by the active older brand names like Kennedy . mental combination of forces rallying around Jimmy and Humphrey but also by permanent interests like Carter had yet to be accounted for. That was when the labor, the Israeli lobby, the peace Left, and others who Rockefeller theory occurred to me, and I hadn't even would want liens on the next Democratic nominee? been looking for it. Nor do I share the U. S. Labor Carter answered simply and with his usual foresight party's ability to find Rockefeller fingerprints ev­ that his success in the early caucuses and primaries erywhere. Furthermore, as I've said, I didn't want to would light the skies with his own brand name, and find a conspiracy. Yet at least three main elements in that he expected not to be in an "adversary" position the Carter engine looked like spare parts from the when he approached the oligarchs before the conven­ Rockefeller shop. tion. One was Time magazine, which gave Carter early His early successes were nonetheless unconvincing, prominence with a flattering cover portrait in 1971. I thought. There was genius in the way Carter conned Through 1975, Time's advertising in other magazines other competitors out of the Florida primary for what for its own campaign coverage looked more like an ad amounted to a one-on-one test against George Wal­ for Jimmy Carter: a half-page picture presented the lace-and used the prospect of that Armageddon to candidate in a Kennedyesque rocking chair under the raise black interest and liberal money. Much of the caption: "His basic strategy consists of handshaking latter was actually diverted beforehand into the and street-cornering his way into familiarity." season-opening media event, the Iowa caucuses. But so what? He couldn't beat Hu­ Should the Trilateral Commission be viewed as a bert H. Uncommitted in Iowa; in all the early pri­ cabal of multinational financiers or should it be seen maries (New Hampshire, simply as 's foreign policy toy? Massachusetts, Florida, Illi­ nois, Wisconsin, , and ), the network and newspaper polls Through 1976 and into 1977, Time's hagiographers of primary-day voters. showed uniformly that Hum­ were hard to separate from the Carter promotional phrey and (both of them eager for the staff. The White House returned the favor regularly­ nomination, I persisted in believing) were the over­ in April, for example, by giving Time the first exclu­ whelming favorites of their party. The Carter voters, sive "Day With Jimmy Carter." And Time kept moreover, did not seem to constitute a base at all-a earning more favors with ever gushier accounts of conservative minority in New Hampshire, a liberal Carter and his men-as of that shrewd Republican minority in Florida; he did particularly well every­ survivor from the Nixon years, "that tall, rumpled, where among Democrats who had voted for Richard totally unpretentious and incisively brilliant intellec­ Nixon in 1972; his primary victories hung repeat­ tual, James Rodney Schlesinger.. . . MR. ENERGY: edly on strength in rural areas where any Demo­ DOING THE DOABLE-AND MORE." Not that there was crat would be hard-pressed in the fall; he was weak anything new or wrong about Time's adjectival poli­ again and again in cities where _a successful Democrat ticking, but I couldn't remember the weekly newsmag­ would have to run strong in the final election. Some of azine extending itself that way in the past except for his "victories," as in the primary over the the more eastern and international (or Rockefeller)

51 wing of the Republican party-for Willkie in 1940, many others, David Rockefeller was more than pleas­ Eisenhower in 1952, and Scranton in 1964. Was Time antly surprised and intrigued at meeting the peanut­ Inc. getting ready to bury Henry Luce's Grand Old farming politician. As a Trilateral Commissioner Jim­ Party? In 197 6, in any event, Time placed a formid­ my Carter was silent but assiduous at the occasional able bet on Jimmy Carter, and won. meetings-a careful notetaker and offstage brain­ · The second Rockefeller connection-more obvious, picker. He proudly mentioned his Trilateral studies less noted-was the Trilateral Commission. The Tri­ and trips whenever questions of his international expe­ lateral Commission was David Rockefeller's brain­ rience popped up in the early presiqential campaign. child, a somewhat more energetic young cousin of the But presumably the much greater value of Trilateral elite Bilderberg Conferences at which Prince Bern­ membership was the private reassurance it conveyed hard of the Netherlands h~d been gathering senior that David Rockefeller had deemed him a promising bankers and political figures from Europe and the student and had gotten his education under way. The since the mid-fifties. Should the Trilat~ Trilateral Commission's executive director, Zbigniew era! Commission be viewed as a cabal of multinational Brzezinski, became quite literally Jimmy Carter's financiers-,-indeed, al; the first step toward a multi­ tutor, and now, of course, directs the White House national government? Should it be seen simply as foreign policy staff, as did in the first David Rockefeller's foreign policy toy? This debate Nixon term. Perhaps all David Rockefeller hoped for has barely begun. · iri assembling the American delegation, a Trilateral The commission was conceived in 1972 as a private colleague mused the other day, was to be sure he vehicle for planning the industrial world's course out included the prospective secretary of state in the era of the international monetary crisis (and John Connal­ following Nixon's. How could he have guessed that his ly's cowboy responses) of that period, away from the Trilateralists would staff all major policy posts in the "Nixon shocks" that had troubled , into a new new government-including, as if by a miracle, the stability of banking relationships among the First vice presidency and the presidency? How indeed? World and of trading agreements with the Third World. The distinctive contribution of the Trilateral Commission was its very th.ree-sidedness, encompass­ arter's third overt Rockefeller link, by my ing as equals sixty members each from North Amer­ reckoning, was Martin Luther King, Sr., the ica, , and Japan. David Rockefeller C. venerable "Daddy" King, as Carter called handpicked the key members and the staff experts him affectionately. By virtue of his son's fame the who have produced a dozen pamphlets so far on such King name on handbills and radio commercials was subjects as "A New Regime for the Oceans," "En­ m~gic among black voters who knew next to nothing ergy: the Imperative for a Trilateral Approach," and about the father. One thing that most of them didn't "Seeking a New Accommodation in World Commodi­ know was that Dadqy King was a lifelong Republican, ty Markets." · of the Civil War or Lincoln Republicans, who had Jimmy Carter had been the one Democratic gover­ supported for President in 1960 until, nor chosen among sixty North American members of in late. October, John Kennedy's phone call to Martin the Trilateral Commission in 1973. The official expla­ Luther King, Jr.'s home dramatized the Democrat's nations have run that the commission needed a south­ concern about the younger King's confinement in a erner and that in the southern governor category Georgia jail on a restaurant sit-in charge. 1 Carter won · a photo-finish race against Governor The black colleges, seminaries, and professional Reubin Askew of Floriqa. A couple of years earlier, in schools of Atlanta, whose alumni became a powerful fact, Carter, ever alert to his future, had been currying Carter network to the black middle class around the Rockefeller attention. In an interview David Rocke­ country, had received millions of dollars in Rockefeller feller recalled with amusement that Jimmy made the benefactions over the years. The Kings' Southern first, ever so slightly brash, overture in 1971, calling Christian Leadership Conference specifically had re­ almost as soon as he had been sworn in to say that ceived personal checks from Nelson Rockefeller in Georgia sold a lot of bonds in New York, and would 1963-when it counted for the civil rights revolution, David Rockefeller please schedule a lunch at which and counted heavily against Rockefeller in his search Governor Carter might meet some bankers. Like so for 1964 convention delegates. (Representative An- ' Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. recounted Daddy King's 1960 conversion in A Thousand Days: "King's father told newspapermen that he Christopher Lydon, '!"ho covered the 1972 and 1976 never thought he could vote for a Catholic but that the call to his presidential campaigns for .• is now a daughter-in-law had changed his mind. 'Imagine Martin Luther reporter and commentator on public television, based at King having a bigot for a father,' Kennedy said- then added quizzi­ WGBH in Boston. · · · eally, 'well, we all have fathers, don't we.""

52 · Jimmy Carter Revealed drew Young o( Atlanta, who had been the only ful assertiveness out of the various blocs that some member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote for missing leader (I kept imagining Kennedy or Hum­ 's confirmation as Vice President, was phrey) might have made into a coalition for progres­ also one of the few who voted for Nelson Rockefeller's sive change. confirmation in 1974.) The King connection may have been Rockefeller money at its noblest; in any case, Daddy King was loyal. Through 1975 he told politi­ ne or combined, Jimmy Carter's several cians and journalists that Nelson Rockefeller was his Rockefellerish connections would never be first choice for President in 197 6 if only he could find a A evidence of conspiracy; the question anyway way to run; Jimmy Carter was his second. was rather what power centers, trends, and ideas had There was nothing wrong with that, either. But it combined to fill Carter's sails, and such currents are was enlightening to see Jimmy Carter's first and fore­ usually mysteries to themselves and each other. But most black backing in this perspective, coming from even a year ago it seemed to me'fal.r to say there was a the older church establishment of Atlanta because the Rockefeller style about the whole Carter enterprise. Rockefeller alternative was not available. On foreign policy, what intimations Carter gave Carter secured and broad­ ened that black support by confronting George Wallace Even a year ago it seemed fair to say in the Florida primary. The there was a Rockefeller style about the whole long buildup of that rendez­ · Carter enterprise. vous with Wallace seemed to me the definitive Carter masterstroke of daring, bluff, and ballyhoo. The black suggested the Rockefeller brothers' liberal ­ enthusiasm it generated in the South was recycled in ism, born again. Like the Rockefellers, and unlike the North as reason enough for white liberals to almost all other politicians of presidential scale in support Carter. What the good vibrations drowned out 1976, Jimmy Carter had somehow escaped the polit­ was that Carter had persistently bad relations with ical and personal crucible of Vietnam. He was the rare black Democratic politicians, and he never had any­ figure for whom the "lessons of Vietnam" were not, in thing resembling a ·program for black America. Even some form, the starting point of the discussiOn; he such Georgians as and Mayor Maynard could make them sound quite irrelevant. Jackson of Atlanta remained hostile a,s long and as He seemed to reveal an engineer's competence in loudly as they dared. the matter of nuclear proliferation and a good politi­ In the North the secular leaders and institutions of cian's instinc.t for that emerging issue. Overall, when black political power were almost all aligned against he talked about the American role in the world, the Carter before the convention, waiting and hoping that onetime submarine officer managed to make the Kennedy or Humphrey would come forward with United States's economic and military dominance something more substantial for black folks thari sound both more liberal and more imperial than did Jimmy Carter's benevolent words. Jimmy <:arter's the men he was running against. A spring evening in capture of the black vote (attaining better than 90 Madison, Wisconsin, sticks in my mind: when a televi­ percent of the turnout in November) seemed to me the sion panel interview turned to questions about Africa, clearest example of a process he repeated again and Carter spoke eloquently of the contributions that again: reaching into Democratic constituencies over black American graduates of the civil rights move­ the heads of hapless "leaders," charming goodly ment might make. Surely, he said, we could find more numbers of listeners with vague but fervent words ("I fitting ambassadors to send to young African nations would rather die than disappoint Daddy King"), but than Shirley Temple! Follow-up questions about what escaping the crass exchanges of nomination politics, he would do in Africa after changing ambassadors never leaving any negotiable IOUs behind him. An­ stopped him dead in his tracks; that discussion was drew Young discovered all that after the election, over. To his credit, I guess, he never suggested that the when he pressed the black claim to two Cabinet seats, foundations of American foreign policy would be other pointedly not including the ambassa- than business as usual. (UN Ambassador Andrew dorship. . Young · seemed to confirm as much in a typically Wasn't there a pattern here? Jirnmy Carter seemed unguarded conversation with Joe Lelyveld of the New better at dissolving Democratic constituencies than at York Times Magazine about the prospects for empa­ energizing them. One of his distinctive skills seemed to thy with the Third World and for racial change in lie in draining the self-confidence, cohesion, and hope- southern Africa: "In Young's vision," Lelyveld re-

53 ported, "the catalyst that brings about change turns often said that no black group had ever hassled him out to be that troublesome and maligned behemoth, about his opposition to busing after he told how his the American multinational corporation." Did he own daughter, Amy, went to a mostly black school at mean those friendly folks from ITT who helped bring home. Jimmy was okay on race! Next question? On change to Allende's Chile?) he so fervently elaborated his personal view In his general approach to domestic policy, Jimmy that "abortion is wrong" that relatively few people Carter defined himself early on in broadly Rockefel­ noticed that in the way of legislation or constitutional f lerish terms as a big-government conservative. That is, amendments he was proposing to do just what most of he was a vigorous executive free of the hang-ups that his rivals proposed: nothing. many Republicans suffer about the sheer size and The classic example of how to bureaucratize an power of government; but he kept himself free, too, of issue was Carter's treatment of tax reform. Surely the· Democratic rhetoric connecting government activism country needed tax reforin, he said, . if then Treasury Ij with public purposes and constituencies of need. Car­ Secretary William Simon, on the Right, and scholarly l ter was promising to make government more rational Joseph Pechman, on the Left, both said so. Granted I and more effective-not smaller, he said. He spoke their "reforms" were not compatible, but Carter I with gusto of a "strong, independent, aggressive" promised to explain someday how tax reform could be ! presidency-but for what? The main job ahead a break for working families and business corporations seemed to be reorganizing the government, and the at the same time. The answer would involve making public purpose in that was always a mystery. If the the Internal Revenue Service administer a clearer, object was to eliminate overspecialized subdivisions, simpler, more predictable tax code for everyone! The might he eventually want to revive the one-room idea that the tax code is a political, not an administra­ schoolhouse? Whether there were 1800 identifiable tive, document was inadmissible in Carter's discus­ government entities or 200, they would all be tied on sions. Of course he always tried to avoid saying who organizational charts to the President and his Cabi.: would pay more, and who less, under the tax reforms net-and might, in any combination, still be un­ he had in mind. He slipped up in an manageable. interview in September, and later repudiated the story. He had another formula for talking about better, Like certain Yankee Republicans of my New broader medical care that England youth, Carter wanted to make it on the Jet him off saying who would appeal of superficially clean, reformist politics pay for that, too. A surgical ·.without any substantive mandate. procedure that involved ten days' hospitalization in ·Brooklyn at a cost of, say, Carter played skillfully on the eternal antigovern­ $1500, was being done in San Diego with only four ment constituency-traditionally a Republican gam­ days in the hospital, at a cost of perhaps $500, Carter bit. His more remarkable success, and his more impor­ related cheerfully. Now if every hospital could work as tant service to the status quo, was in dissolving latent efficiently as that one in San Diego .... Having constituencies within the Democratic fold-in blunt­ blurred the case for national health insurance in the ing the initiative and fogging the vision of a vestigially campaign, Carter .in office has postponed the whole working-class party. This from a man who was billed matter indefinitely He was vague enough, too, about not just as a Democrat but as something of a populist, welfare reform that he felt free this spring to despair yet saw neither villains nor victims in the society he of the long-awaited overhaul, at least in his first asked to lead. According to Carter, there were no term. _ problems of economic or in the land; no What bothered me during the campaign was not so racism, no militarism. The job ahead was to make much that Carter's con games were succeeding against government as good as the people. other guys' con games but that Carter's steady Long before the flowering of his -"symbolic" style as progress toward the nomination was being used to President, Carter showed an uncanny knack for spiri­ argue a smug and essentially false view of economic tualizing and bureaucratizing issues-getting away realities, among other things. "Jobs: the Non-Issue of somehow without politicizing issues into anything 1976," proclaimed Time's Hugh Sidey, a clarion voic~ resembling an "us against them" frame. Race and of rooting Carter on. "It could be, abortion were the best examples of the spiritualizing Sidey declared last June, "when we [sic] finally write tack. All Carter felt he had to do on either front was to the definitive analysis of this period, that as few as half demonstrate that he himself was pure of heart. He a million people who were employable, who really

54 Jimmy Carter Revealed

wanted and sought jobs, and who had really been 20 feeling "we did it," sharing the President's victory unemployed long enough to undergo hardship, were because they had shared his risk? Who, to put it still out of work this spring, though the unemployment crudely, could claim a piece of Carter's presidency? fig ures were near 7 million." Shades of Herbert To that question, he answered, on calm reflection, only Hoover railing against the people who quit good jobs one man: Andrew Young. "I don't know if I could to profiteer in the sidewalk apple trade! The basis for think of any other one," he said. Right about that Sidey's callous view was quite simply that Jimmy time, when barely a dozen small states had started Carter had waltzed around the jobs issue and gotten picking convention delegates, Richard Reeves was away with it. Carter's triumph, it seemed to me, was a developing in New York magazine what struck me as a comfort to too many people who always felt that ugly bizarre theory: that Carter's early string of first-place and miserably difficult problems such as 8 percent finishes (however inconclusive his pluralities, however unemployment could be ignored with impunity. modest the net of delegates) had secured a huge investment of television's credibility in his continued success. In essence, once Walter Cronkite had an­ nee I started looking for them, other little _nounced on half-a-dozen Tuesday nights in late winter · giveaway Republicanisms popped up all that Jimmy Carter had won another caucus or pri­ 0 over the Carter campaign. Carter seemed to mary, how could the network explain in July that he have his own of antiseptic issues was losing the nomination-that all the primary analysts. I took it that he wanted to project an impres­ coverage hadn't mattered? sion that his answers to public questions would come What Reeves (and, I'm sure, Carter) saw was that not from his own experience or from the collective in 1976 a media base was much more important than wisdom of his political coalition but from the relatively the demographic base I knew he'd never get. Sure clinical consideration of expert advisers. But why enough, when Jerry Brown whipped Carter over and should voters have been asked to wait a year or more over, east and west, in May and June, the networks to hear the shape of his tax reform ideas? There was looked the other way. (Was it because media power an elitism about policy-making, a squeamishness had found what it wanted in Carter and stuck with about political interest, that seemed un-Democratic in him? Or because the networks, with no particular . Carter's treatment of issues. Like certain Yankee feeling for Carter, sensed they could not be in on the Republicans of my youth, Carter creation and destruction of a political figure in one wanted to make it on the appeal of superficially clean, short cycle of primaries without revealing their over­ reformist politics without any substantive mandate. whelming dominance and inviting a reaction? All that There was a corporate air about the campaign as a is part of another inquiry.) whole. To my perhaps old-fashioned eye, Carter had Another way to look at Jimmy Carter's base, or lack taken the politics out of politics. No one described the of it, is still to ask: If he had fallen one vote short at the Georgia Mafia around Carter better than a suddenly convention last summer and a ticket had been formed out-of-date Robert Kennedy Democrat who observed of some combination of Humphrey, Kennedy, Brown, that if Jimmy Carter had set out in 1973 not to run for and, say, Dale Bumpers, how many Democratic hearts President but to wage a proxy fight for control of the would have felt broken? Had Jimmy Carter actually Anaconda Corporation, he'd have had the same people lost the election to Gerald Ford, would anyone outside with him. Hamilton Jordan, Jody Powell, Bob Lip­ the Carter entourage have risen to urge him to run shutz, Charles Kirbo, and the rest-take away Jimmy again in 1980? Carter, and his lieutenants were men without political A President who acknowledges very few commit­ direction. They all seemed more than decent people, ments and politicai debts. A citizen population with stunningly good at their campaign assignments, yet such scant knowledge of, and such thin affection for, not quite public men. Most of them were eager to say its leadership-and so little active bargaining power they had · not been in politics before Jimmy and against it. Are not these, rather than limousines and wouldn't be in politics after Jimmy. gold-braided epaulets on the uniforms of the White First, last, and always, Jimmy Carter lacked a base House guards, the essential elements of the imperial in the Democratic party. It's embarrassing now how presidency? Even as he sheds the more obvious long it took me, after discovering that, to realize that imperial trappings, Jimmy Carter has refined the Carter was more than content to play it that way. Late imperial tricks of the electronic age, detaching the last March, when his campaign had hit a comfortable presidency from popular direction and the old institu­ cruising speed on its own self-propulsion, I asked tional restraints. The brilliant deviCes of his in-office Carter to imagine his Inauguration: How many polit­ campaign to stay "close to the people" serve the ical figures, I puzzled, would stand there on January imperial purpose, of course. The "dial-a-President"

55 lottery that gives every phone caller the same chance expanded production; it would have involved enor­ of talking to President Carter and Walter Cronkite is mous public subsidy of the energy industry's leap into a nice way of saying that there's no one that Jimmy exotic fuels, nuclear and otherwise. Different as it is, Carter has to talk to. All citizens, all power centers, the Carter plan would realize another dream of the are equidistant from this President who wants to be energy industry: effective price deregulation that close to everyone. would peg all fuel costs at the extortionate levels fixed by the world oil cartel. .Carter has shown confidence in office, even pleasure t is probably too simple, as I said at the outset, to in the job, but not yet boldness in spending the po­ call Jimmy Carter a Republican. The more litical capital he has supposedly acquired. His first I complicated truth may Qe that the rise of televi­ hundred days reminded me of nothing so much as a sion and the demise of party in American politics have comment by Robert Shrum, a disillusioned liberal finally brought forth a new specimen, the post­ speechwriter who quit Carter's campaign staff with partisan President, who will try to govern, as he the observation to the candidate: "I am not sure what . campaigned, almost exclusively on the strength of you truly believe in other than yourself." personal rating points in popularity polls. Carter Still, I cannot help supposing that Jimmy Carter is a achieved his phenomenal victories of 1976 without Republican deep down. Surely it is hard to call him a presenting any of the "handles" customarily required Democratic President when his most notable skill is at of presidential candidates-that is, without a record in atomizing, confusing, denying, and neutralizing the national affairs, without an organizing issue of any various Democratic constituencies that elected him; I kind, without any overt political alliances or network when his Cabinet represents the IBM board of direc- Il tors more heavily than the ranks of Democratic party Surely it is hard to call him a Democratic activists and elected offi­ President . . . when even the nominally more cials; when the man who liberal members of his drcle wade into office opened his fall 1976 cam- · speaking the same slogans as the Republicans - paign at Warm Springs, Georgia, in memory of who just left. Franklin D. Roosevelt, led in March 1977 what seemed to · of friends outside Georgia. Must he not hope to be a White House boycott of the New Dealers' anni­ preside in the same style? His first three months in the versary dinner in Washington; when even the nominally White House suggested some success and some inher­ more liberal members of his circle wade into office ent limitations in such an approach: he increased his speaking the same slogans as the Republicans who just Gallup poll popularity without building either soli­ left. darity with Congress or a following in the organized Charles Schultze, the new head of the Council of politics of the states, so far as I can see. (Witness the Economic Advisers, was one of the many Carter voices apparently counterproductive intervention of the trying to reassure business late last winter, saying it White House in the North Carolina and Florida legis­ was time "for bringing Adam Smith to Washington." latures' consideration of the Equal Rights Amend­ Another was Carter's young pollster, Patrick Caddell, ment.) He generated a modest number of "reform" who barely a year earlier had been touting evidence goals, but not the movement consciousness that major that the American public was ready for " radical" reforms usually need. He assumed what may just be a economic cures. Around Inauguration time Caddell's truly heroic job of resolving an energy crisis that is still new stance was pro-business: "We've all learned ... invisible to a majority of Americans. Yet presidential you need the goose to lay the golden egg." What does concentration on energy as the number one problem it mean to call Jimmy Carter a Democratic President also served to distract attention from other distres­ when labor's demand for a $3 , up from singly visible crises, including urban degeneration and the current $2.30, is discounted to a 20-cent improve­ an unchecked plague of youth and ghetto unemploy­ ment at the White House? When relations with ment. Democratic party cadres in the states have deterio­ It is only fair to say that the stress on conservation rated to the point where the White House chose to let in Carter's energy progran:i makes it very different the Democratic National Committee vote unanimous from the $100 billion energy plan that Nelson Rocke­ condemnation of Carter's patronage policies feller cooked up for Gerald Ford ·in 1975. Rockefel­ (as it did in April) to avoid the embarrassment ler's answer was based not on conservation but on of further debate and further recitation of the

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non-Democrats· being awarded federal plums? Committee on Government Operations, balked at what ·How much easier it is to picture Jimmy Carter as a he considered an arguably unconstitutional and poten­ Republican--and, mind you, not in a defamatory way, tially Nixonesque reach for wider executive authority. either. Call him a Teddy Roosevelt "Bull Moose" Pat Caddell, in a memo written last December and Republican, if you will, for his blend of moral uplift, leaked into print in May, informed Carter that what administrative reform, liberal imperialism, and anti­ calls itself the Republican party was not the real oppo­ politics. Give Carter credit for recognizing that that sition, The GOP "seems bent on self-destruction," stripe of Republicanism has been popular through Caddell wrote. "We have an opportunity to coopt most of this century. John Kennedy was undoubtedly many of their [the Republicans'] issue positions and right in supposing that if the Republicans had had the take away large chunks of their normal presidential sense to dump Richard Nixon in 1960, Nelson Rocke­ coalition. Unfortunately," he added, "it is those same feller would have won the fall election handily. Were it actions that are likely to cause rumblings from the left not for the truth-in-labeling problem that arises in of the Democratic Party."And so they were. George Carter's running as a Democrat, you could congratu­ McGovern, whistling in the dark, had been loyal to late him on coming honestly by his Republicanism. He Carter throughout 1976, but by May 1977 he was is, after all, a self-made millionaire, a businessman seeing things from a different perspective. Distressed who has met a payroll (and kept the unions out of his about Carter's emphasis on a balanced budget and his plant!) and who revealed over and over in his brilliant reluctance to enact reforms in health care and welfare, campaign the healthy effects of small-business disci­ McGovern remarked that it was hard to tell who won pline. the election. Carter brushed away criticisms from Time let the cat halfway out of the bag in its McGovern and other liberals, saying, "They are very January cover story of the Man of the Year: "Carter is difficult to please." And it was plain that he was not a Democrat who often talks and thinks like a Republi­ going to go out of his way to please them. Charles can." Further clues keep piling up. David _Broder Kirbo, Carter's lawyer friend from Atlanta, told wisely made a page-one story in reporters at breakfast recently that the President was in February of the news that it was the Republican pleased to be widening his base since the election. leadership in the House that jumped to introduce What did that mean? "He told me he was getting Carter's government reorganization plan, after Demo­ some support from Republicans," Kirbo said. Not the crat Jack Brooks of Texas, chairman of the House first time or the last, I thought, and only fair, too. D

'

, THE TRILATERAL / CONNECTION

by Jeremiah Novak

or the third time in this century a group of Fred Bergsten, assistant secretary of the treasury and American scholars, businessmen, and govern­ one of sixteen top Carter appointees who belong to the F ment officials is planning to fashion a new Trilateral Commission. All sixteen represent a deeply world order. Discouraged by UN inadequacies, dis­ internationalist that is part of the eastern heartened by chaos in the Bretton Woods institutions American establishment. "Liberal internationalism is (IMF and the World Bank), and worried about the our creed," said Bergsten. United States's waning strength, these men are look­ And Jimmy Carter is its prophet. Carter is a charter ing to a "community of developed nations" to coordi­ member of the Trilateral Commission and an advocate na te international political and economic affairs. of its basic internationalist viewpoint. According to "After every major war in this century Americans one Carter campaign aide, "Carter reeks of Protestant sought a new world order. Wilson ptlshed the League America's manifest destiny, and embodies the frontier of Nations; Roosevelt and . Truman constructed the tradition, the open door, and 's UN-; and now, after Vietnam, internationalism, all wrapped up in one." Jim my Carter gives us the Trilateral plan." So said C. If there is one book in Carter's gospel, it is Zbigniew

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• Brzezinski's Between Two Ages, published in 1970, in fourteen monographs dealing with political and eco­ which Brzezinski, now national security adviser, nomic problems facing Trilateral nations. formed the concept of "a community of developed Although the commission's primary concern is eco­ nations" that would direct the world to new levels of nomic-principally. the same issues that concerned freedom, human rights, and economic progress. He Cordell Hull, Henry Morgenthau, Harry Dexter rejected both Kennedy's inaugural globalism and the White, and John Maynard Keynes at Bretton establishment prejudice toward Atlanticism that dom- Woods-the Trilateralists pinpointed a vital political . inated the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson years. objective: to gain control of the American presidency. Insisting that the community of developed nations For, as Samuel Huntington, a Harvard government should include Japan, he called his plan "more ambi­ professor and a Trilateral scholar, has written: "To the tious than the concept of an Atlantic Community, but extent that the U.S. was governed by anyone in the historically more relevant." decades after World War II, it was governed by the Brzezinski's community would include not only the President, acting with the support and cooperation of United States, Western Europe, and Japan, but even­ key individuals and groups in the executive office, the tually all other "advanced nations," even communist federal bureaucracy, Congress, and the more impor­ ones. The emphasis is on "developed" and "ad­ tant businesses, banks, Jaw firms, foundations and vanced." As Richard Cooper, who along with Brze­ media, which constitute the private establishment." zinski is a key architect of Trilateralism, wrote in a recent Trilateral paper, "Only those nations whose decisions can affect the whole group should be ad­ n 1973, with Richard Nixon in deep trouble mitted." because he did not have this support, the Tri­ Brzezinski's message did not find immediate accep­ I lateralists found it essential to play a role in tance. However, in December 1971, after the United determining the direction of the American presidency. ,States unilaterally went off the gold standard, causing As early as May 1975, Brzezinski, at a Trilateral the U.S.-Western Europe-Japan alliance to totter, Commission meeting in , hailed Carter as "one Brzezinski convinced Huntington Harris, a Brookings political leader with the courage to speak forthrightly Institution trustee, to fund a series of Tripartite Stud­ on difficult political issues." And Peter Bourne, Car­ ies. Joining Brookings scholars were thinkers from the ter's former deputy campaign chief, has been quoted Japanese Economic Research Center and the Euro­ as saying, "David Rockefeller and Zbig have both pean Community Institute of University Studies. The agreed that Carter is the ideal politician to build on." results of these studies influenced David Rockefeller Carter reciprocated by reiterating during his cam­ to found the Trilateral Commission. According to his paign that "we must replace balance-of-power politics own testimony Rockefeller had begun calling in 1972 with world order politics"-the Trilateralists' basic for the establishment of a Trilateral Community. He theme. Of late this theme has been echoing through broached the subject at the Bilderberg Conference of the halls of Congress, as some of the Administration's corporate leaders, where it found immediate accept- Trilateral appointees, such as Cooper, Bergsten, and , ance. Among those in attendance was Michael Blu­ Cyrus Vance, have testified. "The basic philosophy of menthal, now secretary of the treasury. the Administration," Bergsten told Congress, "is that As chairman of the Trilateral Commission's execu­ domestic and international issues are inextricably tive committee, Rockefeller was able to attract mem­ linked." bers who include the chief executive officers of the Such concepts are being well received by many in Bank of America, First National City Bank, , Congress. For instance, as Representative Henry Gon­ Caterpillar, and CBS, as well as such labor leaders as zalez of Texas said after attending the International I. W. Abel and Leonard Woodcock, and such scholars Development Association (IDA) replenishment con­ as Richard Cooper; provost of Yale, and Harold ference in in March, "The arrival of Bergsten Brown, president of the California Institute of Tech­ and Cooper was like a breath of fresh air. There's a nology. new sense of flexibility and understanding that has From Europe came, among others, the heads of gained new respect for the U.S. among our allies. They . Thyssen, Royal Dutch Petroleum, and Unilever. From know that the people in this Administration care." Japan, the chairmen of the Bank of and Fuji The Administration's internationalist views have Bank. This high-powered gro.l}p appointed Brzezinski also received a big boost from Chair­ full-time director of the Trilateral Commission, and he man Arthur Burns, a Nixon appointee. Speaking at recruited a group of scholars who wrote a series of the School of Business on April 12, he made an impassioned plea for a greatly Jeremiah Novak is a columnist for The Asia Mail . strengthened IMF. His call echoed that of a 1973

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The Trilateral Connection

Trilateral pamphlet written by Richard Cooper, now ysis suggests that applying that cure at present could assistant secretary of state for international economic well be adding fuel to the flames. Needed instead is a affairs .. greater degree of moderation in democracy." The Trilateralists' emphasis on international eco­ Penn State political scientist Larry Spence criticizes nomics is not entirely disinterested, for the oil crisis Huntington's condemnation of value-oriented philoso­ forced many developing nations, with doubtful repay­ phers as "a direct attempt to raise the status of the ment abilities, to borrow excessively. All told, private technocratic elite, who curry to the needs of the multinational banks, particularly Rockefeller's Chase wealthy corporations. If he gets his way," Spence , have loaned nearly $52 billion to devel­ declared, "we will have a new supernational commu­ oping countries. An overhauled IMF would provide nity dominated by the multinational corporations." another source of credit for these nations, and would Another critic is Walter Dean Burnham, professor take the big private banks off the hook. This proposal of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of is a cornerstone of the Trilateral plan, because it Technology. Writing in "Trialogue," the Trilateral makes possible the continuation of free trade interna­ Commission's newsletter, Burnham stated: "Firstly, tionalism. Professor Huntington systematically inflates the claim Perhaps the best example of Trilateralism was the of authority against the claim of liberty in any situa­ post-Inaugural trip to Europe and Japan of Vice Presi­ tion . . . . There is, I think it is fair to say, a visible dent (also ·a Trilateralist). He pro-authority bias to his work ...." assured leaders of Carter's determination to work in Huntington's authoritarian views were widely de­ deep consultation with them. Institutionally, the Ram­ bated by the Trilateralists themselves, many of whom bouillet, Puerto Rico, and London conferences, where demanded that Huntington's book not be published Trilateral leaders have met to discuss economic issues, under Trilateral auspices. Yet, as Dr. Spence put it, symbolize this new community of developed nations. "The book still stands as the official position of the . To implement its aims, the Trilateral Commission has Trilateral Commission." · called for the formation of commissions to coordinate Despite the debate over The Crisis of Democracy, the political and economic power of the Trilateral the Trilateralists' internationalist stance is being lob- ·( area. These commissions will subordinate national hied for in Congress by a new organization called New economic policy to international needs. As Bergsten Directions. The group was founded at the instance of \ said in a speech on April 22 to the Chicago Council on Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame Univer- J Foreign Relations, "The world's major economic sity and chairman of the . powers must, in a positive sense, exercise collective Hesburgh, with the support of Vance and Paul responsibility for the stability and progress of the Warnke (a Trilateralist and Carter's chief arms limi­ world economy." tation negotiator), was able to recruit John Gardner, I Many Americans, in government and without, view chairman of Common Cause, and others to form the ~ 1 this new emphasis on collective responsibility as a new lobby group. Essentially, the group's "Approved threat to traditional national sovereignty. Others wor­ Action Program" reinforces Trilateral positions on I ry about the basic political philosophy that motivates expansion of international financial institutions, in- ' the Trilateralists. In particular, many people are creased development assistance for poor nations, a j concerned about the views of Samuel Huntington, who strong plank for conservation of energy, and reduction is an editor of Foreign Policy magazine-often a of arms sales. showcase for Trilateral thinking. (Trilateralist Rich­ The alliance of Common Cause and New Directions! ard Holbrooke, the former managing editor, is now as­ with Trilateral thinking gives the Trilateralists two; sistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific formidable companion organizations. It was Harlan ~ affairs.) Among other worrisome statements, Hunt­ Cleveland, a member of the board of governors of New j ington wrote in The Crisis of Democracy: "In some Directions, who, on July 4, 1976, wrote a "Declaration : measure the advanced industrial societies have of Interdependence" for the Bicentennial program in ; spawned a stratum of value-oriented intellectuals who Philadelphia. He also published a paperback called ; often devote themselves to the derogation of leadership The Third Try at World Order. \ ... and their behavior contrasts with that of the also Jimmy Carter, as President, presides over this new increasing numbers of technocratic and policy­ internationalism. Indeed, it is said that when he faces oriented intellectuals." Congress he goes as an internationalist; and when he Huntington also made the following statement in travels to Western Europe and Japan he is welcomed his essay: " once remarked 'the only cure for as a brother Trilateralist. In the last analysis, it is Carter the evils of democracy is more democracy.' Our anal- who directs the third try for a new world order. 0

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