Winning on Alien Ground

A veto is sustained and a fire is lit under gas

While Jimmy Carter was concentrating last week on the Middle East, his allies were winning a string of important victories for him in two usually unfriendly arenas: the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

The Administration's initial score was in the House, where conservatives tried to override Carter's first veto of a major bill, the $37 billion defense authorization that contained $1.9 billion for a nuclear aircraft carrier. Carter maintained that the carrier was too expensive, and that the money would be better spent on strengthening NATO forces. Conservative Congressmen disagreed, arguing that Carter was mostly concerned with building a tough-guy reputation by vetoing the measure. Charged New York Republican Jack Kemp: "The President's image guy, Gerald Rafshoon, has been running this."

For three weeks, both sides skirmished, with tit-for-tat briefings by experts, breakfast discussions and discreet lobbying. On the eve of the vote, the Administration was confident, but anticipated a narrow margin. Instead, the override attempt lost, 191 to 206, falling 74 votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority. Much of Carter's support came from Democratic liberals who opposed the carrier. Moreover, many members shared Texas Democrat George Mahon's reluctance to "repudiate the President at a time when he needs strength in his quest for peace in the Middle East."

The President got another boost when the House refused to approve a Republican-sponsored measure to take away Carter's authority to impose import fees on foreign crude oil. For a wobbly moment, the Administration's winning streak in the House was endangered by the threatened gutting of a bill that would require court approval of any wiretapping done for national security reasons. Carter and Attorney General Griffin Bell argued that the measure was necessary to clear up ambiguities in the present law and protect civil rights. The House began rewriting the bill to give the President a free hand to order wiretaps, a liberty that Carter did not want. But after the Democratic leadership rallied the ranks, the House passed just about what the Administration desired.

In the Senate, Administration officials were making headway in their fight to get a natural-gas compromise, the keystone of Carter's long-blocked energy program. The compromise would increase the price of most natural gas by 15% immediately, and continue raising prices until controls ended in 1985. Initially, only gas-pipeline operators supported the bill; almost every other industry group, consumers and labor, opposed it.

Carter was on the phone to Senators urging support for the compromise right up to his departure, for Camp David. "I don't call you often," he told conservative Republican Richard Lugar, "but I need your help desperately." Lugar nonetheless declined to support the bill. The President also sent a three-page letter to every Senator. But the missives brought snickers from some because they were obviously form letters--except for scribbled personal messages from Carter on each --and White House aides had lost a line at the bottom of the second page, making some of the text incomprehensible.

For three days, Vice President Mondale worked Capitol Hill, although he was bleary-eyed from the jet lag of his weekend trip to Rome for the installation of Pope John Paul I. He even sandwiched in an hour of phone calls between meeting Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin at Andrews Air Force Base. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger buttonholed Senators as they went in and out of the chamber. At one point, he chased Missouri Republican John Danforth up the stairs, then lost him in the maze of third-floor corridors.

At week's end, the Administration was cautiously upbeat. "We don't have 50 firm commitments," said Schlesinger, "but we are optimistic." Said Mondale's Senate lobbyist, William Smith: "The momentum is on our side." But the pro-compromise coalition was fragile, and Carter's forces still faced the danger that last-minute lobbying by opponents might turn the tide when the compromise comes up for a vote, probably this week. .

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