Unsinkable Ham Jordan

There's more to his new look than just those suits

Elders in Congress and the Cabinet delight in deriding him as the symbol of what ails the Carter Administration. Gossip columnists depict him as oafish, lecherous or both. His marriage has ended in divorce. Yet, having absorbed enough torpedoes to sink the most buoyant of careers, Hamilton Jordan has done more than merely stay afloat as Jimmy Carter's most trusted aide. He has expanded his range in both administrative and policy matters and is now even scrubbing up his image. White House Correspondent Laurence I. Barrett reports:

Jordan likes to list the things at which he fails to excel. Administrative detail? "I'm not that good at it." Economic policy? "Lucky for the American people I don't make it." The Middle East negotiations, perhaps? "I'm just an observer."

For all of Jordan's self-deprecation, however, the traffic in and out of his office in the White House's West Wing testifies to the growing range of his involvements. When Alfred Kahn is being coaxed away from the Civil Aeronautics Board to head the Administration's anti-inflation effort, that office is Kahn's last stop before visiting Carter. Another day, a visitor finds Jordan closeted with Charles Kirbo, the President's Atlanta-based confidant and troubleshooter, and Jay Solomon, head of the troubled General Services Administration. Yet another day, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski shows up to remind Jordan that a foreign affairs meeting awaits his presence.

Jordan bridles at suggestions that he has at last become Carter's chief of staff. He does not want the job, and the notion of a Haldemanesque executive officer through whom other aides report is anathema to the President. But since last spring, Jordan has with increasing frequency taken charge of important situations. Says an associate: "There was a vacuum. You would sit in a meeting to hash out a problem. Everyone would speak his piece and then go off and do what he intended to do in the first place. Now Hamilton makes assignments and we all recognize that he is the hub of the staff wheel."

Jordan orchestrated the campaign for ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. Last month, as the White House was preparing to announce Stage II of the anti-inflation program, an assortment of advisers seemed unable to square away the final details. Jordan got everyone marching. Usually his fingerprints are harder to detect. "Most people don't know what I ad vise the President," Jordan boasts. "When I do a memo, I type it myself and usually don't make copies."

One of Jordan's more subtle performances took place early in November, when the Egyptian-Israeli talks were growing increasingly difficult. Carter's personal appraisal turned somber and he said as much in public. The State Department and Brzezinski's office, however, kept a relatively optimistic stance. Jordan picked up on this discrepancy, which threatened to confuse both the foreign participants and the American public. He discussed it with Carter and the principal U.S. officials involved in order to restore a single tone. One result was a White House session with reporters on Nov. 10, in which a senior official expressed "gnawing concern" over the possibility of failure. Subsequent statements by Administration figures have all reflected that same degree of caution.

The dominant public perception of Jordan remains that of the crude hick depicted in gossip columns. Some of this Jordan asked for. More than any of the other youngish Georgians in Carter's entourage, he liked to flaunt his contempt for the Washington Establishment.

Through much of last year he sported boots instead of wingtips and sometimes chose to play tennis on the White House court instead of massaging congressional egos. After he and his wife Nancy separated in January, he allowed his way with women to show too much. While visiting Bonn with the President in July, he appeared with a new German friend in a manner so cozy that it immediately made the Washington Star's tittle-tattling "Ear" column. He later grumped, "I didn't think that being seen with a young lady was inappropriate."

As early as last winter, Jordan succumbed to sartorial criticism by switching to neckties and dark suits. The change is not a total plus; he sometimes wears the same suit several days in a row and his chunky frame seems locked into it, making him look like a graduate student using a roommate's clothes for an important interview. His roommates until this fall were Pollster Pat Caddell and White House Aide Tim Kraft; the three shared a place in Georgetown kiddingly called "Halfway House." Now Jordan has an apartment of his own.

Regardless of wardrobe or abode, sensitivity to criticism still makes him a social recluse in Washington. "I just feel incredibly vulnerable," he explains. "If I go somewhere, even for a late hamburger with Tim Kraft, I feel someone is going to call the Post or 'Ear' and tell them I threw food at the customers." When he did attend a chic reception in August, a stranger threw chocolate mousse in his face.

Jordan laughs: "That was supposed to be my coming out."

Another, more complicated coming out may involve a grand jury appearance. The jury is looking into allegations by Columnist Jack Anderson about an influence-peddling scheme to assist fugitive Robert Vesco. Jordan, who is threatening to sue Anderson for libel, hopes that the investigation will further undermine his unsubstantiated charges.

After consulting two close friends, Press Secretary Jody Powell and Media Adviser Gerald Rafshoon. Jordan decided to try to develop a more public persona. Says Powell: "It was naive of him, and of us, to think that he could go through this Administration being a private kind of person. The view of him was being colored almost entirely by what some gossip columns print." Two weeks ago Jordan turned up for the first time in nearly two years on a Sunday TV interview show. Later he made a rare appearance at a political reporters' breakfast.

However his public relations campaign fares, Jordan's greatest strength remains Carter's confidence in him. Still only 34, Jordan has devoted most of his adult life to the service of Carter in Georgia and Washington. He vows he will never work for another political leader.

The two share attitudes as well as the bunions gathered on the long political march from Sumter County. Ga. To a fault, both are extravagantly loyal to colleagues. During the 1976 campaign, a young Jordan aide, Phil Wise, suggested to Carter that Jordan be relieved of command because of what Wise perceived to be Hani's blunders. Instead of firing his aide, Jordan gave him a more responsible post and has helped him up the ladder in the White House; Wise was promoted to appointments secretary in April.

Jordan and Carter are also both pragmatists who doubt that many problems are beyond solution if attacked with sufficient diligence, whether the goal is winning the 1976 Democratic nomination or pulling up the White House after a first year of frustration. It was Jordan last winter who codified for Carter the Administration's flaws in a long memo replete with color charts. That document formed the agenda for an intra-Administration summit at Camp David that led to important changes in the White House staff and in strategy toward Congress.

This is the sort of thing Jordan does best: broad analysis and planning of what he hopes others will execute. The biggest assignment on his horizon now is developing the strategy for the 1980 campaign. Jordan is expected to run that from the White House, with others in nominal charge of the re-election committee. That way he can deny being both Carter's campaign manager and his chief of staff.

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