Drained of Zeal

A look at the President's men

Part I zinged the President. Now comes Part II, in the June issue of the Atlantic, and the President's men get their lumps.

The White House staff, says former Speechwriter James Fallows, 29, in the concluding installment of his reflections on "The Passionless Presidency," functions like a "feudal system." He adds: "By choosing stability, harmony and order as his internal goals, by offering few rewards for ingenuity and few penalties for dullness or failure, Jimmy Carter created an Administration in which people were more concerned with holding their jobs than with using them."

In his first article, Fallows saw Carter as a man who "fails to project a vision larger than the problem he is tackling at the moment." Carter's aides, Fallows says in his second article, have fallen prey to the bureaucratic system that they once vowed to reform. He writes: "Run like a bureaucracy, the White House took on the spirit of a bureaucracy, drained of zeal, obsessed with form, full of people attracted [more] by the side-dressings of their work than the work itself."

Domestic Policy Adviser Stuart Eizenstat, he says, is typical of the Administration mold: "A skilled version of an unimaginative breed." Georgians Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell, says Fallows, cultivate the laid-back style of "cool guys getting the job done without trying too hard or taking it all too seriously." One of the few to win a favorable notice is National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, "high-strung and vain," but also "the one among Carter's senior associates who tried every day to test the limits of his job and come up with new ideas."

In the White House depicted by Fallows, errors, of which Congressional Liaison Frank Moore's have been "the most flagrant," are ignored out of a misguided sense of loyalty. "The goal was orderly performance. The virtues of an organization man--preserving order, preventing errors--were those Carter prized; and if an attempt to produce more imaginative policies, broader sources of information, even better speech drafts would violate these principles of order, it was not likely to prevail."

Despite his criticism, Fallows still clearly admires Carter, and concludes: "Carter is still the best hope for some day bringing the Government under control." No other potential President, from Kennedy to Connally, "would be more likely to recognize the bureaucratic pitfalls than a re-elected President Carter with four years of painful education behind him; nor would they offer the stability of character that is Jimmy Carter's greatest strength." The final verdict: "I am prepared to vote for him again."

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