Carter's Pollster

As Jimmy Carter prepared to take office in 1977, he received a memo from Pollster Patrick Caddell advising him to keep on emphasizing the open, anti-Washington style that had helped him win the election. In this way, the pollster said, Carter could turn his narrow victory margin into a broader mandate. The memo soon became known as Caddell's "style over substance" pitch. Somehow, Carter forgot that advice. But last month, when he began trying to rescue his presidency, he turned again to Caddell for counsel, and this time he followed it.

Caddell wrote a virtual blueprint for Carter's Camp David summit. In fact, Caddell had been trying to persuade Carter to refurbish his presidency since April, when he sent the President a now famous lengthy memo describing growing pessimism among the American electorate. In March, for instance, Caddell found that 48% of the people he surveyed called themselves "longterm pessimists," up from 30% in 1975. Other pollsters question Caddell's objectivity, and stress that Carter is partly responsible for the public gloom. Their surveys find that Americans are more pessimistic about the President than about themselves. Responds Caddell: "To say it is a question of confidence in Carter begs the larger question."

Like Carter's other longtime close advisers, Caddell is young (29). The son of a career Coast Guard officer, he wrote his senior thesis at Harvard ('72) on the changing politics of the South. While still a student, he did some polling for George McGovern in 1972, when he met Carter. Caddell became the Georgian's personal pollster four years later.

Although Caddell carries a White House pass, he is not an official member of the President's staff. He relishes his role as a total outsider who has the President's ear. Says Caddell: "I give him ideas that he may not have heard from others." Caddell operates two polling firms out of Cambridge, Mass. One company is hired by politicians; the other supplies surveys to more than 20 major U.S. corporations for an annual fee of about $20,000 each. Caddell's reports to Carter use data from both firms, and the Democratic National Committee picks up the tab.

The pollster divides his time between houses on Boston's Beacon Hill and in Georgetown. When in Washington, he spends most of his working and leisure hours with Carter's Georgians. Indeed, when three of them separated from their wives, the men temporarily moved in with him: first Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan, then Image Maker Gerald Rafshoon and finally Presidential Assistant Tim Kraft. Says Caddell with a laugh: "The President told me that I was running a halfway house for transients to and from marriage." Caddell's few relaxations include voracious reading, from bestselling novels to heavy political treatises, whipping around town in his gold-colored Mercedes and partying with Jordan. Says he: "I work hard and I play hard." Unmarried, Caddell has recently shed 60 lbs. and grown a gray-flecked beard. He has not, however, lost his sense of where he fits into the Administration's power structure. Says he: "I'm less influential than I'd like to think I am, and a lot more than I deserve."

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