When Ike Wore His Brown Suit

By Hugh Sidey

In nearly three years, there have been only a few good stories about Jimmy Carter as a human being at work in the White House. This shortage may provide an insight into his problem in governing.

We know the narratives of his peace missions and summitry. But around almost every recent President there has developed a rich literature from the human drama that takes place at the center. We had a touch of it with Bert Lance, a bit more in Carter's talks with Begin and Sadat, then a jiggle or two in the Cabinet firings, but beyond that it is thin gruel.

For decades the evenings in the capital were enriched with stories like the one about Franklin Roosevelt's coaxing Ambassador Joseph Kennedy out of a vacation and then with great relish firing him. F.D.R. was a real gossip, demanding every morning the tantalizing doings of the night before. "I had dinner with [Senator Authur] Capper and he was snapping garters all night," chortled an aide one time. Roosevelt roared, eyes bright. "Is he still doing that? he asked, recalling that the old boy was on the prowl back when Roosevelt was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 20 years earlier.

The most successful moments in the presidency in recent years have come when the Chief Executives put together the human equation. They relished the struggles, the intrigue, the failures and triumphs of the men and women involved. Carter, in some ways the most human of Presidents, has taken the lonely ground above, dwelling with statistics, programs, philosophy. There are few zestful folks up there, and almost nobody who can get things done. Carter has only a handful of personal friends in the city, little interest in others beyond their official functions. The story of his presidency so far reads like an annual report.

What Carter has failed to do is explore the minds and manners of the men and women in power. Lyndon Johnson had a novelist's sensitivity. "Watch their eyes, watch their hands," he told his staff.

L.B.J. related how Bobby Kennedy's Adam's apple went up and down when L.B.J. barred him from the vice-presidential ticket in 1964. "The most important thing a man has to tell you," said John son, "is what he is not telling you." L.B.J. could mimic every adversary. "Don't look out those windows," he warned his staff who were across the street the day after Kennedy's murder. "The people in the White House will think you are looking for power." When a TV reporter offended Johnson, he told an aide, "He's a walleye. My daddy said never trust a mule or a man who is walleyed."

Harry Truman took a liking to Joe Stalin, but when he got a case of the old dictator's best vodka, Truman gave it away, wondering about any man who would drink the stuff over bourbon. Truman watched with fascination as Secretary of State Dean Acheson verbally diminished Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, who had the idea he should be a larger figure around the White House.

The city savored Eisenhower down in Augusta. "Golf?" complained Ike.

"How can I play golf with Foster [Dulles] yelling 'Nasser' at the top of my back-swing?" There was the time that Dulles rushed in on a golf afternoon with an other Cuban crisis and Ike said, "Foster, can't it wait until 5:30?" Ike's moods were legend, and his staff was convinced he dressed accordingly. "Oh, God," Appointments Secretary Tom Stephens would warn, "he's got on his brown suit."

Back when he was Vice President, Richard Nixon once brought a toy drummer to the Cabinet and let it walk across the polished table to make his point about what beleaguered Republicans had to do ("Just keep beating that goldarned drum"), which may have hardened Ike's doubts about Nixon, a running theme of speculation in those years. John Kennedy loved to tell the story of calling up Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles and asking innocently who leaked the news about some new ambassadors, knowing full well it was Bowles who leaked it. (Bowles stammered, denied it, but was subdued for months.) In the grand sweep of history, such things may be forgotten. But they have a lot to do with making Washington work.

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