Flip-Flops and Zigzags

Isolated in the White House, Carter seems all too prone to error

He has been holed up in the White House for more than three months now. He has given only two press conferences since October, and only a few aides see him regularly. He summoned 300 business leaders and prominent citizens last week to consult on the galloping inflation rate, but chose not to meet with them. While an aide chaired one of the sessions, Jimmy Carter was in the garden with his grandson Jason, 4. Together, they built a snowman.

This is the "Rose Garden strategy" that began almost accidentally as an outgrowth of Carter's preoccupation with the Iranian seizure of 50 American hostages. Then, as the polls showed Americans rallying around their President, he moved with vigor and anger to condemn the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan, and he demanded that the Soviets be punished for it. Victory followed victory in the primary election campaign, and the Rose Garden strategy became a way of life. But last week a series of blunders and setbacks revealed the isolated President to be somehow out of touch with the nation and perhaps the world. Indeed, a growing number of critics harked back to the possibility that the President was simply not doing his job very well.

The worst blunder, of course, was Carter's public repudiation of a U.S. vote in the United Nations Security Council, which had supported a resolution demanding that Israel dismantle its settlements in the occupied territories, "including Jerusalem." The vote and its disavowal, which managed to outrage both the Israelis and the Arabs, and to baffle and dismay U.S. allies, was blamed on "a failure to communicate." That was hard to believe, and many did not believe it. But if true, it was a remarkable example of official incompetence.

Mistakes often walk hand in hand with bad timing and bad luck. Hardly had the shouts of dismay over the U.N. humiliation ebbed when Pakistan jolted the President by brusquely rejecting a U.S. offer of $400 million in military aid because it was too little ("Peanuts," Pakistan President Zia had said weeks before). Down the drain with that went the efforts of National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who only five weeks ago on a mission to Islamabad had attempted to convince Zia that his security and future lay with the U.S. America, offering its money and a hint of its might, had been spurned in quite embarrassing public circumstances. The result: a serious blow to U.S. international prestige.

The home front reeled as well. The latest figures on the state of the economy were appalling. The wholesale price statistics released on Friday showed an annual inflation rate of nearly 20%, and the Congressional Budget Office projected a budget deficit of nearly $50 billion for fiscal 1980, the very year by which Carter had so earnestly pledged he would balance the budget--but that was a campaign promise made in 1976.

For many of those who look for the best in him, Carter remains an ineffective President, one who has only partly followed the traditional pattern of growing in the job. He too often seems as uncertain as when he first took office: an immensely dedicated, well-meaning, decent man who is not comfortable with the power of the presidency. Says a former top official in Washington: "He really doesn't like power and doesn't know how to use it."

An idealist, Carter tends to think that if a policy is right, it will somehow prevail. A proper moral stance, he seems to believe, is at least half the battle. He thus remains relatively indifferent to strategy, to making sure that all the pieces are in place and all the proper personalities consulted, that all the predictable consequences of an action indeed have been predicted. He tends to react rather than anticipate, to race from one crisis to the next, always hoping for the best. He often fails to see how one event is related to another in a binding chain of circumstances that a President must always keep in mind. And when an action is heralded by the White House, it too often does not take place. For example, to signal U.S. determination to the Soviets, he called for the draft registration of young Americans, men and women alike. Last week Congress banned the registration of women, and the registration of men was in doubt. Some signal.

Carter compounds the confusion by dividing authority among too many people, a presidential tendency that he has carried far. His economic advisers have never been very logically organized. Last week he bypassed Treasury Secretary G. William Miller and put Vice President Walter Mondale in charge of an economic review. But Mondale is not particularly well informed on the subject and has been spending most of his time campaigning for the President. Carter has split foreign policy between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Brzezinski. Until recently, whoever got in the last word often influenced Carter's decision. But Vance has declined in favor, partly because Carter seems to regard him as too mild and conciliatory toward the Soviets. Yet Brzezinski has not assumed power, for Carter mistrusts his emotionalism and theatricality. No one fills the policy void, and decisions have to be made under pressure, sometimes by men in a state of late-night exhaustion. Defense Secretary Harold Brown is regarded as a skilled technocrat but cautious to a fault on policymaking. CIA Director Stansfield Turner makes a very limited contribution. Adding to the disarray, Carter has repeatedly replaced his chief emissary to the Middle East. After Vance came Robert Strauss, who was soon succeeded by Sol Linowitz in a role in which continuity is of great importance.

Continuity indeed is vital in all international relations. U.S, lack of consistency is a chief complaint of such puzzled allies as Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany, who went to Washington last week to convey some of his grievances. Says William Kintner, former U.S. Ambassador to Thailand and now a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania: "It sounds as if Carter never heard of the basic axiom that the art of diplomacy is consistency. His is a policy of flip-flops and zigzags."

Some of the U.S. Administration's most notable flip-flops:

> Carter came into office pledging significant reductions in the number of U.S. troops in Korea, then rescinded the plan.

> He promised a campaign for human rights around the world, then began to make exceptions for certain allies, then largely abandoned the program.

> After U.S. diplomats spent months trying to persuade NATO members in Europe to accept the neutron bomb, Carter suddenly canceled production of the weapon.

> As a guest of the Shah of Iran on New Year's Eve, 1977, Carter toasted his host for his "great leadership." A year later, when mobs were rioting in Tehran, Carter helped nudge the Shah into exile. During this crisis, Carter ordered a U.S. naval task force to sail toward the Persian Gulf, then ordered it back to the Philippines.

> On hearing of a Soviet brigade in Cuba last summer, Carter pronounced it "unacceptable." When the Soviets ignored him, arguing that the troops had been there more than ten years, Carter announced that the brigade "is certainly no reason for a return to the cold war." Last week the State Department reported that the brigade was not only still there, but was out on combat maneuvers.

In addition to the shifts in policy, there is often an improvised quality to Carter's actions. After announcing the grain embargo, Carter discovered that 17 million tons were under contract to the Soviets in the futures market and that the cancellation of sales would provoke bank failures all over the U.S. A mere phone call to the Agriculture Department would have turned up this information. Grain markets had to be closed for two days and an expensive rescue package for grain farmers slapped together.

The White House seemed just as surprised to learn that Argentina had enormous grain reserves ready for sale to the U.S.S.R., a fact known by any grain trader in Chicago. The U.S. then sent a special emissary to Argentina to ask Strongman Jorge Videla to cooperate in the U.S. embargo, but Videla, who had been pilloried by the State Department's human rights pronouncements, refused. The Soviets will be able to make up about 60% of the lost U.S. shipments. Concedes a senior State Department official: "The grain embargo has become symbolic."

The paradox in Carter's failures is that the voters keep turning out to support his candidacy for reelection. It is partly the same patriotic tendency that caused John Kennedy's poll ratings to rise after the debacle at the Bay of Pigs. But there are signs that Carter's extended Indian summer may be turning colder. In the wake of the U.N. uproar, Senator Ted Kennedy began attacking Carter forcefully on the issue; the dismay of pro-Israeli voters could become significant in the two big primaries just coming up: Illinois and New York.

The fate of the hostages in Iran is still a perplexing element in Carter's future. Their safe return would bring a great wave of euphoria, whereas their continued detention makes Carter's vacillations look more damaging as each week passes. Even the euphoria of a safe return cannot last indefinitely, however. The dangerous instabilities of the world and the erosion of the U.S. economy will provide continuing challenges of the kind that Carter has shown himself somewhat ill suited to master.

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