The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; How the Humorists See Carter

BEA GODFREY (to banjo music): Little Jimmy Carter, The will of the people spent. I will sing Jimmy Carter, From peanuts to President.

ROBERT MacNEIL: After fifteen months, we know what the press thinks of him, we know what foreign leaders think of him -- and the gossip writers, and the politicians, and the defense establishment. Tonight, the political humorists look at Jimmy Carter.

Good evening. For all Presidents there are times when things go very sour, when they feel unloved, misunderstood, and frustrated. This is such a time for Jimmy Carter. Fifteen months into office he`s still smiling indefatigably, but for the moment the bloom is off. His approval rating has slipped in the polls; pundits and politicians, domestic and foreign, are questioning his ability to lead; and while he won one with the Panama Canal, much of his program is snarled up in Congress. When he took his team off to Camp David recently for a rethink, they had a lot to chew over. Tonight, a little change of perspective: the Carter the humorists see. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Political cartoonists, whose job it is to be funny with a definite bite or point of view, opened up immediately on Carter. Lurie asked, "Will the real Jimmy Carter please stand up?" Others also emphasized the unknown aspects of this new man from Georgia and made a big thing of what was known -- a big smile and a lot of teeth.

(Sequence of cartoons on this theme.)

MacNEIL: Oliphant of the Washington Star, like most of the cartoonists across the nation, had a lot of fun at first -- to the annoyance of Carter`s Georgia mafia -- with the theme of the Georgia crackers come to town, and supposedly imposing their taste in clothes ... and food ... and drink... on elegant Washington society.

They had a great time with his accent and his humble, plain-folks, ingratiating manner. They played all the variations they could find on the selection of a cabinet. And they went to town on the Carter family, devoting special loving care to the President`s irrepressible, irreverent, outspoken, beer-drinking brother, Billy.

LEHRER: The President`s brother Billy wasn`t the only one in the family noticed by the humorists. The President`s sisters, Ruth Carter Stapleton and Gloria Carter Spann, got some attention, as did all the others, including their mother, Ms. Lillian. Mark Russell, the well-known TV and nightclub comedian here in Washington, views the family situation this way:

MARK RUSSELL (on piano): ...And you can imagine how proud Miss Lillian must be of all the kids. And she might be down there in the parlor in Plains, chatting with a neighbor, and like any mother would do, Miss Lillian would tend to talk about the children, and most likely be a little bit on the boastful side. She might say something like, Gloria`s book is doin better than she planned. She got a nice advance, it was over fifty grand. Ruth just called from her new Cadillac -Conversions are up and Mike Douglas wants her back.

And the Lord and our agents give us what we`ve got. Our little family`s blessed, `cause when you`re hot you`re hot.

Cousin Hugh`s doin` fine on his very own terms, With the Carter name he gets more for his worms. That worm farm of his is doing better than most. Fifteen million worms a year at a hundred grand gross.

And the Lord and our agents give us what we`ve got. Our little family`s blessed, `cause when you`re hot you`re hot.

Well, there don`t seem to be enough hours in the day, What with talk shows, interviews and my CPA.

We`d like to slow down, but we can`t, I fear;

Got to catch up with Billy by the end of the year.

Billy works hard, I taught him that way, Endorsin` products all the livelong day. He made five G`s yesterday, his bankroll`s getting fat;

It`s a pity that his brother isn`t makin` more than that.

And the Lord and our agents give us what we`ve got. Our little family`s blessed, `cause when you`re hot you`re hot.

Too bad that Jimmy`s the poorest of the clan. We try to lay some bread on him whenever we can. Bein` a Carter`s a mighty heavy trip,

But if our name wasn`t, we`d all be makin` zip.

And the Lord and our agents give us what we`ve got. Our little family`s blessed, `cause when you`re hot you`re hot.

MacNEIL: As soon as the family began to wear thin, Mr. Carter handed the humorists another whole theme: his media campaign to build up a kind of savings account of public support to draw on when the going got tough with Congress. They loved the fireside chat. Oliphant pictured the President trying to blow a little life into the device FDR made famous ... and carried the possibilities of grassroots communications with the White House to its ultimate absurdity. "And this is Freddie, Mr. President ... He`d like to say hello, too. Say `hello,` Freddie."

But with the call-ins, they were beginning to notice something else: the president`s insatiable appetite for detail and his fluent command of all issues. Dan Aykroyd, on NBC`s "Saturday Night Live"

ANNOUNCER: And now, live from the White House, "Ask President Carter."

"WALTER CRONKITE": Good evening, and welcome to Number Ten in the CBS radio series, "Ask President Carter," a continuing experiment in Presidential communication with the American people. Mr. President, our first call this week comes from Mrs. Edward Hobrath -- or maybe it`s Hobraith...

"Mrs. HORVATH": That`s Horvath.

"CRONKITE" : Mrs. Edward Horvath; excuse me, of Maple Trace, Kansas.

"PRESIDENT CARTER": Hello, Mrs. Horvath.

"HORVATH": Hello, Mr. President. How are you today?

"CARTER": Very fine --could you turn your radio down, please?

"HORVATH": Oh. Yes.

"CRONKITE": Mrs. Horvath, do you have a question for

the President?

"HORVATH": Yes, sir. I`m an employee of the U.S. Postal Service in Kansas...

"CARTER": Um-hum.

"HORVATH": Last year they installed an automated letter sorting system called the Marvex 3000 here in our branch...

"CARTER": Yes?

"HORVATH": But the system doesn`t work too good; letters keep getting clogged in the first-level sorting grid. Is there anything that can be done about this?

(Laughter from audience.)

"CARTER": Well, Mrs. Horvath, Vice President Mondale and myself were just talking about the Marvex 3000 this morning, as a matter of fact...

(Laughter.)

"CARTER": I do have a suggestion. You know the caliper post on the first grid sliding armature?

"HORVATH": Yes.

"CARTER": Okay, there`s a three-digit setting there where the post and the armature meet. Now, when the system was installed, the angle of cross-lag was put at a maximum setting of one. If you reset it at the three mark like it says in the assembly instructions, I think you`ll solve any clogging problems in the machine.

"HORVATH": Oh, thanks, Mr. President. And by the way, I think you`re doing a great job.

"CARTER": Okay.

(Laughter and applause from audience.)

"CRONKITE": Looks like you`ve been doing your homework, Mr. President. Our time is up for this week, but let me remind you that it is now time to buy your tickets for the first American "I slept at the White House" lottery, on sale at federal office buildings everywhere.

"CARTER": I feel there`s no harm in trying. Well, the tickets are only a dollar, and maybe somebody out there will win an all-expense-paid trip to spend the night with us here in Washington. Good night.

"CRONKITE": Goodnight. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

LEHRER: Style moved finally to substance, for the President as well as those who watched and poked fun. Oliphant saw the issues come and go like this: on the Middle East, a shift in policy, with Israeli Prime Minister Begin getting the boot. Human rights -- Secretary of State Vance wiring back to Washington, "Dear Mr. President. Have foot in door. Please go easy on the dissident statements or I could lose foot. Cyrus." The President kills the B-1 bomber. "Nice shooting, Red Peanut," says the little cartoon character. The economy, the question of business confidence, the stock market down -- "Gently, Mr. Carter, gently," as Wall Street is herded toward the open window. Reform -- welfare and tax and all the others -- "How do you like the reforms so far?" Oliphant`s Mr. Carter asks. The energy plan -- continued. The coal strike: the miners turn down a settlement -- "An egg for Easter." "Our side of the table at the SALT talks" -- the neutron bomb issue: "Well, gee, golly, I don`t really know ... maybe, maybe not." The Panama Canal treaties -- "The home stretch." That`s Mr. Carter there on the bridge of that small, endangered craft.

MacNEIL: But of all the issues, the one Mr. Carter stressed most, and so did the humorists, was energy. They seized on the apparent indifference of the public to the future crisis he was warning about, and they had a ball with big oil, the target of his most impassioned rhetoric.

MARK RUSSELL: Now, April brought about the first anniversary of the introduction of the energy bill, which... they never brought it about. Now, they wonder why we don`t have an energy bill. Well, I think it`s because there aren`t any gas lines, and we don`t have an immediate sense of emergency. I mean, when they say that the energy situation is the moral equivalent of a war, let`s have a wart Let`s have warlike

`propaganda, banners, posters, Bob Hope entertaining the troops at the storm door factory. That`s the trouble. See, we Americans don`t get motivated without that visible symbol of an enemy. It takes a Hitler, unfortunately. It take a Tokyo Rose, tauntingly saying, "Hi, there, Yanks. I`ll bet your best girl is running around with some Arab right now, while you`re sitting there with an empty tank."

Do you remember the time Jimmy Carter went on television? Said the oil companies were ripping us off -those were his exact words. Strong language for a President. Said the oil companies were engaging in wartime profiteering, ho, ho, ho, ho, that`s rough stuff, rough stuff.

Well, he rode into town with a smile on his face, `Cause a sneer would bring fear to the marketplace. With a Stetson burnoose and his Brooks Brothers suits, And his Gucci cowboy boots, he sure looked cute -Big Oil ... Big, bad Oil.

Now, nobody knew where Big Oil came from.

He just rode into town on a twenty-dollar drum. Some folks say he came from the Middle East,

But he looked like a Texan whose rigs were leased. Big Oil ... Big, bad Oil.

Now, Big Oil threw his weight around, he played with fire.

Weren`t long before he raised Sheriff Jimmy`s ire,

And folks `round town were thinkin` soon

That they`d both have a shootout at the stroke of high noon.

Big Oil ... easy and greasy Big Oil.

Well, Jimmy rode into town with Jody by his side, He swore he`d give Big Oil a real rough ride. How could he know, how could he tell

That Big Oil had seven sisters who were mean as hell?

Big Oil ... we`re talkin` mean.

Well, there was Esmerelda Exxon, a nasty old dame,

There was Gerty Gulf from the witches` hall of fame,

Mabel Mobil and Tessie Texaco.

If there`s a meaner bunch of sisters, man, I don`t want to know.

Big Oi1...Big, bad Oil.

Now, the clock was approaching the high noon hour How could Jimmy stand up to all of that power? But he had a secret weapon strapped to his side, And if those sisters ever saw it they would run and hide.

Big Oil.

But would he use that weapon on the seven sisters? "Use iti" cried his deputy, Schlesinger....

And he pulled it from his holster -- and nobody could look -- and he shot `em all down...

With a ration book. Big, bad Oil.

LEHRER: Is this man Carter even up to the task of being President? Well, Russell Baker, the man of satire in the New York Times, asked that question in a column about one part of the job in particular. Robin does the honors on behalf of Baker.

MacNEIL: Better economists than I are saying President Carter is going to have to start jawboning if he wants to stop inflation. All very well for a President who can jawbone like a champion, but veteran jawbone writers doubt that Mr. Carter has what it takes. The NBC nightly news showed films the other night comparing President Carter`s jawboning with President Kennedy`s. All you could say after watching the Kennedy performance was, "They don`t make jawboners like that any more." What Caruso was to opera, what Babe Ruth was to bats, Jack Kennedy was to jawboning. By comparison, Jimmy Carter sounded like a hambone the steel tycoons might toss into the soup.

The President is aware, of course, that his jawboning needs a lot of work but denies that he`s asked Muhammad Ali and Reggie Jackson for jawboning lessons. Ali and Jackson are generally thought to possess the finest jawbones in the country today. Many economists believe that, if unleashed against inflation, those jawbones alone could cause the dollar to stabilize by next weekend.

This seems a bit far-fetched, as does the suggestion that President Carter`s jawboning is not powerful enough to do the job. Persons with jawbones much weaker than Mr. Carter`s have found they can nevertheless jawbone with modest success in their own small domains.

Jawboning alone is not apt to intimidate a truculent customer like inflation unless the noise is backed up by a credible threat to escalate jawboning into headboning. Headboning consists of knocking two or more heads together until the headbones see the light; namely, that you don`t intend to put up with any more inflation.

That`s what made President Kennedy`s jawboning so effective. It left you with the queasy suspicion that unless you did something fast the President was going to start headboning. President Carter`s jawboning, on the other hand, leaves you with the suspicion that unless you do something fast he will take off on another international tour. Mr. Carter either doesn`t know about headboning or he`s too much of a gentleman to practice it. This may be because he thinks we Americans are tired of Presidents who aren`t civil to everybody.

He`s probably thinking of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, who carried boning to unseemly extremes. President Johnson, not content with jawboning followed by headboning, frequently went on to omniboning, which is a nasty business of mashing every bone that doesn`t get the message until the jawbones cry "Unclel" President Nixon, revolted by such direct methods, preferred what he called "stroking," a process of jawboning so sweet to the strokee`s earbones that the victim fell into a hypnotic state in which he could be deboned without realizing it. By the time

Mr. Nixon finally stumbled in his own tape, he had fileted a large part of the government.

And so, following Presidents Johnson and Nixon, Mr. Carter may be quite naturally assuming that the country`s greatest desire is for a President who will leave their bones alone. This could be a sad miscalculation in view of the speed with which Americans can change their tastes nowadays in everything, including Presidents.

If these prices keep rising, Mr. Carter might become as unwelcome as a fishbone in the windpipe. This often leads to a vigorous ejection, which is known as fishboning.

LEHRER: The President`s boneheads -- real or imagined -- also came in for a lot of attention. They were a mixture of issues and style. According to Oliphant: Bert Lance -- that`s Mr. Carter under Lance, Jody

Powell on the rope saying, "`Scuse me, Mr. President, but Bert here seems too heavy to leave twistin` slowly in th` wind."

The President`s well-publicized differences with Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns. The Marston case: the President says to his Attorney General, "Did you notice how that cruel Republican U.S. Attorney is harassing those poor Democrats, Mr Bell? I hope somebody in authority fires him for it -- without telling me, of course."

The President comes out against living in sin, and Oliphant`s woman writes, "Dear President Carter. I thought you would be pleased to hear that Harry and I are no longer living in sin. When I mentioned your views on the subject, Harry took off."

Carter compared to Gerald Ford: "Remember how we used to laugh when of Jerry Ford would go around bashing his head into everything?" Indecisiveness developed as a Carter criticism, and a theme for the likes of Oliphant. "Come back tomorrow and try for a decision. We`re being wishy- washy today."

Mark Russell, the man at the piano, has this retrospective view of some of the Carter problems:

MARK RUSSELL: I suppose not a day goes by without somebody asking me the same question over and over again, every day I get it. People say, "Is Jimmy Carter funny?" I have a stock answer for that -- "No." Now, do you remember, it was about a year ago, how did we feel about him? We were all kind of insecure because we did not know Jimmy Carter. Well, today it`s different. Now, at the very beginning of all of this it was the basic Carter reference, kind of the folks from Georgia coming up to Washington, and it was hoedown time, it was very, very basic -- like this (plays piano) -- sort of "Turkey in the Straw" parody a little bit.

Well, clap your hands and see Jimmy dance With Hamilton Jordan and Cyrus Vance. Allemande left, now take a chance, Say goodbye to old Bert Lance.

Well, Bert Lance, that was September; I just came up about nine months there. So there I added this lyric here, you see:

Well, he`s a buddy, he`s a friend. Stuck with him until the end. Overdrawn by a mile,

And that`s called banking Georgia style, And that`s Jimmy Carter`s hoedown.

Now we`ve got another issue working into the same basic "Turkey in the Straw" format.

Dance in the light, dance in the dark, Throw out that present from Tongsun Park. The word in Congress is don`t get excited; Unless you`re retired you won`t be indicted....

MacNEIL: But there`s no pleasing some people. Even the humorists got tired and began to question Mr. Carter`s ability to inspire -- at least, that was the complaint of America`s most famous syndicated funny columnist, Art Buchwald:

Everybody`s doing it -- analyzing Jimmy Carter`s first year in office. So it came as no surprise when I was invited to a meeting of newspaper cartoonists and humor columnists last week at the Tongsun Park Pizza Palace and Massage Parlor in beautiful downtown Gaithersburg. The consensus of the group was that Carter had raised political cartoonists` expectations when he first came to the White House, but he promised more as a candidate than he could deliver as a President.

"He had us fooled," said one embittered cartoonist, "because of his teeth. We figured all those teeth would say it all." The man sitting next to him agreed. "He also had hair. When a President has both teeth and hair he should be ripe for plucking." A third cartoonist said, "Ford had regular teeth and very little hair. Yet in some ways he was easier to draw." A fourth cartoonist commented, "I don`t think it was the teeth or the hair. I believe we all thought we`d have a ball with peanuts and the screwy family. After three weeks we used up every peanut joke in the book."

"I thought Billy Carter would last the full four years. Then he sold out and was overexposed in three months. I can`t draw Billy Carter any more without getting sick." "Try writing about him and see how it gets you," I said.

"If Bert Lance had only not resigned," someone said wistfully. "That was a tough break," a humor columnist agreed. "He could have been this administration`s Bebe Rebozo."

"I think Carter`s big mistake from our point of view," another club member said, "was appointing so many faceless people to his cabinet. For example, Vance is no Kissinger." "The worst thing about drawing Carter people is you have to put their names on them, and then people still don`t know who they are," another cartoonist said.

"I think where Carter has really failed is that he`s offered solutions for problems that cannot be solved. Then when they aren`t solved he goes on television and admits they were much harder to solve than he thought they would be," a columnist said. "What`s your point?" someone asked. "Well, if nobody understood the solution in the first place, how can you make fun of his failures in the second?" "Right, that`s why I hate to do energy cartoons," someone said. "Or welfare reform."

"You know what I think?" a cartoonist said. "Carter`s an enigma."

The people haven`t made up their minds about him, so they don`t know whether he`s funny or not." "Isn`t being an enigma an impeachable offense?" "It would be if you could pin it down. Let`s face it. Carter says he likes the job. That means we have to live with him for at least three more years." "The country is dealing with a born-again President," said a stand- up comedian, "and it isn`t any easier for them than it is for us." "I believe there`s hope," I said, trying to cheer up everybody`s spirits. "Don`t forget Nixon didn`t give us much funny material the first year he was in office, either. We`ve got to give Carter a chance. No President, including Jerry Ford, ever let down political cartoonists or humorists before." "He`s right," someone said. "One year is too short. If Carter would just make one more trip around the world, I think we`d all be home free." "Yeah, but what do we do until then?" "How about Ham Jordan? He`s sorta getting to be funny," a club member said. "Yeah, but only when he goes to dinner."

LEHRER: Now to the question of what effect, if any, the works of Buchwald and the other humor types have on their targets as well as their various audiences. Mark Shields is here to discuss that with us. Mr. Shields is a political consultant who has worked for candidates in thirty-seven states and for four Presidential candidates. He`s also written on .politics for the Boston Globe and the Washington Star, talked about it on NBC and CBS, and taught it at Harvard. First question: has all of this kind of thing we`ve just seen hurt President Carter, do you think?

MARK SHIELDS: I don`t think so, Jim. I think that the question is really how it`s affected him -- whether in fact he feels put upon and has to do something to compensate to prove he is a serious, competent, decisive person. In that sense, it would have affected him, and probably affected him adversely.

LEHRER: What`s the public evidence thus far as to how well he is handling it?

SHIELDS: I don`t think humor in politics generally is something that somebody does, like a speech, or a walk through a room or a march in a parade. Humor in politics has to be just as natural as humor in everyday life, and I don`t think that President Carter -- there`s nothing that I`ve seen demonstrate it -- is a humorous person by nature. I think it`s probably fair to say that any individual that has Hyman Rickover as his role model -- you`re not really talking about the Will Rogers of the naval service, you`re talking about Admiral Rickover; a distinguished citizen, but hardly a guy whose anecdotage is quoted widely.

LEHRER: But a lot of people in public life -- for instance, you worked for Robert Kennedy; he was able to turn some of the negative things about him to an advantage, was he not, through the use of humor?

SHIELDS: Yes, he did. Senator Robert Kennedy, I remember in Nebraska in 1968, would stand up, and here he was a totally urban public figure, with a close identification with the black community, with the Hispanic community, and say to the Nebraska farmers, "I have at my home this morning consumed twelve loaves of bread, six quarts of milk, and I have a dozen children; and I challenge Richard Nixon to do that." And it worked. And it worked as an antidote to his own perception of ruthlessness.

LEHRER: I was just thinking about that, the ruthlessness bit that he used; as we pointed out, and as the cartoonists have shown, this question of indecisiveness that is coming to the fore as a criticism of Carter, and it`s become perhaps not a big thing in a real sense, but what could he do about that? He could work on that, could he not?

SHIELDS: He could kid about it. He`s done it a couple of times; he did it, in fact, at the Democratic Study Group dinner here in Washington. It was interesting. He stood up and talked about that he really did understand about Washington and those people around him; in fact, he`d spent a lot of time on Pennsylvania Street -- instead of Pennsylvania Avenue -- which evoked a real response from the crowd, most of whom were members of Congress or people who work in the Congress. The next day up on the Hill there was a real feeling about him and his ability to kid himself. He has not done that on a sustained basis, though.

LEHRER: Okay. Well, we`ll see what he does from now on. Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Thanks, Mr. Shields; good night, Jim. That`s all for tonight. We`ll be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.