I was glad the conference table was so large, because I truly feared that Mondale might reach over to choke Caddell in his intense anger. Caddell said later of the tongue-lashing: “I didn’t even look up, I was so scared.”56
Rafshoon tried for a middle ground, while seeking to cool tempers with a dose of calm: “Sometimes the best thing is to do nothing,” He argued that we had become too obsessed with policy and tied down in legislative details. He stressed, and with good reason, that while we had a very successful legislative record, it had not helped our political standing at all. As one of the architects of Carter’s insurgent campaign, Rafshoon underscored that Carter had not been elected as a traditional programmatic liberal Democrat, but as someone who touched voters through identifying with their broader concerns.57
Since I toiled on policy problems, that made me uncomfortable, but Rafshoon was essentially correct. In the campaign we had outlined numerous positions on dozens of issues in many different forums, but they had not won Carter the presidency. He won by offering to heal the country’s wounds, reform government, assert the common good over private interests, make the American people feel part of their government, and create jobs and growth. Rafshoon rightly pointed out that now, halfway into his presidency, was the time Carter had to show the voters that he had not forgotten why they elected him.
CADDELL’S PRESCRIPTION
As we prepared to break for dinner, Carter told us he had listened to everyone and declared decisively that he was going to accept Caddell’s prescription in its entirety: “I’ve read it, and I’m going to do it all.” Again reflecting Caddell’s words, he said: “I think the people have given up on us and turned us off, but I think they would have done this regardless of who was president.… We have a good energy program, but it will be five years before it shows results.”
Turning to Mondale, he said that his presence at various labor and constituency-group conventions was “not as important to me as it is to you,” and “I am inclined to stay up here to arouse the interest of the public. I can’t turn around public opinion without drama and mystery”—exactly Caddell’s prescription.
What he planned to do before the speech, however, was spend as long as a week at Camp David meeting with mayors and governors, civil rights, business and labor leaders, and listening to new economic voices and political Wise Men to explore solutions to domestic problems. Then he would start spending an average of one week a month outside Washington; however, he did not want to make an energy speech that could be delivered by anyone in the administration. This sent my head reeling. How could he avoid addressing energy when gas lines and soaring prices were a major part of his political problem, but instead launch a philosophical discourse about an ill-defined crisis of confidence?
Then, with the righteous fervor that made Jimmy Carter unique among modern politicians, he said: “The country is not bad off materially, but the problem is with spiritual and moral values … I am convinced Pat is correct.” I retorted that Caddell’s draft was too negative about ordinary Americans, when he had campaigned on heading “a government as good as the American people.”
I then proposed what ended up as the accepted compromise. As much as I disagreed with the president acting as the nation’s psychoanalyst, I proposed that we tone down Pat’s rhetoric to make it clear we were not blaming the American people, but that we took responsibility for the state of the country. The speech would end by giving an abbreviated version of the energy policy speech we had prepared, but in the form of what I urged should be a “call to arms,” backed up by a detailed energy fact sheet issued the day after the speech to avoid drowning out the main message. I argued that by tackling our energy challenge and taking on OPEC, we could rally the public with a common purpose, directed at something concrete. The president and everyone else agreed. But when we got to specifics, and I mentioned the possibility of decontrolling gasoline prices to end the lines at gas stations, the president said firmly: “I won’t decontrol gasoline.”58
We were all emotionally tight as drums, and Mondale was inconsolable. Even years later the bitterness of the meeting lingered. Mondale recalled that Carter knew he was so disturbed, because rather than turn his back on Mondale after a stream of accusations, he took him for a walk around the compound to help him recover from a very rough session. Mondale later confided that he knew Carter and his staff were angry at him because he thought Caddell’s ideas were “slop,” and that we should confront real problems people were facing and ask them to help us.59
After Mondale’s futile walk around Camp David with the president, Rosalynn took Caddell for a drive in a golf cart and told him that the president had intentionally not disclosed before the meeting with us that he was accepting all of Caddell’s plan, because Caddell “was going to be in enough hot water with everybody.” Instead, she told him, her husband had read Caddell’s memo and speech draft and then decided “he would play his own cards now, he was masterminding that himself.… He thought it better not to tell anybody. He would just take charge.” Caddell confided to Rosalynn during the short ride that it had been a “terrible 36 hours … everybody’s on me saying, ‘You’re to blame.’”60 After dinner at Holly Lodge we all went to the more informal setting of the president’s Aspen Lodge, where we stood around with drinks to watch the TV news, which we were part of in real time.
Now the focus shifted from staying at Camp David to making that stay productive. We began what was a heavily political exercise in choosing whom to invite up to the mountain; any important group that was excluded could immediately become a critic or an outright opponent. What began as an effort to solicit advice on righting Carter’s administration turned into a circus because of the necessary inclusion of every major interest group. So energy and economic experts, congressional leaders and governors, labor chiefs and business titans, minority and women’s group heads, and even religious leaders, with a careful balance between Christians and Jews, all were summoned for advice in an extraordinary event billed as a “Domestic Summit” setting “Goals for America.”
Democratic governors were invited for Friday night. On Saturday came the Washington Wise Men: such eminences as Clark Clifford (top Truman aide and secretary of Defense under LBJ), John Gardner (head of the government watchdog group Common Cause), and Sol Linowitz. On Sunday would come the energy experts; on Monday, the economists in the morning, and the civil and human rights leaders in the evening (including Jesse Jackson, head of Operation PUSH, a black advocacy group focused on jobs for minorities). Tuesday would focus on congressional leaders on energy and the economy. Wednesday would be devoted to meetings with labor leaders (including the UAW’s Doug Fraser and Lane Kirkland, head of the AFL-CIO) and others to deal with unemployment, and then finally mayors and county officials. On Thursday he would lunch with the cabinet and White House staff. On Friday the president would schedule visits to a few families in rural Maryland around the Camp David area. Saturday was left open to work on the speech he would deliver Sunday night.
THE WASHINGTON WISE MEN WEIGH IN
I doubt any other American president has subjected himself to such intense scrutiny, soul-searching, and criticism as Carter did during that week—and for good reason. The groups started trooping up to Camp David on July 8. The president was dressed informally. Some meetings were held in his Aspen Lodge residence, some around the large Laurel Lodge cabinet table. He took about a hundred pages of detailed notes in his small, clear handwriting.61
These sessions were by no means all fluff and theater. Indeed, the pastoral setting afforded an opportunity for leaders in many fields to engage in serious discussions of two to three hours in front of the president of the United States. But Carter got more than he bargained for by inviting outsiders to unload on him. They unanimously criticized the Georgia Mafia as too immature for their jobs and suggested strengthening the White House staff, advice that was largely ignored.62 The most cogent critiques were cataloged and included at the introduction of the pres
ident’s speech, and the sharpness of the criticisms was staggering.
Among the most stinging came from Clifford, former top White House aide to President Truman and secretary of Defense to President Johnson. Before meeting Carter, this most fastidious of men, whose demeanor, expensive wardrobe, and wavy silver hair gave him an elegant, even regal bearing, fell off his bicycle while pedaling with John Gardner of Common Cause.63 Clifford recoiled from the whole scene, later describing it to me “as unusual a weekend as I have ever spent. The president of the United States was sitting on the floor with a big pad of yellow paper, taking notes while people sat around him, five or six of us, and told him what he was doing wrong.”
Clifford urged Carter to give a Churchill-style “blood, toil, tears and sweat” speech, and then sharply criticized Carter for his personnel choices—Jordan was “not the right man” for the job of chief of staff, and neither was Frank Moore at congressional relations. He also posed a series of rhetorical questions straight out of Political Science 101: “Is there a strong hand on the helm? Is the crew loyal? When decisions are made, is the follow-through there?” As for Carter himself, Clifford told the president that to a certain extent he was “still running against Washington [and] had a lack of understanding of what takes place within the Beltway.” This was not altogether surprising advice from one of the most influential and highest-paid lawyer-lobbyists in Washington, D.C.64
Gardner called Energy Secretary Schlesinger a “dreadful leader, not a manager and not a politician.” Linowitz asked rhetorically: “Can Jimmy Carter govern?” He also had no confidence in Schlesinger, none in Blumenthal, until recently, and felt “Califano was in business for himself.” Most congressional criticisms were equally withering. The young Missouri Democrat Richard Gephardt, who would later become House Majority Leader, said: “People are cynical, angry, and desperate, and you need to address this; it is time to tell them we’re in a war, an economic war.”
The unkindest cut came from House Democratic Majority Leader Wright, who angrily told the president to stop blaming the House of Representatives, since its members had already passed his windfall profits tax and a huge bill to underwrite the development of synthetic fuels. But a more reflective comment came from Representative Morris Udall, who had also been Carter’s most formidable opponent in the 1976 primaries. “We are paying a price for overreacting to Nixon,” Udall said, and the distrust was “creating a paralysis in decision making, when we should give the president the benefit of the doubt.”
When the elder statesmen of Congress and some state governors as well as activists arrived, a certain amount of obvious advice and sheer bloviating was to be expected. Governor Hugh Carey of New York told Carter he was “suffering from overexposure.” Others talked of an image of indecision and incompetence for both the president and Congress, and that the American people were not ready for sacrifice because they did not believe there was an energy crisis. Jesse Jackson, of course, focused on urban problems and youth unemployment, and urged a “comprehensive urban policy.”
One particularly impressive participant was the 32-year-old first-term governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, whose criticism was among the most constructive in proposing that a percentage of public-service jobs be tied to energy conservation. Clinton, showing an upbeat approach that would later serve him well in the White House, advised Carter: “Mr. President, don’t just preach sacrifice but liberation—and that it is an exciting time to be alive. Say your program will unleash a burst of energy.” In his notes for emphasis, Carter put quotation marks around Clinton’s remark about the excitement of life.
With all the criticism of the White House staff, House Speaker Tip O’Neill had given me a strong infusion of oxygen by pulling me aside at the previous week’s meeting of congressional leaders on energy to say: “We don’t have many things going for us, but you’re one of them—stick in there.”65 When Tip spoke to the president, it was to emphasize Congress’s limits (vividly on display during the energy debate). He pleaded with Carter not to try to seek legislative authority to ration gasoline because of the “parochialism of people in the House.” Senator Bentsen proclaimed: “This is one of the most difficult times since the Civil War” and therefore “the time for action.” The one piece of good news came from Russell Long, who pledged passage of a windfall profits tax on newly decontrolled crude oil, but then cautioned that synthetic fuels were three times more expensive than the oil and gas produced by his constituents’ industries.
The forum with the energy specialists included Schlesinger and his team, with outside experts from industry and academia. Carter opened with Caddell’s litany of Watergate and shocks from the 1960s—the country was suffering, as Caddell had put in his memorandum, from an “American malaise … American values are crumbling.” This seems not to have made much impression on practical oilmen pursuing profits. Thornton Bradshaw, who headed the Atlantic Richfield oil company, focused on the vast underground shale resources Carter wanted to exploit. Jerome Wiesner, president of MIT, estimated that the United States could produce 3 to 4 million barrels of oil per day from shale without polluting any water. James Akins, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and an energy expert, said OPEC’s goal was to raise crude oil prices to the cost of alternative fuels like synthetics, to gain more revenues for themselves.66 Senator Moynihan, the irrepressible Democrat from New York and a distinguished sociologist, said in his puckish way: “Your administration is filled with people who don’t agree with you.” He urged the president to “emphasize in your speech what OPEC has done to us.… Mr. President, get mad at them. What they’re doing to us is changing our whole system.” Carter made an interesting observation: “I was an OPEC man, but in the last six months I have changed, as I feel they are trying to punish the West.” The president played an active role, probing for a new path to lead the country on energy. He was so engaged that supper was served at Holly Lodge and the meeting went well into the night.67 The ineffable Moynihan privately told me: “Stu, you know the problem with your boss? He’s conservative on domestic policy and liberal on foreign policy, and he should be the other way around!”
* * *
It would be gratifying to report that experts in other fields offered concrete advice that would be of value to a practical political leader, but the Congressional Inflation Working Group of economic and budget leaders joined with our administration team to retrace our steps over well-trodden ground on the trade-off between inflation versus unemployment, and the effect of skyrocketing oil prices on both. That left us more or less where we started. A two-hour session on July 11 with labor, business, and civil rights leaders considered high and persistent unemployment among youth, especially black teenagers, and focused on the need for economic stimulus and employment and training programs. In many ways this session underscored our central economic dilemma: The base of the Democratic Party was demanding action on jobs and jobs programs, while we tried to keep federal spending tight to deal with high inflation. The UAW’s Doug Fraser at least acknowledged the inflation problem, stating that as much as he opposed mandatory wage and price controls, they were better for workers than enduring 13 percent inflation. It was a conflict we could never satisfactorily resolve.68
Perhaps the most useful advice on how to proceed came from the Hollywood mogul Steve Ross, who maintained that the entertainment industry best understood the mood of the country and reported that people wanted to know “Who are the good guys?” He urged the president to “make clear who the enemy is” (OPEC), and in military terms to urge sacrifice and energy initiatives on the scale of a new Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb. We were doing just that with our $80 billion synthetic-fuels program, but none of these peacetime hawks had thought too deeply about how the leader of a democratic nation could act decisively without building a sturdy base of public support.
Carter ended the Camp David retreat with a gesture engaging ordinary people, as Caddell had suggested. He secretly boarded a small Gulfstream
jet to meet with blue-collar families, but threw the press off his trail by sending a mock advance team to the declining Pennsylvania coal-mining cities of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Meanwhile he arrived at the opposite end of the state. The White House press corps waited in vain for him to arrive in northeast Pennsylvania. What he heard from the families was what Mondale and I had stressed: how hard it was to break even with high inflation, soaring energy prices, gasoline shortages, and a lack of good jobs.
A CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE
Rafshoon and Hertzberg set to work drafting a new speech to catch the attention of the American people at the start, by distilling many of his visitors’ most biting critiques. I drafted the energy section, based on the original energy speech we prepared, but now under Rafshoon’s instructions to include “tough, specific rhetoric with an emphasis on individual responsibility, and with a series of brief, clear specific directives and proposals, such as ‘I will propose,’ ‘I will direct.’” He allowed me no more than two pages and told me to outline Carter’s concrete energy plan and—as Rafshoon suggested—“unleash the unlimited creativity, ingenuity and enterprise of America to find and develop alternative sources of energy.” He also warned me I could only use one number, because I always wanted to cite numerous figures. While I objected, I understood his point about being simple and direct to leave a strong impression.
The president called me on July 14 to make detailed comments on the energy section, and said: “We need to be politically bold and challenging” in setting goals for the centerpiece of the new energy plan—a massive federal and private-sector program to develop synthetic energy—even if we were “not 100 percent certain” we could reach the goals. Rafshoon read the speech to me later that day to be certain the energy section was accurate, but offered no opportunity for further comments on the “crisis in confidence” passages drawn from Caddell. In a covering note to Carter, Rafshoon wrote: “We should consider saying that meeting the threat to America requires a successful war on the energy problem, but more because the threat is deeper than energy alone.” Carter wrote, “Okay.” When Rafshoon told him that he deleted some of the harsh criticisms of society, Carter replied: “Put more harshness back in.” Rafshoon suggested adding the phrase, “We are the generation that will win the energy war,” and Carter agreed. The draft contained a stirring call I had recommended and to which Carter agreed: “Energy will be the test of our ability to unite, but it will also be the standard around which we will unite. On the battlefield of energy we can rally our nation to a new confidence and we can seize control of our common destiny.”69 All of this tells a story of how presidential speeches are assembled by officials and talented writers, plus in this case, an unusual number of outside experts summoned to Camp David for the occasion.
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