by Ira Shapiro
The Democrats might be riding high in January 1977, but only four years before, the Democratic presidential nominee had lost forty-nine states, winning only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. American politics had been volatile since John Kennedy’s death. As 1977 began, the Democrats, as well as the Republicans, had a great deal to prove to a skeptical populace. And as the two parties sought to sharpen their separate appeals to the American people, the Senate would be the place where they would have to work together most closely.
chapter 3
GREAT EXPECTATIONS, DIFFERENT AGENDAS
SIXTEEN DAYS AFTER THE SWEARING IN OF THE NINETY-FIFTH CONGRESS and the election of its majority and minority leaders came the inauguration of America’s thirty-ninth president, James Earl Carter of Plains, Georgia.
A year earlier, Carter was still a virtual unknown, and perhaps the longest shot in a large Democratic presidential field. But Carter had grasped several fundamental political realities. He understood that the Democrats who voted in caucuses and primaries were open to new faces; George McGovern had demonstrated that in seizing the Democratic nomination four years earlier. He also saw that the Iowa caucuses could be a springboard that could propel the winner to national prominence. Jimmy Carter had the patience and persistence to meet every active Iowa Democrat—in their kitchens if necessary—and he gave himself the time to do it. He also had a huge advantage that in retrospect would seem obvious: unlike his fellow candidates, he had the freedom to run for president full time, and he did exactly that.
In the aftermath of Watergate, 1976 promised to be a Democratic year, and a large field of contenders entered the presidential fray. Four senators ran in the primaries. Birch Bayh of Indiana, handsome, likeable, and genuine, had become one of the country’s most effective liberal forces in his two terms in the Senate. Bayh had taken the lead in the Senate’s rejection of two of Richard Nixon’s nominations for the Supreme Court, building deep friendships with unions and the civil rights and other liberal organizations that constituted the established strength of the Democratic Party.
Frank Church of Idaho was a leading opponent of the Vietnam War, and he had recently captured the nation’s attention by chairing the select committee investigating the abuses of America’s intelligence agencies. Henry Jackson of Washington, better known as “Scoop,” was one of the Senate giants. A New Deal liberal on domestic issues and a hard-liner on foreign policy and defense, Jackson had earned the strong support of the AFL-CIO and the Jewish community, powerful forces within the Democratic Party. Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma was the populist candidate for the nomination, directing his campaign to “the little people.”
Bayh, Church, Jackson, and Harris quickly discovered what many senators had found out before them: you could be a very good senator and still be an awful presidential candidate. Bayh’s liberal supporters split in too many directions, and he never won a primary. Church started much too late. Jackson, extraordinarily effective on Capitol Hill, was simply unable to communicate on television or in speeches. As one humorist noted, “If Scoop Jackson gave a fireside chat, the fire would go out.” After Harris was crushed in the crucial New Hampshire primary, receiving less than 1 percent of the vote, he explained: “The little people couldn’t reach the levers.”
In July 1976, Jimmy Carter accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for president. Carter was a truly unknown quantity when the Democrats nominated him. A political cartoon in the Washington Post by Herblock, which showed the Democrat Party as a nervous bride at the altar waiting for a groom who was a complete stranger, captured the moment. The Democrats drew some comfort from Carter’s choice of Walter F. (“Fritz”) Mondale, a popular Minnesota senator with strong ties to labor and the liberal community, to be his running mate.
As the general election campaign started, Carter appeared certain to be the next president. He had captivated the country and captured the public mood after Watergate with his promise of “a government as good as the American people.” America had initially been grateful to Gerald Ford, for the calm and assured way that he had ended the “long national nightmare” and stepped into the presidency. But Ford had made the difficult decision to pardon Richard Nixon, enraging much of the country. Moreover, America’s economy had been going through a serious downturn, featuring high unemployment and soaring inflation, triggered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Ford’s efforts to provide economic leadership were often painful to watch. When he put on a WIN button—“whip inflation now”—he was widely ridiculed for offering slogans and gimmickry, rather than real leadership. After the Democratic convention, national polls showed Carter with a thirty-point advantage over Ford, who was still struggling to fend off Reagan’s challenge. The only unelected president in American history looked to have no chance of winning in 1976.
And then, suddenly and surprisingly, the national mood began to change. July 4, 1976, was America’s Bicentennial. All across the country, people participated in a national celebration of the historic occasion. They thrilled to the image of the “tall ships” coming into the harbor of New York City. The Vietnam War, the longest in U.S. history and the most divisive since the Civil War, had ended badly, but it was finally over. Anger about the Nixon pardon began to fade as more Americans concluded that Ford had made a courageous decision to put an end to the national crisis. The U.S. economy was recovering from the deep recession. For the first time in many years, Americans just felt better.
Ford managed to outlast Reagan to win the nomination. His convention speech was undoubtedly the best he had ever given. Meanwhile, Carter seemed to be squandering his advantage. He gave an interview to Playboy magazine in which he confessed to have “lust in his heart” many times, which jolted the many Americans who were previously attracted by his piety, and others who questioned his political judgment. As voters grew uneasy that they really did not know Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford came to seem comfortable and familiar, rather than boring or incompetent.
The race tightened steadily, and on Election Day, 1976, Jimmy Carter won, but in one of the closest elections in American political history. His mandate was uncertain. Americans said they wanted change, but the change they seemed to want was a period of calm after the crisis years that began with the Cuban missile confrontation in 1962 and ended, apparently, when the last Americans went to the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon to leave Vietnam.
Although Carter’s margin of victory had narrowed dramatically, other Democratic politicians were increasingly confident as they added control of the presidency to significant majorities in both houses of Congress. They had prevailed over Richard Nixon, a longtime adversary whom many senators had personally despised. Watergate had tarnished the Republican brand, and the party itself had split sharply during the contest between Ford and Reagan, the type of division that was usually confined to the Democrats.
But below the placid surface ran deeper and more ominous currents. Carter’s outsider campaign had resonated with Americans who were angry at Washington, and angry at government as usual. The Democratic Congress seemed not to recognize that, fairly or unfairly, it personified government as usual. Polls and press reports indicated that the country was becoming more conservative, less inclined to be supportive of government programs as they perceived the U.S. economy to be weaker than it had been. As the Democrats congratulated themselves on their victory, looking out at a seemingly prostrate Republican Party, they would have been wise to recall the last time the Republicans had been pronounced dead, after Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. Four years later, Richard Nixon was elected president.
ON JANUARY 20, 1977, Jimmy Carter became the first president to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue after his inauguration. Expectations for his presidency ran high. Although only eight years had passed since a Democrat had occupied the White House, it seemed much longer. In 1967 and 1968, as America’s cities erupted into flames and violence and the Vietnam War tore the country apart, Lyndon Johnson’s pr
esidency had crumbled. More than ten years had passed since a Democratic president had the political support needed to take meaningful action for the country.
From FDR to Harry Truman to John Kennedy to Lyndon Johnson, Democratic presidents come to office to “get the country moving again,” using an activist federal government to expand economic opportunity and advance social justice. Democrats expected Carter to assume their mantel and fall into line—but it was an open question how a neophyte like the new president would work with his legislative counterparts.
The interest groups that were the most influential forces in the Democratic Party wanted action. During the presidential campaign, they had run phone banks, gone door to door, and mobilized supporters to help Carter win his narrow victory. Experienced in the ways of Washington, they understood that the legislative victories they sought would not come easily. In the historic Eighty-ninth Congress, Lyndon Johnson, at the height of his power, secured passage of eighty-four out of the eighty-seven pieces of legislation he proposed. But one of the three failures was labor’s highest priority: rolling back the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which allowed states to pass “right to work” laws disallowing exclusively union shops and prohibiting contractual agreements that required employers to hire only union members. The labor movement would not rest until it achieved its key objectives in this Democratic administration—and other Democratic constituencies felt the same urgency.
The labor unions, led by George Meany and the AFL-CIO, wanted legislation that would make it easier to form unions in order to reverse the long decline in union membership. Consumer groups, led by Ralph Nader, wanted legislation to create a Consumer Protection Agency, which would establish a consumer representative in agency proceedings to offset what the consumer groups saw as the disproportionate power of corporate America. A constellation of organizations representing the interests of minorities and the poor wanted action to create jobs and strengthen the social safety net in response to what had been the worst recession since the Great Depression. These groups would make their case directly to the incoming administration, and they would pressure the administration by enlisting their longtime allies in the Senate and the House.
The relationship between the new president and the Democrats on the Hill would be crucial, and yet Hill veterans were already growing anxious. Jimmy Carter had campaigned as a liberal while preserving as much maneuvering room as he could. Political Washington looked carefully for telltale signs of Carter’s true interests and beliefs, above and beyond faith in himself and a desire to purify politics. He remained inscrutable.
During the transition, president-elect Carter invited a number of leading Democrats to Plains to discuss administration appointments. Those invited came eagerly, anxious to begin forming the relationships needed to help Carter govern successfully. They came back stunned.
For three hours, Jimmy Carter had presided over a meeting with leading Democrats on steel folding chairs, without food or drink or even a bathroom break. Vice President–elect Mondale, still getting to know Carter, said to a Carter aide, “I learned three things about Carter today. First, he has a cast-iron rear end. Second, he has a bladder the size of a football. And third, his idea of a party is a half glass of scotch.”
It would become clear soon enough: the new president disliked political small talk, disliked politicians, and liked politics least of all. He thought that the interest groups who had worked to elect him were selfishly pursuing their own narrow agendas at the expense of the national interest. He saw members of Congress as either complete captives of the interest groups or too quick to bend to their views. The only politician he had faith in was Jimmy Carter. Principled compromise was the heart and soul of the legislative process, but Jimmy Carter was not a believer in compromise.
Carter’s training as an engineer, coupled with his inordinate self-confidence, convinced him that there was a right answer to every problem that he could find if he studied it carefully. By contrast, Congress seemed to crave endless consultation—before he was even president, no less. Meeting their demands, if that were even possible, would take Carter away from what he really wanted to do: study problems, decide what was in the national interest, and pursue a solution irrespective of the political fallout.
The Senate Democrats were potentially Carter’s strongest allies. Their experience was broad and deep, and although they had forged close friendships with the Democratic interest groups, they were, for the most part, astute, independent-minded politicians with a keen sense of what was possible. Most of them understood that the winds had begun to shift in American politics. They recognized both the fiscal constraints imposed by a weakening economy and the growing doubt around the country that federal programs were being run successfully or effectively. John Kennedy had once described himself as “an idealist without illusions,” and his description fit many of the senators. They wanted to be partners with the new president—but if he chose not to cultivate their friendship, they could also be very tough adversaries.
The Founding Fathers built tension into the Constitutional system, dividing and checking power between the legislative and executive branches. Advocates of congressional power noted that it was no accident that the Founding Fathers had specified the powers of Congress, rather than the presidency, in Article I of the Constitution; their experience with England had left them fearful of a strong executive. At the same time, the Constitution created a president, and separated the powers of the two branches so that our democracy would not be a parliamentary system.
The power of the executive had generally increased over time. Starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt, when America desperately needed strong leadership to battle the Depression and win World War II, power had tilted dramatically toward the presidency and away from Congress. The Cold War and the threat of nuclear war had further strengthened the hand of presidents that followed Roosevelt.
But the tragedy of Vietnam and the abuse of power that was Watergate had provoked a powerful reaction on Capitol Hill. Congress had brought the Vietnam War to an end and forced Richard Nixon out of office. It had also made far-reaching institutional changes designed to allow Congress to reclaim its authority in major areas, particularly the budget and the power to declare war. Jimmy Carter would be the first elected president to deal with a Congress that had reasserted its authority.
As professor Nelson Polsby memorably observed, the president and the Congress were like “two gears, each whirling at its own rate of speed.” American presidents live in the shadow of FDR’s first one hundred days. They are expected to put together their administration during the ten-week transition, inspire the nation in the inaugural address, go to the Hill for the first State of the Union, and put forth a program. In general, presidents are expected to fire out of the box and create movement and a sense of change immediately.
Alternately, the Congress has its own pace, particularly the Senate. Relatively little gets accomplished in the early weeks of the session. Senators and Senate committees take their time studying, critiquing, and improving the president’s proposals. Their leaders think not in terms of three months, but of what can be accomplished during the two-year Congress. The Senate does not like to be rushed, and its leaders would not hesitate to let the president know when his expectations are unreasonable.
Jimmy Carter had campaigned for president almost nonstop for two years. His campaign had certainly included significant study of the issues facing the country. But actually making decisions on a legislative program requires a much different type of preparation—in fact, just the type of preparation that Carter liked best. At home in Plains, he immersed himself in the issues, reading briefing paper after briefing paper, meeting with his transition staff, who would become his key advisers. These meetings seldom included members of Congress. By the week before his inauguration, Carter had already decided on the key initiatives for the early months of his presidency. And, for the most part, he had already decided to leave the Senators, and their repeated p
leas for consultation, out.
CARTER AND HIS ADVISERS confronted a complicated economic picture. The economy had begun to recover from the severe recession of 1973–1974 triggered by the OPEC oil embargo, but unemployment still stood at an unacceptably high rate of 7.8 percent. The nation’s output of goods and services had increased only a disappointing 3 percent in the last quarter of 1976, the lowest since the spring of 1975. Fortunately, inflation had come down from 12 percent in 1974 to about 6 percent by the end of 1976, but by historical standards, that number was still very high. The American public listed job creation as its number-one priority, and that certainly was true for key Democratic constituencies.
Carter’s hope was to stimulate the economy without kicking off another ruinous round of inflation. He proposed to do so by keeping tight control of the tools of fiscal policy—most notably, spending. In spite of his efforts, before too long, it would become clear that the economic challenge was not just complicated, it was unprecedented: what Bruce Schulman would describe as “the disintegration of the long sweet summer of post-war prosperity.” Economic policy would prove a continuous battleground between the president and the Hill for the four years to come.