Prospects For The Michigan Primary How We Got Stuck With Jimmy Carter

By Derek VanPelt

It’s Saturday night in downtown Detroit, and a few thousand very important people are turned out in their election-year best for the Michigan Democratie Party's biggest political event of the season- the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, $35 a plate, at Cobo Hall. On the floor, underneath the huge banner reading, "Happy Days Are Near Again," handshakes, grins, and sirloin tip steak are the order of the evening. Volunteers have spent the afternoon loading down the audience with the literature of their favorite Democrat- the O'Hara for Senate contingent was especially well-prepared- and Jimmy Carter's "ethnic purity" gaffe of a few days before is the hot topic at the press table. 

From that vantage point, we gaze upward at the long table lined with the high honchos of the powerful state organization- Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, State Chairman Morley Winograd, the UAW's Leonard Woodcock and Douglas Fraser, Secretary of State and U.S. Senate candidate Richard Austin, the venerable Sen. Philip Hart, and eight or ten other larger-than life figures. George Wallace has already given a surprisingly mild speech and departed, leaving us with the blessing- or curse, depending on how you look at it- that "If I were ever run out of Alabama, i'd go straight to Michigan.”

Fred Harris, who had planned to attend the event, was a late cancellation following his decision to drop out of active campaigning. That left the two major Democratic candidates working for the "liberal vote," Carter and Sen. Morris Udall. 

Carter rose from his seat next to Mayor Young, who had recently announced his support for the Georgia Governor in the May 18 Michigan primary, and moved to the microphone to deliver what some observers considered one of his poorer speeches in recent memory.

In fifteen minutes, we learned, among other things, the ages and occupations of Carter's children; his favorite President (Harry S. Truman); his favorite theologian (Reinhold Niebuhr); and a few facts of more utility, including his newly arrived-at support for a program of compulsory 

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Prospects for the Michigan Primary

How We Got Stuck with Jimmy Carter 

“The coherence of a given candidate's program or his ability to run the country have far less to do with the results than do that candidate's funding, his campaign organization, and his ability to sell himself to the mass media.”

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national health insurance and of the Humphrey-Hawkins federal job bills. 

We also learned, according to Jimmy Carter at any rate,  that"'The United States still has the best system of government in the world. Nixon didn't hurt it. Chile, Pakistán. the CIA didn't hurt it. It's still clean, decent, immaculate." We learned that Jimmy Carter believes in the work ethic and grew up on a farm. And we were treated to Carter's familiar litany : "The American people are a good, honest, fair to faithful people. If the government was as good as the people of this country, we could solve all our problems." 

Much to our amazement, not a word was said, here in one of the nation's largest and most troubled cities, about Carter's plan to reconstruct the urban centers-whatever that may be. In fact, Carter's speech failed to include even one specific reference to Detroit or the state of Michigan. 

Carter's broad, vote-fetching grin was notably absent throughout his little fundamentalist sermón, and his reception by the well-heeled throng only somewhat more polite than that accorded the rather pathetic figure of George C. Wallace.

Morris Udall, on the other hand, was the surprise hit of the evening, saying twice as much in his fifteen minutes as the other two candidates put together, and saying it better. As Udall has warmed to the realization that the Carter bandwagon is on the verge of running away with the nomination, he has begun to shed some of the Adlai Stevenson-like professional demeanor that has no doubt put distance between him and the less literate voters of this country; he had the night's funniest lines and got its only standing ovation, aside from that given Sen. Hart, the exciting liberal tower of strength. 

What's more important, Udall addressed the issues and insisted that the voters "hold a gun on the candidates" to make them all do the same. He took conspicuous note of the economic plight of black people, called for "putting the cities first and the Pentagon second once in a while," and talked about reigning in "the conglomerates and multinational corporations who try to influence our lives and our political process." 

While Carter supporters Woodcock and Young sat chins in hand, impassively staring into the audience, Udall addressed himself to the Carter phenomenon: "A Presidential election is not a sports event, a personality contest, or a contest to see who has the best smile ... A candidate cannot be all things to all people. He must make hard choices. 

"We didn't get civil rights by putting our arms around Bull Connor--we had to fight," the Senator continued. "We won't get full employment without taking on some big interests. And we won't get national health insurance without fighting certain segments of the medical profession . . . I'm all for peace. love. and happiness. I'm all for trusting the people. To that, I would add, 'Give the people son leaders they can trust.

In spite of Jimmy Carter's equivocation and slowness to put forth specific programs to deal with such issues, he is identified with the "new pragmatism." In spite of Carter’s opposition to busing, abortion, affirmative action, public service jobs for full employment, and public housing in the suburbs, he has swept the black vote in one primary after another. Although he "defines the Vietnam War as a mistake of strategy and not of policy or morality" {Encoré, April 5, 1976). he attracts former McGovern supporters. 

Meanwhile, Morris Udall, despite his relatively progressive stands on many of these same questions, enjoys less support nationwide than California Gov. Jerry Brown, if the polls are to be believed-and Brown hasn't even campaigned. The Udall effort is leaving problems raising enough money to stay in the ball game, mostly because of the Federal Election Commission's inability to provide matching funds-due, in turn, to recent decisions by the conservative Supreme Court. And Fred Harris, of course, despite his having presented the most thoughtful and coherent platform of any candidate, is out of the running, for all intents and purposes, and for the same reasons. 

Why, in this year of critical choices for the nation, when the very survival of our cities is in doubt, when the economy is plainly not operating to the advantage of millions of people, when voter cynicism runs deeper than ever, does it appear that we may be stuck with either the mass of contradictions that is Jimmy Carter or the traditional midwestern Republicanism of Jerry Ford? 

To begin to answer that question, we will have to extricate ourselves from the three-ring circus atmosphere of the Presidential primaries to consider the American Political Process for what it is: the world's largest and most expensive public-relations elïort, in which political leadership is carefully packaged and sold with only slightly more dignity than laundry detergents and toothpaste, and in which the coherence of a given candidate's program or his ability to run the country have far less to do with the results than do that candidate's funding, campaign organization, and his ability to sell himself to the mass media. 

The key elements in the equation are money, image, and media coverage-not programs, policies, or even competence. In the context of the primaries, a successful candidate like Carter must give priority attention to developing those elements, for without them, the finest programs in the world will never reach the voters. As Carter has shown, the programs can be worked out as one goes along, thereby minimizing the danger of alienating any segment of the electorate. The mass media, which is interested primarily in entertaining the voters, rather than enlightening them, can then be managed so as to reflect the candidate's desired image- especially within the context of the 30 or 60-second television news item. Once the media has been convinced of a candidate's "newsworthiness," the possibilities open up. If they are not convinced, as in the case of Fred Harris, there can be no expectation of success. 

Space here does not permit us to offer a lengthy analysis of the 1 976 primaries in these  terms, something we will concern ourselves with in greater depth in the next installment of this study. Suffice it to say that Jimmy Carter understood the process early on, and has orchestrated his campaign organization, his public image, and his media coverage into an impressive selling effort that has made him, in the estimation of Mayor Young and others, the candidate of choice in the Michigan Democratic primary and possibly the national nominating convention. 

"It's not just what one says," explains Malcolm Dade, the Mayor's adviser in such manners, "but one's ability to convince others, and to demonstrate that by winning elections." 

So although Morris Udall who is supported by John Conyers, George Cushingberry, and (unofficially) Douglas Fraser may have what it takes to put forth a solid program and even run the country, he hasn’t shown he can win elections. 

Faced with the real possibility of a Carter stampede at the Democratic Convention, Mayor Young and such party leaders as Leonard Woodcock have made a tactical decision to devote their energies to influencing the Georgia Governor toward progressive social programs, and their conversations with the candidate are given much credit for his new commitments to Humphrey-Hawkins and national health insurance. 

While anything can happen between now and the Convention, including an improved performance by Udall or a compromise settlement in favor of Hubert Humphrey, it will be difficult at this point to derail the Carter bandwagon. Those of us who place our hopes in a Udall, now that we no longer have a Harris, may well have to follow the Mayor's lead and do our best to make a Carter into the kind of candidate we want. It may be a difficult pill for many to swallow, but not nearly as unpalatable as another four years of Gerald Ford.