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While campaigning, Carter has been handicapped by one of the great burdens of the incumbency: a challenger need not, indeed cannot, prove that he could do better, and a sitting President cannot make claims with the casual insouciance of his out-of-office opponent. For example, Reagan is free to talk more boldly about his support for Israel than Carter, who has taken a far more even-handed approach in office. The general thrust of Carter's Middle East policy has been sound, if often marred in execution; Reagan's almost totally one-sided Middle East program would be unlikely to survive in office.
At the Forest Hills Jewish Community Center in Queens, New York City, the President is shouted at by a handful of Jews who believe that if re-elected he will put pressure on Israel to give up the West Bank and Gaza. "Jerusalem is Jewish," they chant. Carter shouts over the most raucous heckling he has endured as President. "I want each of you, including the demonstrators, to go back to the people in your neighborhoods and tell them this: the President will never turn his back on Israel. I never have and I never will ... this President will never use economic and military aid as a lever against Israel, not in the last four years, not now and not in the next four years."
For all the warm welcomes he usually gets, the campaigning Carter has not stilled the old question about his difficulty in being an inspiring leader. He still has trouble rising above the level of politician to project himself as truly presidential. His vituperative personal attacks on Reagan may have "worked," as his political advisers maintain. But by choosing that tactic Carter brushed aside the fact that Americans expect more of their Presidents. That too is a burden of incumbency, one of the prices to be paid for all the benefits it bestows.
If Carter is reelected, there will be a drastic reshuffling of the Cabinet, top agency chiefs and some of the senior White House staff. The President has never used his Cabinet well, relying far too much on the tiny band of Georgians who constitute most of his inner circle of advisers. Domestic Adviser Stuart Eizenstat, for example, has served on numerous occasions, in fact if not title, as Secretary of Energy and of Treasury. Cecil Andrus has already announced his intention to leave the Interior Department. Philip Klutznick will depart Commerce. The White House has been disappointed with both Benjamin Civiletti at Justice and Charles Duncan at Energy, and they are likely to go, along with many others, including, friends believe, Hamilton Jordan, who will have had enough of Washington if he succeeds in getting Carter re-elected
Jimmy Carter will feel vindicated if he wins again, which his instincts, if not yet the polls, tell him he will. Harry Truman is his hero. A bronze bust of the 33rd President faces him across the Oval Office. He sees striking similarities between himself and the feisty haberdasher who was all but written off until the final count of the 1948 election. "When I take a step that's not very popular, I think of the unpopularity that Harry Truman had to suffer before he was finally vindicated," Carter told an audience at Truman High School in Independence, Mo., last month.