The President's nine-day, 18,500-mile odyssey is heavy on symbolic acts
"This journey," said Jimmy Carter last week, "reflects the diversity of a rapidly changing world." If the President's expectations seemed modest, the itinerary for his trip was anything but. By late this week, he will have covered 18,500 miles in nine days, visiting at least seven countries along the way: Poland, Iran, India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, France and Belgium.
This is the first leg of a presidential grand tour that will be resumed in March, when Carter visits Africa and South America. The four-continent odyssey originally was to have taken place in one installment last November, but it was postponed because Congress had not finished work on the energy bill. With the legislation still stalled in Congress, Carter decided to make the trip anyway, maintaining that this might somehow encourage a House-Senate conference committee to speed up work on the bill after its members return from vacation on Jan. 19.
While abroad, Carter talked about human rights, oil prices, Middle East peace and other matters of substance. But he put major emphasis on a series of symbolic acts that were intended to have broad significance. These acts, said National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, would demonstrate to the world that the Carter Administration, more than any of its predecessors, is trying to break out of old foreign policy molds, willing to deal equably with diversity abroad and genuinely committed to the cause of human rights. Having frequently demonstrated his skill with political symbolism at home, the President seemed to be trying his hand at the same game overseas. Apart from a possible upward blip in the popularity polls, however, he left home anticipating no heavy returns from this trip or the one in March. Said a senior U.S. official of the communiqués that were being drafted for each stop: "They will be remembered for less time than it takes to write them."
Before leaving Washington, Carter tended to some last-minute domestic affairs. He nominated Businessman G. William Miller as Federal Reserve chairman and promoted James Mclntyre Jr. to Director of the Office of Management and Budget (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS). But Carter spent most of his time getting ready for his trip. Like any other tourist headed for Asia, he took pills to ward off malaria and was inoculated against cholera and typhoid. He pored over thick briefing books. He packed a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu holy book.
Finally, bundled in an overcoat and scarf against an early-morning chill, he boarded Air Force One and began his journey, which will take him a third of the way around the world and into 1978. Accompanying him were 200 reporters, cameramen and TV technicians on two chase planes and an official party of 13 on the presidential jet, including Wife Rosalynn, Brzezinski, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and his wife Grace.