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He talked nuclear strategy in a place called the "pond house," near where he caught the catfish that he helped to fry and eat. He pondered the state of the national and world economies while strolling past the weathered brick facades of his tiny town. The issues and their urgency have not diminished but, in a singular way, have been brought closer to earth and home and people. It is not beyond belief that this new dimension will be felt in Washington; a national impulse transmitted through a man and a place practically unheard of when the Administration now ending first came to power.
It is the conviction of many people who watch Carter that he will keep one foot firmly planted in his town, that he will sustain those quiet family rituals and Main Street contacts that give him so much pleasure and sustenance. Some of the journalists who study him are mystified by his seeming fulfillment from hours of small talk with family and friends about weddings, births and deaths. Ironically, it was one of the most urbane of modern politicians who explained the phenomenon best. Said Adlai Stevenson in 1948 when he bade goodbye to the people of Bloomington on his way to become Governor of Illinois: "In quiet places reason abounds ... In quiet people there is vision and purpose ... Many things are revealed to the humble that are hidden from the great. I hope and pray that I can remember the great truths that seem so obvious in Bloomington but so obscure in other places."
It is a shame that at the end of Thursday afternoon, when President Carter will turn and walk from the reviewing stand into the White House, the procedure cannot be reversed—that he cannot sit down in the East Room and turn on a television set and see his nation. What a sight it would be.
The scars, yes. Watts, the crime-ridden Detroit streets, Bedford-Stuyvesant, the hovels of Appalachia, poisoned air and the gashes of the strip miners in forested hills. All part of Carter's new agenda. But he would see something else.
Wild Oregon shore, the hard sweep of the Rockies, plains that still make the eye ache in their loneliness, farms and towns with new life and awareness, cities that work, like Minneapolis and Cincinnati. People wondering—but also hoping again.