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Inevitably, there was a babble of conflicting suggestions (balance the budget to curb inflation, start public works programs to fight unemployment) and a good deal of general exhortation about the need for a strong hand on the national tiller. Democratic Senate Leader Robert Byrd thundered: "Mr. President, someone has said, 'Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.' Once the American people understand the problem and rally in support of leadership, there is no problem they can't overcome." Connecticut Governor Ella Grasso advised Carter to "go out on the stump and talk to the people the way you just talked to us." The President took it all cheerfully; several guests got an impression that he feels isolated in the White House.
Carter himself told several guests that he felt he had lost the touch with the country that he had developed during the 1976 campaign, and longed to get it back. He will change the way he conducts the presidency, he said. He will spend less time behind his desk poring over briefing papers, more traveling around the nation meeting people. He mused that he might try some other tactics, perhaps making a regular practice of "having seven or eight Governors in to spend the night with me at the White House and just talk over how we can cooperate and deal with the energy question, because I see the states as kind of 50 experiment stations."
Serious though the sessions were, they had lighter moments. Clark Clifford, 72, former Secretary of Defense and all-around troubleshooter for Democratic Presidents, tried to ride a bike for the first time in 60 years and fell on the seat of his pants. Said Clifford: "The last time I rode a bicycle, you reversed the pedals to stop. This time I reversed the pedals and it went faster. I bailed out."
Some of the humor contained good-natured barbs. At a session with journalists toward the end of the week, Carter encountered a long delay getting a gin-and-tonic for himself. "No authority around here," somebody muttered. Earlier, Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine had told a story about a preacher offering an eloquent sermon during a drought. The congregation congratulated him, but one remarked: "A little rain would do us a hell of a lot more good." Muskie's point: the nation needs action rather than just speeches.
The summit produced some vivid phrasing too. Urban League Executive Director Vernon Jordan observed of Carter: "He's going to have to say the right prayer, preach the right sermon, sing the right hymn." The Rev. Jesse Jackson, another black leader, told reporters, "We have an energy crisis, an urban crisis, growing racial polarization, a moral crisis. You get all these together and you have a civilizational crisis." At another point, speaking to Carter directly about the vulnerability of the U.S. caused by oil imports, Jackson came up with a back-alley metaphor: "Mr. President, we've got our vital organs over the fence and our neighbors have the knife."