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For most of Europe, 1976 was a year of disappointment and frustration. As Britain and its once proud pound continued to slump, Labor Prime Minister James Callaghan began talking like a Tory; he urged the trade unions to ease off on wage demands and ordered cuts in costly social services. Italy's Communists under Enrico Berlinguer came closer to entering the government by increasing their vote from 27% to 34%, while the tired Christian Democrats held steady at 39%.
Despite all the gloomy news from Europe, West Germany—by hard work and sensible policies of free enterprise—widened its lead as the Continent's dominant economic power. Spain held its first free vote in 40 years; encouraged by popular King Juan Carlos, 94% of the voters approved a reform bill calling for the election of a bicameral legislature this spring. In Northern Ireland, Betty Williams, 33, and Mairead Corrigan, 32, both Catholics, won the admiration of the world by ignoring death threats and leading thousands of women, Protestants and Catholics alike, in massive demonstrations for peace.
Struggling with their own problems, world leaders watched closely—and occasionally with understandable bewilderment—to see what manner of man they would have to deal with when the exhausting and uniquely American rite of choosing a President was finally over. As he often points out, Carter has had a richly varied career: Annapolis graduate, Navy officer, nuclear engineer, successful farmer, businessman. Those experiences may have given him, as he insists, some feeling for the variety of problems facing the nation. But no President since Calvin Coolidge has entered the White House with a briefer public record. (Eisenhower had never held political office, but he had been a commanding world figure for a decade.) Carter has never served in any capital larger than Atlanta: four years in the Georgia Senate, four years as Governor of the nation's 14th largest state. The questions about him, however, go much deeper than what he has done or not done: they focus on what kind of man he really is. It is no longer "Jimmy who?" but "Jimmy what?"
The doubts persist, although he is remarkably open and has been unusually accessible to journalists. Asked why people still have trouble figuring him out, Carter says, "I don't know. Sometimes I think people look too hard. They're looking for something that isn't there. I don't really think I'm that complex. I'm pretty much what I seem to be."
Still, Carter is fond of quoting Danish Theologian Soren Kierkegaard that "every man is an exception," a view that certainly fits him. He has been described with a catalogue of contradictions: liberal, moderate, conservative, compassionate, ruthless, soft, tough, a charlatan, a true believer, a defender of the status quo, a populist Hamlet.
The continuing concern about Carter stems from the growing realization that the basic character of the man who sits in the Oval Office is more important than his views on SALT talks or any other specific issue. The evidence about Carter is often perplexing.
HIS FEELING FOR