(4 of 11)
On the floor of the Senate, Republican Leader Ted Stevens of Alaska offered an extreme and unfair comment. Said he: "Some of us are seriously worried that he might be approaching some sort of mental problem. He ought to take a rest." Majority Leader Robert Byrd leaped to his feet in defense. Said Byrd: "The President should not take a vacation. I don't want to leave the impression that the burdens have gotten to the President and that he ought to take a vacation."
Many impartial experts on the presidency were mystified by what Carter had done and the way he had done it. Said Marquette University Professor George Reedy, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson and author of The Twilight of the Presidency: "It sets people's teeth on edge. There is a kind of ruthlessness implied. It creates the impression that the President is trying to surround himself with yes men." Said another L.B.J. aide, George Christian, who is now a public relations expert in Austin: "It's a jolting thing to the country. To the public, it is more evidence of disarray in Government. A President is susceptible to errors when he feels besieged." Jonathan Moore, director of Harvard's John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government, argued that the request for resignations "diminishes Carter." Now, said Moore, "the President is out there alone, and he's naked as a jay bird."
On the other hand, Historian James MacGregor Burns, author of the book Leadership, which was passed around by Carter's aides at the Camp David summit, took a restrained view. Said Burns: "The President has complete power to hire and fire. How he goes about it is his prerogative." To Burns the more important event was the Camp David summit. Said he: "The modern presidency requires a periodic stepping back, taking an overall look. The Cabinet changes are among the things that flow from that."
The shakeup, in fact, was the final act in a script that had been carefully worked out by Carter and his closest advisers at Camp David. The President arrived there on July 3, after the Tokyo summit, and began poring over a 107-page memo from his personal pollster, Patrick Caddell. It was a detailed compilation of long-term national trends−most of them bad for the Administration−and a series of recommendations for action. One was for Carter to call together various categories of Americans for consultations, which is a standard marketing-research technique. Caddell also organized Carter's visits to middle-class families in Carnegie, Pa., and Martinsburg, W. Va.*
Caddell's thumbprints also were on the energy speech that Carter delivered to the nation Sunday after returning to Washington. To one pollster the speech was structured much like a market report: "You lead off with a bunch of quotes to set forth the key thoughts. Then you go on to outline a plan of action drawn from what you have learned. It is basic pollster technique."