July 19, 1979

Carter Kicks Off Campaign For Reelection

Jimmy Carter went to the mountain top as president of the United States but came down as a candidate for reelection.

Thus we discover the scenario of the Camp David Follies wherein a cast of characters were trotted on and off the state for dramatic effect.

It was passable theater but suspect performance.

After ten days of confabs with 147 opinion leaders ferried in by gas-guzzling helicopters, and two Air Force One forays into the hustings for audience participation, we got a re-run.

To be, or not to be, a candidate?  That was the question.

The political nature of the "decisions" that came from this extraordinary production gives us the answer.  "Damn Teddy Kennedy!  Full steam ahead."

Had economic problems topped the bill Carter would have declared his determination to proceed with the only two solutions that can save us:

• Deregulate energy.
• Cut taxes.

Inasmuch as these measures supposedly are unpopular, Candidate Carter over powered President Carter.

So we got a revival of born-again rhetoric that was such a hit the first time around.  It was his first speech of the 1980 campaign.

"Too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.

"The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us.

"There is a growing disrespect for government and for churches and for schools, the news media and other institutions.

"Piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose."

Hells bells!  We're not out of confidence.  We're just out of gas.

No one questions our ability to work our way out of this mess.  We need action, not sermons.  Public opinion polls disclose an overwhelming desire to get going.

I, for one, am sick and tired of being beat on the head with the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the assassinations of John F.  Kennedy and Martin Luther King.  If such events triggered our present shortage of oil then we must also blame the no-win Korean War still stalemated, the Bay of Pigs, Koreagate bribes and Congressional sex and payroll scandals.

None of these were a crisis of the American spirit at the time, and are even less so at this late date.  Faults of individuals do not descend unbidden from some reservoir of national meanness, nor shape social forces.

A large majority of Americans strive to do the right thing for the country as well as themselves.  Yet they are lectured by Carter for uncertain short comings and admonished to sacrifice.

Very well.  Let it start with the government.  Double-digit inflation and the shortage of energy has been obvious for a year or more.  OPEC announced its recent price hike more than six months ago.  Bureaucratic attempts to manage shortages rather than stimulate production are the root cause of all our miseries.

If we can get the heavy hand of government off our backs, even this will pass.

It is not necessary to invoke a "moral equivalent of war" to deal with a technological problem.  In fact, a crisis psychology may be counter productive.  A shortage of gasoline - not its price - arouses Americans to quite enough anger and determination.

Candidate Carter sold a morality crisis to a majority of Americans three years ago.  Strangely it appears not to have dissipated.  He may feel constrained to chew old campaign cabbage for lack of any new proposals.

His latest program, though useful as far as it goes, is not innovative.

The House of Representatives has passed already a bill mandating synthetic fuels through government subsidization.  A freeze on imported oil at our peak year of 1977 was agreed on at the Tokyo summit.  The president has had import quota authority for years.  Conservation is an old story.  Standby power for gas rationing is a piece of mischief the Democrat Congress only recently refused to inflict on a Democrat president.

A certain amount of political courage was required to advocate relaxation of environmental regulations and of construction of more nuclear power plants.  But this risk was minimized a day later with a Prussian-style threat before the National association of Counties at Kansas City.

A new Energy Security Administration -- separate from the newly created Department of Energy -- will see to it that drillers find more oil and refiners produce more gasoline.

"The oil companies must cooperate!" shouted Carter with clenched fist.  "We will bring the full force of the law to bear on those who profiteer or, who try to cheat the American public." He promises 600 auditors will be loosed on the industry to force compliance.

The president says he will finance his program with a "windfall profits" tax -- which is not a tax on company profits as implied.  If things work out as planned by DOE there won't be any company profits.

The tax, in reality, is an excise levy on the gross price of oil as set by OPEC.  The levy will be collected by the government at the gas pump for what ever purposes seem fitting at the time.

Democrat Congressman Charles Vanik says the only way Carter's tax will produce $140 billion is if the price of oil rises from the present $21 to $30 a barrel.  "To me it looks like a fix-up program through the elections -- then the roof caves in."

Just so.  Candidates and presidents have different priorities, and Mr. Carter needs a running start.

Author: Lindsey Williams