THE PRESS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1980. Carter and Reagan

Press, 22 September 1980, Page 16

THE PRESS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1980. Carter and Reagan

The latest opinion polls from the United States show that in the six weeks until the Americans vote, the fortunes of the two main candidates could still change dramatically. The wise are still not even calling the odds, let alone placing money on one candidate or the other. But the nature and tone of the campaign have already been set, and they are no more reassuring than the calibre of the candidates themselves. The choice between the two main contenders clearly leaves many American voters cold and nothing has happened so far in the campaign to make this great mass of uncommitted voters warm to one or the other.

The tenor of the Democrats’ campaign has been that Mr Reagan would be even worse than Mr Carter; that of the Republicans’ that Mr Reagan could not possibly be worse than Mr Carter. Indeed, President Carter’s record is almost as dismal as candidate Reagan’s pronouncements are alarming. Mr Carter has been wise to try to divert attention from most of what has happened in the last four years. But his ploy of making Mr Reagan the main issue of the campaign could still backfire, The empty seat at the first debate, too, may count heavily against Mr Carter, although his absence could also be to his advantage if Mr Reagan can be provoked into' making further gaffes without Mr Carter seeming to be goading him to do so.

Mr Reagan has, so far, shown himself to be a vulnerable opponent. His ill-considered remarks — on China, on Southern race relations, on Vietnam, on Darwinian theory of all topics — have allowed the Democrats to reinforce doubts about his experience in foreign affairs and about the impact his ideological prejudices could have on domestic affairs. The Republicans are trying to prevent Mr Reagan from making further gaffes. If, as a candidate, Mr Reagan cannot be persuaded to avoid undiplomatic and possibly. provocative remarks, the risk that he will, as President, apply his simplistic views must be taken seriously. Mr Carter has made gaffes of his own in the past. But he has said nothing as disturbing as Mr Reagan, whose simplicity and forthrightness may be disarming in a private citizen but would be disastrous in a President.

if Mr Reagan’s statements are signs of what a Reagan administration would be like, a Carter victory is to be preferred. Mr Carter’s foreign policy has not been co-ordinated or systematic: neither has it been irresponsible or risky, as Mr Reagan’s would be in the areas of arms control, of relations between the United States and China and of the role the United States could play in such troubled regions as Southern Africa.

The course of the campaign itself, however, suggests that a second term for Mr Carter is only just to be preferred. He will not suffer this time, if he is returned to office, from having his performance measured against the high expectations which his rhetoric aroused in 1976. If Mr Carter gets back in it will probably be on an anti-Reagan vote, not because he has himself inspired any hope or confidence. To have the United States governed for another four years by a President who lacks significant popular support and cannot exercise effective authority is not a pleasant prospect.

Whether Mr Carter can gain sufficient support to be able to take effective charge for the next four years may depend less on what he or Mr Reagan says or does not say than on what is done or not done by two bit players in the electoral drama, or is it farce? If Mr Kennedy, in his eagerness to see Mr Reagan defeated, throws his support in behind Mr Carter, and if Mr Anderson proves himself to be, as his record suggests he is, an inappropriate bearer of a liberal standard, then Mr Carter may enter on his second term with a sufficiently convincing endorsement to provide the leadership he has failed to provide through most of the last four years.

In the meantime, it is a sign of the political times that no-one expects that Mr Reagan will be buried in a landslide, as Mr Goldwater was buried in 1964. Mr Johnson’s victory in that year inaugurated, with Vietnam expected, the last creative episode in American political life. It is too much to hope that Mr Carter could ever preside over a similar episode in .the early 1980 s. But his victory could at least avert the disasters in .which a Reagan presidency seems likely to involve the United States—and the world.