The Press: Carter's Mouth

Every so often, Jimmy Carter sifts through his mail and finds a tactfully worded testament to his inadequacy. The content may vary from a suggestion that he abandon his call for "a national statute" limiting abortion, to a few examples of jokes he might tell, given his not-so-breezy speaking style. These missives are unfailingly polite—and Carter almost always obeys them. The author: Press Secretary Jody Powell, probably the only person on Carter's payroll who can regularly get away with pointing out the candidate's failings.

Except for Campaign Manager Hamilton Jordan, none of the candidate's 250 full-time staff members has served longer or is paid more ($22,000) than sandy-haired, chain-smoking Powell, 32. He is also closer to the candidate than even Jordan. "Jody probably knows me better than anyone except my wife," Carter has said. If the candidate wins in November, Powell will probably become one of the more powerful presidential press secretaries in decades.

That would be a dazzling rise for a man who entered politics a scant six years ago as a "gofer" (gofer coffee, gofer a newspaper, gofer the car). Raised on a farm in Vienna (pronounced Vy-anna), Ga., 35 miles east of Plains, Joseph Lester Powell Jr. entered the Air Force Academy in 1961—and was expelled three years later for cheating on a history exam.

"You don't know what loneliness is," Powell says of his postexpulsion phase. He graduated from Georgia State University in 1966 and was midway through a Ph.D. in political science at Emory University in 1969 when he signed on as an unpaid helper for Jimmy Carter, then running for Governor. The gofer and the candidate became good friends as Powell chauffeured him to virtually every hamlet in the state. Since he was the only person traveling with Carter, Powell found himself functioning as press secretary and after Carter won stayed on in that job.

The new Governor's new mouth spent much of his time making sure reporters got Carter's record straight. His ear tuned to a car radio, Powell would screech into the nearest gas station whenever Carter was maligned on some talk show and phone in an instant rebuttal. He could go too far. To a critic of Carter's stand on school busing, Powell wrote: "I respectfully suggest you take two running jumps and go straight to hell."

In the early months of Carter's quest for the presidency last year, Powell again was the only aide traveling with him, briefing reporters and still acting as gofer. Powell soon began to impress the national press corps with his authoritative access to the candidate and his relentless energy. When Harper's last winter was about to depict Carter as a liar, Powell rushed out a 22-page response that did not convince all reporters but certainly reached most of them before their copy of Harper's.

Such industry would probably not sit well were it not for Powell's strategic use of humor. When a former Georgia Governor called a press conference to denounce Carter, Powell countered, "Being called a liar by Lester Maddox is like being called ugly by a frog." When not home in Atlanta with his wife and nine-year-old daughter, Powell spends his free hours drinking (beer or bourbon) with reporters. Says Political Writer Richard Reeves: "Jody is genuinely good company. Carter is not."