THE ADMINISTRATION: Sowing 'Seeds of Real Conflict'

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Still, as Carter makes hard decisions in the future, his popularity is sure to fall, just as it has for other Presidents who started out with strong backing from the public. Thus many of Carter's political foes, as well as his political friends, cannot understand why he almost seems to go out of his way to antagonize Washington's traditional powerbrokers. Says Robert Hughes, the canny Republican chairman of the Cleveland area: "He's on good ground now, but if he gets in trouble with the people, Congress is really going to kick him around."

Carter got a similar message from Senate Democratic leaders last week. In a meeting at the White House, the President argued that inflation was the pub-He's greatest concern. He urged the Democrats to get behind his economic program and not dwell on "extraneous matters" like the water projects. But Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd brushed aside that reasoning. Said he: "This is a battle that you can do without. It's going to boil over into other problem areas that are really more important to you. As of today, the [$50 tax] rebate would lose badly. But it is potentially winnable, if the water project irritant can be removed." Carter coolly replied, "I don't think that as President of the United States, this is the time for me to go bartering votes on the tax package for dams."

Edmund Muskie, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, complained that the Administration was making congressional Democrats look like wild spenders in other avoidable ways. He argued that the White House, by overestimating revenues, had made it appear that its proposed budget for fiscal 1978 was $6.5 billion less than the one Congress had in mind. In fact, claimed Muskie, the Administration's budget was only $1 billion less than the Hill's. Said the Senator: "We'd appreciate more accuracy so we won't look so bad. We should both have the same estimates."

Finally, Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey lectured Carter about the Administration's generally conservative approach to the economy. Said he: "If you want to do something about inflation, you've got to do something about unemployment." Again Carter did not budge. After the meeting a House leader told TIME Correspondent Neil Mac-Neil, "In my judgment, there are the seeds of real conflict in that encounter. One has the feeling that the President is trying to set Congress up as a whipping boy on spending."

Too Soon. Some old hands in Washington argue that Carter's problems stem partly from a tactical error of trying to do too much too soon. They believe he should have moved one step at a time, concentrating at first on a single overriding problem, such as energy conservation, while converting his popularity into support for solid programs.