FOREIGN RELATIONS: Jimmy, the Bible

It somehow seemed an unlikely time and place for Jimmy Carter's first full-length speech on Soviet-American relations. Here was the President on what looked for all the world like an old-fashioned barnstorming tour through his native South last week, and here were 500 Southern state legislators in the gardenia-adorned Gaillard Auditorium in Charleston, S.C., all ready for a few lighthearted moments of down-home pleasantries and political good tidings. That same evening the President was off to Yazoo City, Miss., for a "Citizens' Public Meeting" (see following story) and then, the next day, he was lifted by helicopter to an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, where he donned red coveralls and a white hard hat with "President Jimmy Carter" painted on in green—and pronounced himself in favor of further offshore exploration all along the Atlantic Coast. In fact, he said on returning to New Orleans, the U.S. should seriously consider building a new sea-level canal through Panama just to handle the Atlantic-Pacific oil trade. By the year 2000, the President reckoned, such a canal just "might be in the interests of national security militarily as well as economically."

The high point of two frenetic days of travel, though, was Carter's stopover in Charleston. The spectacle of thousands of people turning out in 100° temperatures to cheer the presidential motorcade as it wound through Charleston's narrow myrtle-scented streets evoked familiar campaign memories, but Carter quickly made clear to the legislators that he had a much broader—and more distant—audience in mind.

The message was for Moscow, and the tone was intended to ease tensions, but the substance was basically nonconciliatory. Though he spoke of "the invisible human reality that must bring us together," Carter made it clear that he had meant everything he previously said that had roused Soviet ire. Carter tried to drive home points with Southern politicians, as well as Soviet leaders, by citing the Bible and Leonid Brezhnev in almost the same breath. After all, Carter noted, the Soviet President had remarked three weeks ago that "realism in politics and the will for detente and progress will ultimately triumph, and mankind will be able to step into the 21st century in conditions of peace, stable as never before." To make this big step, added Carter, echoing St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, "our planet must finally obey the biblical injunction to 'follow after the things which make for peace.' "