The Nation: Storm over The Canal

As Carter & Co. mount a hard sell, opposition also mounts

With a long-sought agreement on the future of the Panama Canal finally in hand, President Carter last week mounted a hard-sell campaign aimed at whipping the treaty through the Senate as quickly as possible. Administration emissaries fanned out to brief influential politicians, and Carter himself got on the phone to promote the pact. Yet winning approval by two-thirds of the Senate—where cries of "Giveaway!" are sure to echo and the filibuster remains a real threat—could prove a difficult, divisive and time-consuming task. Winning that approval before the end of the year is likely to prove an impossible one.

Carter must sell the treaty not only to the Senate but also to a public that may need a good deal of persuading. An Opinion Research Corporation poll of 1,100 Americans conducted before the new agreement was initialed showed that 78% wanted to keep the canal, whereas only 14% favored ceding it to Panama. Of course, those figures could change drastically now that a treaty is in sight.

The President focused his first selling efforts on two influential Republicans. Twice last week he spoke on the phone to Gerald Ford. First Carter called the former President at his vacation retreat in Vail, Colo. The next afternoon Ford called Carter at Camp David; the President thanked him "for this example of bipartisan support." In between conversations, Ford had been briefed for 90 minutes by Sol Linowitz (who had negotiated the terms, along with Ellsworth Bunker), and by Gen. George S. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At the White House, Carter had former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger over for lunch and stressed that the agreement was part of "an absolute continuum of what you and [former President Ford] started." Kissinger, whose foreign policy was a major target during last year's presidential campaign, must have been amused by Carter's talk of a continuum; his response went unrecorded. In any event, after further briefing by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he went on record with his support.

By the end of the week, some critics were complaining about the publicity blitz. Said Robert Michel, No. 2 House Republican: "We have been asked to wait for phone calls that never come and detailed briefings that never materialize. Meanwhile, the President and his top negotiators are saturating the air waves with praise for the agreement."

The basic agreement negotiated by Bunker and Linowitz would give Panama control of the canal by the end of the century. A second agreement gives the U.S. the right to defend the canal's "neutrality" beyond the year 2000. Both must be okayed by the Senate. Not clear, though, is whether a majority of the House will have to approve the first treaty, since it involves disposal of U.S. property. Moving to assert the authority of the lower house, New York's conservative Democratic Congressman John Murphy, chairman of the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, summoned Bunker and Linowitz to a hurriedly convened hearing. His committee, Murphy said, was not about to watch the canal "go down the drain" without some say in it all.