Nation: Packaging a New Carter

Jerry Rafshoon tries to reverse a popularity slide

Is a new Jimmy Carter emerging —tougher, demanding more of his staff, focusing more sharply on issues? Some recent evidence suggests that there is, despite the polls indicating that the public widely regards him as a weak leader. He acted unusually quickly to obtain the resignation of Adviser Peter Bourne when he became an embarrassment to the White House. He dramatically asserted presidential control over the scandal-tinged General Services Administration. And he has imposed a tighter rein on Cabinet officials.

Much of the credit (or blame) for this new Carter image belongs to Gerald Rafshoon, 44, the well-tailored, curly-haired, New York-born adman who has worked in every Carter campaign since 1966. After unofficially advising Carter since the Inauguration, he joined the White House's senior staff in July. As the $56,000-a-year Assistant to the President for Communications, Rafshoon has the job of improving the public's perception of his boss. He follows in the footsteps of such presidential image burnishers as Truman's Leonard Reinsch, Eisenhower's James Hagerty and Nixon's Herbert Klein.

Rafshoon believes one of Carter's problems is that he has not sufficiently followed his own political instincts. As a result, "too many people still feel that they do not know him. He has not made enough of an impression of who and what he really is." Rafshoon, therefore, has been trying to increase Carter's exposure in the press and on TV. When the President had his town meeting last month in West Berlin, for instance, Rafshoon arranged for live network coverage of it back in the U.S. After returning home, Carter held his first evening news conference in order to capture much of TV's prime-time audience. In the near future, Rafshoon plans a few televised presidential interviews. Carter and Rosalynn, meanwhile, have been holding intimate dinners at the White House for news executives, to give them a better feel for his personality and goals.

To overcome Carter's image as a weak leader, Rafshoon has been urging the President to assert more control over his Administration in public. Thus when U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young thoughtlessly equated U.S. treatment of civil rights activists with the Soviet Union's persecution of its dissidents, he was openly reprimanded by Carter. Similarly, in the wake of the Bourne episode, the President sternly lectured his staff that they would be fired if they broke the law by smoking marijuana or sniffing cocaine. Rafshoon has told Carter, who tends to be extremely loyal to his staff, that it is unwise to keep aides who are not performing well.

Another Rafshoon goal is ending the Administration's confusing zigzags and fuzziness on key issues. Says a White House aide: "Jerry is doing things that should have been done all along. He is concentrating the emphasis on a few major themes and goals." At Rafshoon's urging, the Administration on the domestic front has begun focusing mainly on energy, the economy and Government efficiency.