■ Battle lines drawn on the neutron bomb. On the day following President Carter’s announcement that he would suspend production, lead editorials in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Baltimore Sun urged him to reverse decision. … A Times story quoted a Carter “insider” as saying that Carter’s decision left him “the worst of both worlds. He’s still vulnerable to Soviet propaganda on the neutron bomb and to congressional critics that he’s soft on defense.”. . . Even Defense Secretary Harold Brown was faint in his support. The neutron warhead, he said, would be a useful addition to the U.S. arsenal but its absence “will not be crucial.” . . . Sen. Sam Nunn (D., Ga.), who helped sell the neutron bomb to Congress last year at Carter’s urging, asked: “Why should they [the Soviets] negotiate away a weapon they are willing to produce for one we don’t have the courage to produce?” (Nunn, incidentally, was one of the final holdouts on the first Panama vote, flipping into the pro camp at Carter’s urging.) . . . Also on their feet in the Senate opposing the move, Democrats Henry Jackson and Patrick Moynihan, and Republicans Howard Baker and Dewey Bartlett. . . . Radio Peking was distressed: Carter’s backing away on the N-bomb, it said, was due to a successful Soviet propaganda campaign. . . . Which continues: The Daily World, the Communist Party paper in New York, has launched a letter-writing campaign to the White House urging Carter to ban the neutron bomb for good. A pre-prepared telegram the World suggests its readers clip out and send also urges Carter to “reach a SALT agreement as quickly as possible.”
■ There’s much speculation on the Hill about what Jimmy Carter meant when he told the American Society of News-paper Editors that “I don’t definitely plan to run for re-election.” Did he mean that the time wasn’t right to announce, or that he might, if it looks bad in the spring of 1980, pull a Lyndon Johnson? . . . Evans & Novak comment about Carter: “If Jimmy Carter has one real friend in Congress, he is unknown to us. If Jimmy Carter has one real friend of his own generation within his Administration . . . we do not know him.” . . . On the plus side (very small plus), Carter’s premier opponent, Gov. Jerry Brown of California, is not doing too well himself these days. In 1976, Californians picked Brown over Carter as their presidential favorite by 66 to 33 per cent; today that has slipped to 52 to 30 per cent.
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