New York, July 29—Let’s see now. As these words are written, Carter has contradicted himself twice, Civiletti has contradicted himself once, Brzezinski and Rosalynn have done a pas de deux in the Rose Garden in the moonlight, Jody has denounced third-rate accusations, Jimmy has cabled the Shah’s widow offering condolences while carefully omitting any word of praise for the late Shah, whose departure was hailed by his benevolent successors in Iran as the end of the “bloodsucker,” in a statement that included the reiteration of Iranian resolve to keep the hostages, whose term of captivity we forgot because Walter Cronkite wasn’t on last night, and the Democrats, or most Democrats, are preparing to renominate for re-election the incumbent President about whom the most that can be said was said by Henry Kissinger keynoting the Republican convention in Hartford over the weekend, to wit that President Carter delivered his first foreign-policy address to the American people wearing a sweater, which at least proves that he pulled the wool over his own eyes before going ontodoitto the rest of us. Have I forgotten anything?
Yes. It is the extraordinary turn of mind that persuaded the President of the United States last November and December to think to appeal to the Ayatollah through the good offices of Qaddafi of Libya. It is altogether stranger than fiction.
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