Flint, Michigan, May 18—A week on the road persuades you that there is one and only one persistent question on people’s minds. It is: What do you think of Jimmy Carter? It bespeaks an anxiety to think something about him different from the usual characterizations, all the more because they are not by any means identical. People want to know what Jimmy Carter is “really” like. People both hope that he is holding out on them—and fear that he is holding out on them. There is the useful wisecrack in a play of Oscar Wilde’s. “I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked, and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”
This much is safe to say. (What is unsafe, I’ll say later.) If Carter turned tomorrow to the left, he would disappoint and surprise about half his constituents. If tomorrow he turned to the right, he would disappoint and surprise about half his constituents. As he stands, both groups tend to co-opt him. It is not a bad position to occupy.
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