New York, Sept. 24—President Carter’s in trouble, he knows it, Walter Cronkite knows it, I know it, and who’s left? The Washington Post? “[Carter has renewed his] memorable record of personally savaging political opponents.” Was the Post trying to out-point the Washington Star in a contest of sensibilities? The Star: it was a “squalid exercise in church.”
What Mr. Carter had done, no less, was to imply from a pulpit that Ronald Reagan is waging a campaign of racism and of hatred. The Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. looked on soulfully, as well he might. There are still some people who trust President Carter, and if it were true that the man who opposes him and will probably win the Presidency believes in stirring up hatred and racism, then there is every reason to be melancholy. Not everybody knows the troubles Dr. King has seen, but he knows. His wife, and his son, were murdered by haters. What can you do if you hate hatred in this world? Vote Carter/Mondale on November 4. Happy days are here again. That, obviously, is Carter’s message, and his efforts to wriggle out of the implications of what he is saying didn’t work, and the press made that abundantly clear the next day at the highly unpresidential presidential press conference.
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