“Our people are hungry for integrity and competence in government,” said Jimmy Carter repeatedly during the campaign. That word “competence” was used nearly as often as “love,” and even his enemies conceded that Carter would probably be a more competent President than Gerald Ford. But after less than a year of the Carter Presidency, the consensus among political observers and journalists here is that this just may be the most amateurish and incompetent Administration in modern memory. Outside of the Lance affair, which was blown out of all proportion partly because of Carter’s stubbornness, there have been no crises. In fact, compared to other recent Administrations, Carter’s first months in office have been downright tranquil. Nevertheless, despite the reservoir of good will in the nation and on the Hill, Carter’s performance has been so startlingly inept that his approval rating has plunged to 46 per cent—just about where Richard Nixon stood a few months into Watergate.
Nothing has worked. His energy proposals, which were to represent his first great legislative achievement, have been gutted so thoroughly by the Senate that the talk now is of starting from scratch. His undermining of the Senate filibuster, undertaken by Senators Abourezk and Metzenbaum to support what they were told was the White House position, has alienated young liberal Democratic activists such as Gary Hart. And older, more conservative senators have been offended by Carter’s repeated charges that they are unduly influenced by the oil and gas lobby. Carter himself, they point out, strongly championed deregulation during the campaign, flatly promising oil-state senators and governors that he would fight for it if elected.
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