Letter from Washington

The big story here this week. Has been Butz Last week it was Lust, but Lust has taken a holiday, blitzed off the front pages and TV screens by Butz’s barroom crudity about blacks. By resigning, Butz has taken the only politically possible course open to him and thereby may have defused the explosive campaign issue his continued presence would cause. Reactions to his departure here are mixed. Many Administration officials sincerely believe Butz to have been one of the most effective Agriculture secretaries of recent memory. And the Ford Committee had been counting heavily on his campaign help in crucial battleground states such as Illinois, where it is essential that Ford pull a substantial farm vote to offset Carter’s urban support. Others here, however, believe that Butz’s appeal to the farm bloc has always been vastly overrated, and that in fact his involvement in the grain embargo made him a distinct campaign liability. But however they view him, Republicans are bitter about the way the story has been played. And they are all appalled that he had to make those remarks before—of all people—John Dean. “John was on that plane as an accredited reporter,” says one Nixon holdover. “Butz is an old Nixon hand. He should know, better than most, that John wouldn’t mind in the least helping to bring down the whole Administration once and for all. It would be the final star in his crown. Remember, he’s already laid one President low.”

Just how much damage Butz has done is not yet possible to assess. But there is no doubt that the way the story has been played has helped to put a brake on the momentum that the Ford campaign appeared to pick up during September, a momentum that itself seemed to depend primarily on how the press chose to play other stories. Since Labor Day, the campaign has been treated as a comedy of errors. The stories that have received the most loving coverage center on the blunders that each candidate manages to make, what one reporter here calls “the flub of the week coverage.” And through most of September, the flubs were all Carter’s— the income tax flap, LBJ, and lust. Going into October, the press believed it sensed one of those distinct shifts that can determine the outcome of an election, a moment when the front-runner no longer seems to be moving and the challenger has just pulled even on the outside. But just as that moment arrived, and just as movement toward Ford became discernible, the media began to focus negatively on Ford. There was the barrage of stories about golf trips and about the special prosecutor running daily on the front pages and evening news, juxtaposed in the DC area with stories on the corruption trial of Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel. Few knowledgeable people here believed the stories had substance. But the very fact that they ran day after day, forming the basis for nearly all the questions at the daily White House press briefing, was in itself sufficient. And then came the Butz flub, and many here believe that the focus on Butz has helped to put Carter back on the track.

The big story here this week. Has been Butz Last week it was Lust, but Lust has taken a holiday, blitzed off the front pages and TV screens by Butz’s barroom crudity about blacks. By resigning, Butz has taken the only politically possible course open to him and thereby may have defused the explosive campaign issue his continued presence would cause. Reactions to his departure here are mixed. Many Administration officials sincerely believe Butz to have been one of the most effective Agriculture secretaries of recent memory. And the Ford Committee had been counting heavily on his campaign help in crucial battleground states such as Illinois, where it is essential that Ford pull a substantial farm vote to offset Carter’s urban support. Others here, however, believe that Butz’s appeal to the farm bloc has always been vastly overrated, and that in fact his involvement in the grain embargo made him a distinct campaign liability. But however they view him, Republicans are bitter about the way the story has been played. And they are all appalled that he had to make those remarks before—of all people—John Dean. “John was on that plane as an accredited reporter,” says one Nixon holdover. “Butz is an old Nixon hand. He should know, better than most, that John wouldn’t mind in the least helping to bring down the whole Administration once and for all. It would be the final star in his crown. Remember, he’s already laid one President low.”

Just how much damage Butz has done is not yet possible to assess. But there is no doubt that the way the story has been played has helped to put a brake on the momentum that the Ford campaign appeared to pick up during September, a momentum that itself seemed to depend primarily on how the press chose to play other stories. Since Labor Day, the campaign has been treated as a comedy of errors. The stories that have received the most loving coverage center on the blunders that each candidate manages to make, what one reporter here calls “the flub of the week coverage.” And through most of September, the flubs were all Carter’s— the income tax flap, LBJ, and lust. Going into October, the press believed it sensed one of those distinct shifts that can determine the outcome of an election, a moment when the front-runner no longer seems to be moving and the challenger has just pulled even on the outside. But just as that moment arrived, and just as movement toward Ford became discernible, the media began to focus negatively on Ford. There was the barrage of stories about golf trips and about the special prosecutor running daily on the front pages and evening news, juxtaposed in the DC area with stories on the corruption trial of Maryland Governor Marvin Mandel. Few knowledgeable people here believed the stories had substance. But the very fact that they ran day after day, forming the basis for nearly all the questions at the daily White House press briefing, was in itself sufficient. And then came the Butz flub, and many here believe that the focus on Butz has helped to put Carter back on the track.