THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: A Troublesome Question of Class

There is something in politics called “class.” It has little to do with pedigree, money, dress or good looks. Instead, it is the essence of the man. Thus the colleagues of big, blustering House Speaker Tip O’Neill, from the back streets of Cambridge, can hail him as “a classy guy.” And thus did John F. Kennedy so devastatingly sum up his 1960 victory over Richard Nixon: “He’s got no class.” Franklin Roosevelt had class. Warren Harding did not. One of the maladies of the Carter Administration these days seems to be lack of class. Class is not always necessary for effective leadership; Lyndon Johnson sometimes demonstrated this. But if there is a dearth of achievement or other excitement, then a lack of class can be troublesome. The Carter Administration is drifting toward a description favored by the late Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News, who used to say of the buffoons who brought us Watergate, “Class, they ain’t got.”

Jimmy Carter is the first modern President whose quotient of class seems to have gone dramatically down since his days as a candidate. Normally, the primary battles are considered times of intrigue and crude maneuvers, leading up to the White House, a place of enlarged distinction. In the Iowa farm homes and the New Hampshire grange halls Carter had class as he talked about his hopes for America. He still is impressive in the small groups that gather around him in the Cabinet Room. But his presidency is becoming tarnished by the antics of others and the fact that Carter tolerates them, indeed sometimes covers for them.

Aide Hamilton Jordan’s celebrated evening at Sarsfield’s bar is only the latest episode in a continuing assault on traditional American sensitivities that probably began with Billy Carter. It has included such elements as Sister Ruth’s evangelical mission to Porn King Larry Flynt, the Bert Lance affair, Jody Powell’s intrigue against Senator Percy.

No incident by itself would matter all that much. But the weight of the total may exceed the sum of the parts. It seems to be the old problem of the magnifying effect of the White House. Richard Sennett, who has written an intriguing book on “the fall of public man,” would perhaps see the White House problem as part of the larger trouble of a people who no longer believe that their public personalities should be based on what they would like to be rather than what they truly are. We are poorer, says Sennett, because we have abandoned control and restraint. Wearing a mask, he insists, can be the essence of civility. Carter sometimes seems to go in the opposite direction to show the world he will not live up to tradition. He would not wear his tuxedo for the state dinner in France’s Versailles Palace, but he put the tux on to appear at the political fund raiser in Atlanta set up by his deposed pal Bert Lance. Theodore H. White, an authority on Presidents and how they got there, has long contended that class is a critical part of politics. “Class is a matter of style in leadership,” he says. “It is the magic that translates the language of the street into the language of history.”

Press Secretary Jody Powell has worried lately about the failure of the Carter culture to mix with some segments of the country, notably New York-Washington. The 33-page r buttal to Jordan’s latest incident suggests that the sensitivity is deeper than many thought. So there is hope. Jordan, after all, is the man who once worked with Beethoven playing in the background, and who fired a fellow just when the cannons went off in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. A man who can do that has got some class even if he will not admit it.