The Great Shark Hunt Part 33

It is not my wont to take undue advantage of the Secret Service. We have gone through some heavy times together, as it were, and ever since I wandered into a room in the Baltimore Hotel in New York one night during the 1972 campaign and found three SS agents smoking a joint, I have felt pretty much at ease around them. . . So it seemed only natural, down in Georgia, to ask one of the four agents in our detail for the keys to the trunk of his car so I could lock my leather satchel in a safe place, instead of carrying it around with me.

Actually, the agent had put the bag in the trunk on his own, rather than give me the key. . . But when I sat down at our table in the cafeteria and saw that the only available beverage was iced tea, I remembered that one of the things in my satchel was a quart of Wild Turkey, and I wanted it. On the table in front of me -- and everyone else -- was a tall gla.s.s of iced tea that looked to be the same color as bourbon. Each gla.s.s had a split slice of lemon on its rim: so I removed the lemon, poured the tea into Paul Kirk's water gla.s.s, and asked one of the agents at the next table for the key to the trunk. He hesitated for a moment, but one of the law school deans or maybe Judge Crater was already talking into the mike up there at the speakers' table, so the path of least disturbance was to give me the key, which he did. . .

And I thought nothing of it until I got outside and opened the trunk. . .

Cazart!

If your life ever gets dull, check out the trunk of the next SS car you happen to see. You won't need a key; they open just as easily as any other trunk when a six-foot whipsteel is properly applied. . . But open the b.u.g.g.e.r carefully, carefully, because those gentlemen keep about 69 varieties of instant death inside. Jesus, I was literally staggered by the ma.s.s of weaponry in the back of that car: there were machine guns, gas masks, hand grenades, cartridge belts, tear gas canisters, ammo boxes, bulletproof vests, chains, saws and probably a lot of other things. . . But all of a sudden I realized that two pa.s.sing students had stopped right next to me on the sidewalk and I heard one of them say, "G.o.d almighty! Look at because those gentlemen keep about 69 varieties of instant death inside. Jesus, I was literally staggered by the ma.s.s of weaponry in the back of that car: there were machine guns, gas masks, hand grenades, cartridge belts, tear gas canisters, ammo boxes, bulletproof vests, chains, saws and probably a lot of other things. . . But all of a sudden I realized that two pa.s.sing students had stopped right next to me on the sidewalk and I heard one of them say, "G.o.d almighty! Look at that that stuff!" stuff!"

So I quickly filled my gla.s.s with Wild Turkey, put the bottle back in the trunk and slammed it shut just like you'd slam any other trunk. . . and that was when I turned around to see Jimmy Carter coming at me with his head down, his teeth bared and his eyes so wildly dilated that he looked like a springtime bat. . .

What? No. That was later in the day, on my third or fourth trip to the trunk with the iced-tea gla.s.s. I have been sitting here in a frozen, bewildered stupor for 50 or 55 minutes trying to figure out where that last image came from. My memories of that day are extremely vivid, for the most part, and the more I think back on it now, the more certain I am that whatever I might have seen coming at me in that kind of bent-over, fast-swooping style of the springtime bat was not not Governor Carter. Probably it was a hunchbacked student on his way to final exams in the school of landscaping, or maybe just trying to walk fast and tie his shoes at the same time. . . Or it could have been nothing at all; there is no mention in my notebook about anything trying to sneak up on me in a high-speed crouch while I was standing out there in the street. Governor Carter. Probably it was a hunchbacked student on his way to final exams in the school of landscaping, or maybe just trying to walk fast and tie his shoes at the same time. . . Or it could have been nothing at all; there is no mention in my notebook about anything trying to sneak up on me in a high-speed crouch while I was standing out there in the street.

According to my notes, in fact, Jimmy Carter had arrived at the cafeteria not long after Kennedy -- and if he attracted any attention from the crowd that had come to see Teddy I would probably have noticed it and made at least a small note to emphasize the contrast in style -- something like: "12:09, Carter suddenly appears in slow-moving crowd behind TK. No autographs, no bodyguards & now a blue plastic suit instead of Levi's. . . No recognition, no greetings, just a small sandy-haired man looking for somebody to shake hands with. . ."

That is the kind of note I would have made if I'd noticed his arrival at all, which I didn't. Because it was not until around ten o'clock on the night of the New Hampshire primary, almost two years later, that there was any real reason for a journalist to make a note on the time and style of Jimmy Carter's arrival for any occasion at all, and especially not in a crowd that had come to rub shoulders with big-time heavies like Ted Kennedy and Dean Rusk. He is not an imposing figure in any way: and even now, with his face on every TV screen in the country at least five nights a week, I'd be tempted to bet $100 to anybody else's $500 that Jimmy Carter could walk -- by himself and in a normal noonday crowd -- from one end of Chicago's huge O'Hare Airport to the other, without being recognized by anybody. . .

Or at least not by anybody who had never met him personally, or who had not seen him anywhere except on TV. Because there is nothing about Carter that would make him any more noticeable than anyone else you might pa.s.s in one of those long and crowded corridors in O'Hare. He could pa.s.s for a Fuller Brush man on any street in America. . . But if Jimmy Carter had decided, 15 years ago, to sign on as a brush and gim-crack salesman for the Fuller people, he would be president of the Fuller Brush Company today and every medicine chest in the country would be loaded with Carter-Fuller brushes. . . And if he had gone into the heroin business, every respectable household between Long Island and Los Angeles would have at least one resident junkie.

Ah. . . but that is not what we need to be talking about right now, is it?

The only thing I remember about the first hour or so of that luncheon was a powerful sense of depression with the life I was drifting into. According to the program, we were in for a long run of speeches, remarks, comments, etc., on matters connected with the law school. Carter and Kennedy were the last two names on the list of speakers, which meant there was no hope of leaving early. I thought about going back to the beer parlor and watching a baseball game on TV, but King warned me against it. "We don't know how long this G.o.dd.a.m.n thing is gonna last," he said, "and that's a h.e.l.l of a long walk from here, isn't it?"

I knew what he was getting at. Just as soon as the program was over, the SS caravan would rush us out to the Athens ariport, where Carter's plane was waiting to fly us back to Atlanta. Another big dinner banquet was scheduled for 6:30 that night, and immediately after that, a long flight back to Washington. n.o.body would miss me if I wanted to go to the beer parlor, King said; but n.o.body would miss me when the time came to leave the airport, either.

One of the constant nightmares of traveling with politicians is the need to keep them in sight at all times. Every presidential campaign has its own fearful litany of horror stories about reporters -- and, occasionally, even a key staff member -- who thought they had plenty of time to "run across the street for a quick beer" instead of hanging around in the rear of some grim auditorium half-listening to the drone of a long-familiar speech, only to come back in 20 minutes to find the auditorium empty and no sign of the press bus, the candidate or anybody who can tell him where they went. These stories are invariably set in places like b.u.t.te, Buffalo or Icepick, Minnesota, on a night in the middle of March. The temperature is always below zero, there is usually a raging blizzard to keep cabs off the street, and just as the victim remembers that he has left his wallet in his overcoat on the press bus, his stomach erupts with a sudden attack of ptomaine poisoning. And then, while crawling around on his knees in some ice-covered alley and racked with fits of projectile vomiting, he is grabbed by vicious cops and whipped on the shins with a night stick, then locked in the drunk tank of the local jail and b.u.g.g.e.red all night by winos.

These stories abound, and there is just enough truth in them to make most campaign journalists so fearful of a sudden change in the schedule that they will not even go looking for a bathroom until the pain becomes unendurable and at least three reliable people have promised to fetch them back to the fold at the first sign of any movement that could signal an early departure. The closest I ever came to getting left behind was during the California primary in 1972, when I emerged from a bathroom in the Salinas railroad depot and realized that the caboose car of McGovern's "victory train" was about 100 yards further down the tracks than it had been only three minutes earlier. George was still standing outside the platform, waving to the crowd, but the train was moving -- and as I started my sprint through the crowd, running over women, children, cripples and anything else that couldn't get out of my way, I thought I saw a big grin on McGovern's face as the train began picking up speed. . . I am still amazed that I caught up with the G.o.dd.a.m.n thing without blowing every valve in my heart, or even missing the iron ladder when I made my last-second leap and being swept under the train and chopped in half by the wheels.

Ever since then I have not been inclined to take many risks while traveling in strange territory with politicians. Even the very few who might feel a bit guilty about leaving me behind would have to do it anyway, because they are all enslaved by their schedules, and when it comes to a choice between getting to the airport on time or waiting for a journalist who has wandered off to seek booze, they will shrug and race off to the airport.

This is particularly true when you travel with Kennedy, who moves at all times with a speedy, split-second precision on a schedule that n.o.bobdy except a perfectly organized presidential candidate would even try to keep pace with. When he is traveling with a detail of Secret Service agents, the caravan stops for nothing and waits for n.o.body. . . The SS agents a.s.signed to Kennedy are hypersensitive about anything that might jack up the risk factor, and they move on the theory that safety increases with speed.

There was no need for King and Kirk to warn me that the SS detail would have a collective nervous breakdown at the prospect of taking Senator Kennedy and the governor of Georgia through the streets of downtown Athens -- or any other city, for that matter -- to search for some notoriously criminal journalist who might be in any one of the half-dozen bars and beer parlors on the edge of the campus.

So there was nothing to do except sit there in the university cafeteria, slumped in my chair at a table right next to Dean Rusk's, and drink one tall gla.s.s after another of straight Wild Turkey until the Law Day luncheon ceremonies were finished. After my third trip out to the trunk, the SS driver apparently decided that it was easier to just let me keep the car keys instead of causing a disturbance every 15 or 20 minutes by pa.s.sing them back and forth. . . Which made a certain kind of fatalistic sense, because I'd already had plenty of time to do just about anything I wanted to with the savage contents of his trunk, so why start worrying now? We had, after all, been together for the better part of two days, and the agents were beginning to understand that there was no need to reach for their weapons every time I started talking about the blood on Dean Rusk's hands, or how easily I could reach over and cut off his ears with my steak knife. Most Secret Service agents have led a sheltered life, and they tend to get edgy when they hear that kind of talk from a large stranger in their midst who has managed to stash an apparently endless supply of powerful whiskey right in the middle of their trunk a.r.s.enal. That is not one of your normal, everyday situations in the SS life; and especially not when this drunkard who keeps talking about taking a steak knife to the head of a former secretary of state has a red flag on his file in the Washington SS headquarters in addition to having the keys to the SS car in his pocket.

Carter was already speaking when I came back from my fourth or fifth trip out to the car. I had been careful all along to keep the slice of lemon on the rim of the gla.s.s, so it looked like all the other iced-tea gla.s.ses in the room. But Jimmy King was beginning to get nervous about the smell. "G.o.dd.a.m.nit Hunter, this whole end of the room smells like a distillery," he said.

"b.a.l.l.s," I said. "That's blood you're smelling."

King winced and I thought I saw Rusk's head start to swing around on me, but apparently he thought better of it. For at least two hours he'd been hearing all this ugly talk about blood coming over his shoulder from what he knew was "the Kennedy table" right behind him. But why would a group of Secret Service agents and Senator Kennedy's personal staff be talking about him like that? And why was this powerful stench of whiskey hanging around his head? Were they all drunk?

Not all -- but I was rapidly closing the gap and the others had been subjected to the fumes for so long that I could tell by the sound of their laughter that even the SS agents were acting a little weird. Maybe it was a contact drunk of some kind, acting in combination with the fumes and fiendish drone of the speeches. We were trapped in that place, and n.o.body else at the table liked it any better than I did.

I am still not sure when I began listening to what Carter was saying, but at some point about ten minutes into his remarks I noticed a marked difference in the style and tone of the noise coming from the speakers' table and I found myself listening, for the first time all day. Carter had started off with a few quiet jokes about people feeling honored to pay ten or twelve dollars a head to hear Kennedy speak, but the only way he could get people to listen to him was to toss in a free lunch along with his remarks. The audience laughed politely a few times, but after he'd been talking for about 15 minutes I noticed a general uneasiness in the atmosphere of the room, and n.o.body was laughing anymore. At that point we were all still under the impression that Carter's "remarks" would consist of a few minutes of friendly talk about the law school, a bit of praise for Rusk, an introduction to Kennedy, and that would be it. . .

But we were wrong, and the tension in the room kept increasing as more and more people realized it. Very few if any of them had supported Carter when he won the governorship, and now that he was just about finished with his four-year term and barred by law from running again, they expected him to bow out gracefully and go back to raising peanuts. If he had chosen that occasion to announce that he'd decided to run for president in 1976, the reaction would almost certainly have been a ripple of polite laughter, because they would know he was kidding. Carter had not been a bad governor, but so what? We were, after all, in Georgia; and besides that, the South already had one governor running for president. . . Back in the spring of 1974 George Wallace was a national power; he had rattled the h.e.l.l out of that big cage called the Democratic National Committee in '72, and when he said he planned to do it again in '76 he was taken very seriously.

So I would probably have chuckled along with the others if Carter had said something about running for president at the beginning beginning of his "remarks" that day, but I would not have chuckled if he'd said it at the end. . . Because it was a king h.e.l.l b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a speech, and by the time it was over he had rung every bell in the room. n.o.body seemed to know exactly what to make of it, but they knew it was sure as h.e.l.l not what they'd come to hear. of his "remarks" that day, but I would not have chuckled if he'd said it at the end. . . Because it was a king h.e.l.l b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a speech, and by the time it was over he had rung every bell in the room. n.o.body seemed to know exactly what to make of it, but they knew it was sure as h.e.l.l not what they'd come to hear.

I have heard hundreds of speeches by all kinds of candidates and politicians -- usually against my will and for generally the same reasons I got trapped into hearing this one -- but I have never heard a sustained piece of political oratory that impressed me any more than the speech Jimmy Carter made on that Sat.u.r.day afternoon in May 1974. It ran about 45 minutes, climbing through five very distinct gear changes while the audience muttered uneasily and raised their eyebrows at each other, and one of the most remarkable things about the speech is that it is such a rare piece of oratorical artwork that it remains vastly impressive, even if you don't necessarily believe Carter was sincere and truthful in all the things he said. Viewed purely in the context of rhetorical drama and political theater, it ranks with General Douglas MacArthur's "old soldiers never die" address to the Congress in 1951 -- which still stands as a masterpiece of insane bulls.h.i.t, if nothing else.

There were, however, a lot of people who believed every word and sigh of MacArthur's speech, and they wanted to make him president -- just as a lot of people who are still uncertain about Jimmy Carter would want to make him president if he could figure out some way to deliver a contemporary version of his 1974 Law Day speech on network TV. . . Or, h.e.l.l, even the same identical speech; a national audience might be slightly puzzled by some of the references to obscure judges, grade-school teachers and backwoods Georgia courthouses, but I think the totality of the speech would have the same impact today as it did two years ago.

But there is not much chance of it happening. . . And that brings up another remarkable aspect of the law Day speech: it had virtually no impact at all when he delivered it except on the people who heard it, and most of them were more stunned and puzzled by it than impressed. They had not come there to hear lawyers denounced as running dogs of the status quo, and there is still some question in my own mind -- and in Carter's too, I suspect -- about what he came there to say. There was no written text of the speech, no press to report it, no audience hungry to hear it, and no real reason for giving it -- except that Jimmy Carter had a few serious things on his mind that day, and he figured it was about time to unload them, whether the audience liked it or not. . .

Which gets to another interesting point of the speech: although Carter himself now says, "That was probably the best speech I ever made," he has yet to make another like it -- not even to the extent of lifting some of the best images and ideas of incorporation into his current speeches -- and his campaign staff attached so little importance to it that Carter's only tape recording of his Law Day remarks got lost somewhere in the files and, until about two months ago, the only existing tape of the speech was the one I made and carried around with me for two years, playing it in some extremely unlikely situations for people who would look at me like I was finally over the hump into terminal brain damage when I'd say they were going to have to spend the next 45 minutes listening to a political speech by some ex-governor of Georgia.

It was not until I showed up in New Hampshire and Ma.s.sachusetts for the '76 primaries and started playing my tape of the Law Day speech for a few friends, journalists and even some of Carter's top staff people who'd never heard it that Pat Caddell noticed that almost everybody who heard the speech was as impressed by it as I was. . . But even now, after Caddell arranged to dub 50 tape copies off of my copy, n.o.body in Carter's brain trust has figured out what to do with them.

I am not quite sure what I would do with them, myself, if I were Carter, because it is entirely possible that the very qualities that made the Law Day speech so impressive for me would have exactly the opposite effect on Carter's new national const.i.tuency. The voice I hear on my tape is the same one all those good conservative folk out there on the campaign trail have found so appealing, but very few of them would find anything familiar in what the voice is saying. The Jimmy Carter who has waltzed so triumphantly down the middle of the road through one Democratic primary after another is a cautious, conservative and vaguely ethereal Baptist Sunday school teacher who seems to promise, above all else, a return to normalcy, a resurrection of the national self-esteem, and a painless redemption from all the horrors and disillusion of Watergate. With President Carter's firm hand on the helm, the ship of state will once again sail a true and steady course, all the crooks and liars and thieves who somehow got control of the government during the turmoil of the Sixties will be driven out of the temple once and for all, and the White House will be so overflowing with honesty, decency, justice, love and compa.s.sion that it might even glow in the dark.

It is a very alluring vision, and n.o.body understands this better than Jimmy Carter. The electorate feels a need to be cleansed, rea.s.sured, and revitalized. The underdogs of yesteryear have had their day, and they blew it. The radicals and reformers of the Sixties promised peace, but they turned out to be nothing but incompetent trouble-makers. Their plans that had looked so fine on paper led to chaos and disaster when hack politicians tried to implement them. The promise of Civil Rights turned into the nightmare of busing. The call for law and order led straight to Watergate. And the long struggle between the Hawks and the Doves caused violence in the streets and a military disaster in Vietnam. n.o.body won, in the end, and when the dust finally settled, "extremists" at both ends of the political spectrum were thoroughly discredited. And by the time the 1976 presidential campaign got under way, the high ground was all in the middle of the road.

Jimmy Carter understands this, and he has tailored his campaign image to fit the new mood almost perfectly. . . But back in May of '74 when he flew up to Athens to make his "remarks" at the Law Day ceremonies, he was not as concerned with preserving his moderate image as he is now. He was thinking more about all the trouble he'd had with judges, lawyers, lobbyists and other minions of the Georgia establishment while he was governor-- and now, with only six more months in the office, he wanted to have a few words with these people.

There was not much anger in his voice when he started talking. But halfway through the speech it was too obvious for anybody in the room to ignore. But there was no way to cut him short and he knew it. It was the anger in his voice that first caught my attention, I think, but what sent me back out to the trunk to get my tape recorder instead of another drink was the spectacle of a Southern politician telling a crowd of Southern judges and lawyers that "I'm not qualified to talk to you about law, because in addition to being a peanut farmer, I'm an engineer and nuclear physicist, not a lawyer. . . But I read a lot and I listen a lot. One of the sources for my understanding about the proper application of criminal justice and the system of equities is from Reinhold Niebuhr. The other source of my understanding about what's right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. Listening to his records about 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' and 'Like a Rolling Stone' and The Times They Are A-Changin',' I've learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society."

At first I wasn't sure I was hearing him right and I looked over at Jimmy King. "What the h.e.l.l did I just hear?" I asked.

King smiled and looked at Paul Kirk, who leaned across the table and whispered, "He said his top two advisers are Bob Dylan and Reinhold Niebuhr."

I nodded and got up to go outside for my tape recorder. I could tell by the rising anger in Carter's voice that we were in for an interesting ride. . . And by the time I got back he was whipping on the crowd about judges who took bribes in return for reduced prison sentences, lawyers who deliberately cheated illiterate blacks, and cops who abused people's rights with something they called a "consent warrant."

"I had lunch this week with the members of the Judicial Selection Committee and they were talking about a 'consent search warrant,' " he said. "I didn't know what a consent search warrant was. They said, 'Well, that's when two policemen go to a house. One of them goes to the front door and knocks on it and the other one runs around to the back door and yells come in.'"

The crowd got a laugh out of that one, but Carter was just warming up and for the next 20 or 30 minutes his voice was the only sound in the room. Kennedy was sitting just a few feet to Carter's left, listening carefully but never changing the thoughtful expression on his face as Carter railed and b.i.t.c.hed about a system of criminal justice that allows the rich and the privileged to escape punishment for their crimes and sends poor people to prison because they can't afford to bribe the judge. . .

(Jesus Babbling Christ! The phone is ringing again, and this time I know what it is for sure. Last time it was the Land Commissioner of Texas, threatening to have my legs broken because of something I wrote about him. . . But now it is the grim reaper; he has come for my final page and in exactly 13 minutes that G.o.dd.a.m.n mojo wire across the room will erupt in a frenzy of beeping and I will have to feed it again. . . But before I leave this filthy sweatbox that is costing me $39 a day I am going to deal with that rotten mojo machine. I have dreamed of smashing that f.u.c.ker for five long years, but. . . Okay, okay, 12 more minutes and. . . yes. . .) So this will have to be it. . . I would need a lot more time and s.p.a.ce than I have to properly describe either the reality or the reaction to Jimmy Carter's Law Day speech, which was and still is the heaviest and most eloquent thing I have ever heard from the mouth of a politician. It was the voice of an angry agrarian populist, extremely precise in its judgments and laced with some of the most original, brilliant and occasionally bizarre political metaphors anybody in that room will ever be likely to hear.

The final turn of the screw was another ugly example of crime and degradation in the legal profession, and this time Carter went right to the top. Nixon had just released his own, self-serving version of "the White House tapes," and Carter was shocked when he read the transcripts. "The Const.i.tution charges us with a direct responsibility for determining what our government is and ought to be," he said. And then, after a long pause, he went on: "Well. . . I have read parts of the embarra.s.sing transcripts, and I've seen the proud statement of a former attorney general who protected his boss, and now brags of the fact that he tiptoed through a minefield and came out. . . quote, clean, unquote." Another pause, and then: "You know, I can't imagine somebody like Thomas Jefferson tiptoeing through a minefield on the technicalities of the law, and then bragging about being clean clean afterwards. . ." afterwards. . ."

Forty-five minutes latter, on our way back to Atlanta in the governor's small plane, I told Carter I wanted a transcript of his speech.

"There is no transcript," he said.

I smiled, thinking he was putting me on. The speech had sounded like a product of five or six tortured drafts. . . But he showed a page and a half of scrawled notes in his legal pad and said that was all he had.

"Jesus Christ," I said. "That was one of the d.a.m.nedest things I've ever heard. You mean you just winged it all the way through?"

He shrugged and smiled faintly. "Well," he said, "I had a pretty good idea what I was going to say, before I came up here -- but I guess I was a little surprised at how it came out."

Kennedy didn't have much to say about the speech. He said he'd "enjoyed it," but he still seemed uncomfortable and preoccupied for some reason. Carter and I talked about the time he invited Dylan and some of his friends out to the governor's mansion after a concert in Atlanta. "I really enjoyed it," he said with a big grin. "It was a real honor to have him visit my home."

I had already decided, by then, that I liked Jimmy Carter -- but I had no idea that he'd made up his mind, a few months earlier, to run for the presidency in 1976. And if he had told me his little secret that day on the plane back to Atlanta, I'm not sure I'd have taken him seriously. . . But if he had told me and if I had taken him seriously, I would probably have said that he could have my vote, for no other reason except the speech I'd just heard.

Which hardly matters, because Jimmy Carter didn't mention the presidency to me that day, and I had other things on my mind. It was the first Sat.u.r.day in May -- Derby Day in Louisville -- and I'd been hara.s.sing Jimmy King since early morning about getting us back to Atlanta in time to watch the race on TV. According to the schedule we were due back at the governor's mansion around three in the afternoon, and post time for the Derby was 4:30. . . But I have learned to be leery of politicians' schedules; they are about as reliable as campaign promises, and when I'd mentioned to Kennedy that I felt it was very important to get ourselves back to Atlanta in time for the Derby, I could tell by the look on his face that the only thing that might cause him to go out of his way to watch the Kentucky Derby was a written guarantee from the Churchill Downs management that I would be staked down on the track at the finish line when the horses came thundering down the stretch.

But Carter was definitely up for it, and he a.s.sured me that we would be back at the mansion in plenty of time for me to make all the bets I wanted before post time. "We'll even try to find a mint julep for you," he said. "Rosalynn has some mint in the garden, and I notice you already have the main ingredient."

When we got to the mansion I found a big TV set in one of the bas.e.m.e.nt guest rooms. The mint juleps were no problem, but the only bet I could get was a $5 gig with Jody Powell, Carter's press secretary -- which I won, and then compounded the insult by insisting that Powell pay off immediately. He had to wander around the mansion, borrowing dollars and even quarters from anybody who would lend him money, until he could sc.r.a.pe up five dollars.

Later that night we endured another banquet, and immediately afterward I flew back to Washington with Kennedy, King and Kirk. Kennedy was still in a funk about something, and I thought it was probably me. . . And while it was true that I had not brought any great distinction to the entourage, I had made enough of an effort to know that it could have been worse, and just to make sure he understood that -- or maybe for reasons of sheer perversity -- I waited until we were all strapped into our seats and I heard the stewardess asking Teddy if she could bring him a drink. He refused, as he always does in public, and just as the stewardess finished her spiel I leaned over the seat and said, "How about some heroin?"

His face went stiff and for a moment I thought it was all over for me. But then I noticed that King and Kirk were smiling. . . So I strangled the sloat and walked back to my hotel in the rain.

The Last Crazed Charge of the Liberal Brigade: The Shrewdness of Richard Nixon, the Deep and Abiding Courage of Hubert Humphrey and All of His New Found Friends. . . Jimmy Carter at Home in Plains, One Year Later the Leap of Faith SPECIAL BULLETIN.

BEAUMONT, TEXAS (Apr 29) -- Anarchist presidential candidate Hunter S. Thompson announced yesterday during opening ceremonies at the Beaumont Annual Stock Auction that Democratic front-runner Jimmy Carter was "the only candidate who ever lied to me twice in one day." Thompson's harsh denunciation of Carter -- who was also at the auction for purposes of wrestling his own bull -- came as a nasty shock to the crowd of celebrities, bull wranglers and other politicos who were gathered to partic.i.p.ate in ceremonies honoring Texas Land Commissioner Bob Armstrong, who followed Thompson's attack on Carter with an unexpected statement of his own, saying he would be the number two man on a dark-horse(s) Demo ticket with Colorado Senator Gary Hart. Armstrong also denounced Carter for "consciously lying to me, about the price of his bull." The Carter-owned animal, a two-year-old peanut-fed Brahman, had been advertised at a price of $2200 -- but when the front-runner showed up in Beaumont to ride his own bull, the price suddenly escalated to $7750. And it was at this point that both Thompson and Armstrong stunned the crowd with their back-to-back a.s.saults on Carter, long considered a personal friend of both men. . . Carter, who seemed shocked by the attacks, lied to newsmen who questioned him about the reasons, saying, "I didn't hear what they said."

The Law Day speech is not the kind of thing that would have much appeal to the mind of a skilled technician, and that kind of mind is perhaps the only common denominator among the strategists, organizers and advisers at the staff-command level of Carter's campaign. Very few of them seem to have much interest in why why Jimmy wants to be president, or even in what he might do after he wins: their job and their meal ticket is to put Jimmy Carter in the White House, that is all they know and all they need to know -- and so far they are doing their job pretty well. According to political odds-maker Billy the Geek, Carter is now a solid 3-2 bet to win the November election -- up from 50-1 less than six months ago. Jimmy wants to be president, or even in what he might do after he wins: their job and their meal ticket is to put Jimmy Carter in the White House, that is all they know and all they need to know -- and so far they are doing their job pretty well. According to political odds-maker Billy the Geek, Carter is now a solid 3-2 bet to win the November election -- up from 50-1 less than six months ago.

This is another likely reason why Carter's brain trust is not especially concerned with how to put the Law Day speech to good use: the people most likely to be impressed or even converted by it are mainly the ones who make up the left/liberal, humanist/intellectual wing of the Democratic party and the national press -- and in the wake of Carter's genuinely awesome blitzkrieg in Pennsylvania and Texas, destroying all all of his remaining opposition in less than a week, it is hard to argue with the feeling among his staff-command technicians that he no longer of his remaining opposition in less than a week, it is hard to argue with the feeling among his staff-command technicians that he no longer needs needs any converts from the left/liberal wing of the party. He got where he is without the help he repeatedly asked them for during most of 1975 and early '76, and now the problem is any converts from the left/liberal wing of the party. He got where he is without the help he repeatedly asked them for during most of 1975 and early '76, and now the problem is theirs. theirs. The train has left the station, as it were, and anybody who wants to catch up with it now is going to come up with the air fare. . . The train has left the station, as it were, and anybody who wants to catch up with it now is going to come up with the air fare. . .

But I have just been reminded by a terrible screeching on the telephone that the presses will roll in a few hours and that means there is no more time at R ROLLING S STONE than there is in the Carter campaign for wondering than there is in the Carter campaign for wondering why why about anything. Idle speculation is a luxury reserved for people who are too rich, too poor or too crazy to get seriously concerned about anything outside their own private realities. . . and just as soon as I finish this G.o.dd.a.m.n wretched piece of gibberish I am going to flee like a rat down a pipe into one of those categories. I have maintained a wild and serious flirtation with all three of them for so long that the flirtation itself was beginning to look like reality. . . But I see it now for the madness it was from the start: there is no way to maintain four parallel states of being at the same time. I know from long experience that it is possible to be rich, poor and crazy all at once -- but to be rich, poor, crazy and also a functioning political journalist at the same time is flat-out impossible, so the time has come to make a terminal choice. . . about anything. Idle speculation is a luxury reserved for people who are too rich, too poor or too crazy to get seriously concerned about anything outside their own private realities. . . and just as soon as I finish this G.o.dd.a.m.n wretched piece of gibberish I am going to flee like a rat down a pipe into one of those categories. I have maintained a wild and serious flirtation with all three of them for so long that the flirtation itself was beginning to look like reality. . . But I see it now for the madness it was from the start: there is no way to maintain four parallel states of being at the same time. I know from long experience that it is possible to be rich, poor and crazy all at once -- but to be rich, poor, crazy and also a functioning political journalist at the same time is flat-out impossible, so the time has come to make a terminal choice. . .

But not quite yet. We still have to finish this twisted saga of Vengeance and Revelation in the shade of the Georgia pines. . . So, what the h.e.l.l? Let's get after it. There is plenty of room at the top in this bountiful nation of ours for a rich, poor and crazy political journalist who can sit down at a rented typewriter in a Texas motel with a heart full of hate and a head full of speed and Wild Turkey and lash out a capsule/narrative between midnight and dawn that will explain the whole meaning and tell the whole tale of the 1976 presidential campaign. . .

h.e.l.l yes! Let's whip whip on this thing! Until I got that phone call a few minutes ago I would have said it was absolutely impossible, but now I know better. . . If only because I have just been reminded that until I saw Hubert Humphrey "quit the race" a few days ago I was telling anybody who would listen that there was no way to cure an egg-sucking dog. . . So now is the time to finish this rotten job that I somehow got myself into, and also to congratulate my old buddy Hubert for having enough sense to ignore his advisers and keep the last faint glimmer of his presidential hopes alive by crouching in the weeds and praying for a brokered convention, instead of shooting his whole wad by entering the New Jersey primary and getting pushed off the wall and cracked like Humpty Dumpty by Jimmy Carter's technicians. on this thing! Until I got that phone call a few minutes ago I would have said it was absolutely impossible, but now I know better. . . If only because I have just been reminded that until I saw Hubert Humphrey "quit the race" a few days ago I was telling anybody who would listen that there was no way to cure an egg-sucking dog. . . So now is the time to finish this rotten job that I somehow got myself into, and also to congratulate my old buddy Hubert for having enough sense to ignore his advisers and keep the last faint glimmer of his presidential hopes alive by crouching in the weeds and praying for a brokered convention, instead of shooting his whole wad by entering the New Jersey primary and getting pushed off the wall and cracked like Humpty Dumpty by Jimmy Carter's technicians.

I am beginning to sense a distinctly pejorative drift in this emphasis on the word "technician," but it is only half intentional. There is nothing wrong with technicians, in politics or anywhere else. Any presidential campaign without a full complement of first-cla.s.s political technicians -- or with a drastic imbalance between technicians and ideologues -- will meet the same fate that doomed the Fred Harris campaign in New Hampshire and Ma.s.sachusetts. But the question of balance is critical, and there is something a little scary about a presidential campaign run almost entirely by technicians that can be as successful as Carter's.

"Awesome" is the mildest word I can think of to describe a campaign that can take an almost totally unknown ex-governor of Georgia with no national reputation, no power base in the Democratic party and not the slightest reluctance to tell Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor and anyone else who asks that "the most important thing in my life is Jesus Christ" and to have him securely positioned, after only nine of 32 primaries, as an almost prohibitive favorite to win the presidential nomination of the nation's majority political party, and even bet to win the November election against a relatively popular GOP president who has managed somehow to convince both Big Labor and Big Business that he has just rescued the country from economic disaster. If the presidential election were held tomorrow I would not bet more than three empty beer cans on Gerald Ford's chances of beating Jimmy Carter in November.

. . . What? No, cancel that bet. The Screech on the telephone just informed me that Time Time has just released a poll -- on the day after the Texas primary -- saying Carter would beat Ford by 48% to 38% if the election were held now. Seven weeks ago, according to has just released a poll -- on the day after the Texas primary -- saying Carter would beat Ford by 48% to 38% if the election were held now. Seven weeks ago, according to Time Time via The Screech, the current figures were almost exactly reversed. . . I have never been much with math, but a quick shuffling of these figures seems to mean that Carter has picked up 20 points in seven weeks, and Ford has lost 20. via The Screech, the current figures were almost exactly reversed. . . I have never been much with math, but a quick shuffling of these figures seems to mean that Carter has picked up 20 points in seven weeks, and Ford has lost 20.

If this is true, then it is definitely time to call Billy the Geek and get something like ten cases of 66 proof Sloat Ale down on Carter, and forget those three empty beer cans.

In other words, the panic is on and the last survivors of the ill-fated Stop Carter Movement are out in the streets shedding their uniforms and stacking their weapons on street corners all over Washington. . . And now another phone call from CBS correspondent Ed Bradley -- who is covering Carter now after starting the '76 campaign with Birch Bayh -- saying Bayh will announce at a press conference in Washington tomorrow that he has decided to endorse Jimmy Carter.

Well. . . how about that, eh? Never let it be said that a wharf rat can get off a sinking ship any faster than an 87% ADA liberal.

But this is no time for cruel jokes about liberals and wharf rats. Neither species has ever been known for blind courage or stubborn devotion to principle, so let the rotters go wherever they feel even temporarily comfortable. . . Meanwhile, it is beginning to look like the time has come for the rest of us to get our business straight, because the only man who is going to keep Jimmy Carter out of the White House now is Jimmy Carter.

Which might happen, but it is a hard kind of thing to bet on, because there is no precedent in the annals of presidential politics for a situation like this: with more than half the primaries still ahead of him, Carter is now running virtually unopposed for the Democratic nomination, and -- barring some queer and unlikely development -- he is going to have to spend the next two months in a holding action until he can go to New York in July and pick up the nomination.

Just as soon as I can get some sleep and recover from this grim and useless ordeal I will call him and find out what he plans to do with all that time. . . And if I were in that nervous position I think I would call a press conference and announce that I was off to a secret think tank on the Zondo Peninsula to finalize my plans for curing all the ills of society; because a lot of strange things can happen to a long-shot front-runner in two months of forced idleness, and a lot of idle minds are going to have plenty of time for brooding on all the things that still worry them about living for at least the next four years with a president who prays 25 times a day and reads the Bible in Spanish every night. Even the people who plan to vote for Jimmy Carter if he can hang on between now and November are going to have more time than they need to nurse any lingering doubts they might have about him.

I will probably nurse a few doubts of my own between now and July, for that matter, but unless something happens to convince me that I should waste any more time than I already have brooding on the evil potential that lurks, invariably, in the mind of just about anybody anybody whose ego has become so dangerously swollen that he really wants to be president of the United States, I don't plan to spend much time worrying about the prospect of seeing Jimmy Carter in the White House, There is not a h.e.l.l of a lot I can do about it, for one thing; and for another, I have spent enough time with Carter in the past two years to feel I have a pretty good sense of his candidacy. I went down to Plains, Georgia, to spend a few days with him on his own turf and to hopefully find out who Jimmy Carter really was before the campaign shroud came down on him and he started talking like a candidate instead of a human being. Once a presidential aspirant gets out on the campaign trail and starts seeing visions of himself hunkered down behind that big desk in the Oval Office, the idea of sitting down in his own living room and talking openly with some foul-mouthed, argumentative journalist carrying a tape recorder in one hand and a bottle of Wild Turkey in the other is totally out of the question. whose ego has become so dangerously swollen that he really wants to be president of the United States, I don't plan to spend much time worrying about the prospect of seeing Jimmy Carter in the White House, There is not a h.e.l.l of a lot I can do about it, for one thing; and for another, I have spent enough time with Carter in the past two years to feel I have a pretty good sense of his candidacy. I went down to Plains, Georgia, to spend a few days with him on his own turf and to hopefully find out who Jimmy Carter really was before the campaign shroud came down on him and he started talking like a candidate instead of a human being. Once a presidential aspirant gets out on the campaign trail and starts seeing visions of himself hunkered down behind that big desk in the Oval Office, the idea of sitting down in his own living room and talking openly with some foul-mouthed, argumentative journalist carrying a tape recorder in one hand and a bottle of Wild Turkey in the other is totally out of the question.

But it was almost a year before the '76 New Hampshire primary when I talked to Carter at his home in Plains, and I came away from that weekend with six hours of taped conversation with him on subjects ranging all the way from the Allman Brothers, stock car racing and our strongly conflicting views on the use of undercover agents in law enforcement, to nuclear submarines, the war in Vietnam and the treachery of Richard Nixon. When I listened to the tapes again last week I noticed a lot of things that I had not paid much attention to at the time, and the most obvious of these was the extremely detailed precision of his answers to some of the questions that he is now accused of being either unable or unwilling to answer. There is no question in my mind, after hearing him talk on the tapes, that I was dealing with a candidate who had already done a ma.s.sive amount of research on things like tax reform, national defense and the structure of the American political system by the time he announced his decision to run for president.

Nor is there any question that there are a lot of things Jimmy Carter and I will never agree on. I had warned him, before we sat down with the tape recorder for the first time, that -- although I appreciated his hospitality and felt surprisingly relaxed and comfortable in his home -- I was also a journalist and that some of the questions I knew I was going to ask him might seem unfriendly or even downright hostile. Because of this, I said, I wanted him to be able to stop the tape recorder by means of a remote-pause b.u.t.ton if the talk got too heavy. But he said he would just as soon not have to bother turning the tape on and off; which surprised me at the time, but now that I listen to the tapes I realize that loose talk and bent humor are not among Jimmy Carter's vices.

They are definitely among mine, however, and since I had stayed up most of the night, drinking and talking in the living room with his sons Jack and Chip Carter and their wives -- and then by myself in the guest room over the garage -- I was still feeling weird around noon, when we started talking "seriously," and the tape of that first conversation is liberally sprinkled with my own twisted comments about "rotten fascist b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," "thieving c.o.c.ksuckers who peddle their a.s.ses all over Washington," and "these G.o.dd.a.m.n brainless fools who refuse to serve liquor in the Atlanta airport on Sunday."

It was nothing more than my normal way of talking, and Carter was already familiar with it, but there are strange and awkward pauses here and there on the tape where I can almost hear Carter gritting his teeth and wondering whether to laugh or get angry at things I wasn't even conscious of saying at the time, but which sound on the tape like random outbursts of hostility or pure madness from the throat of a paranoid psychotic. Most of the conversation is intensely rational, but every once in a while it slips over the line and all I can hear is the sound of my own voice yelling something like "Jesus Christ! What's that filthy smell?"

Both Carter and his wife have always been amazingly tolerant of my behavior, and on one or two occasions they have had to deal with me in a noticeably bent condition. I have always been careful not to commit any felonies right in front of them, but other than that I have never made much of an effort to adjust my behavior around Jimmy Carter or anyone else in his family -- including his 78-year-old mother, Miss Lillian, who is the only member of the Carter family I could comfortably endorse for the presidency, right now, with no reservations at all.

Whoops! Well. . . we will get to that in a moment. Right now I have other things to deal with and. . . No, what the h.e.l.l? Let's get to it now, because time is running out and so is that G.o.dd.a.m.n sloat; so now is the time to come to grips with my own "Carter Question."

It has taken me almost a year to reach this point, and I am still not sure how to cope with it. . . But I am getting there fast, thanks mainly to all the help I've been getting from my friends in the liberal community. I took more abuse from these petulant linthead b.a.s.t.a.r.ds during the New Hampshire and Ma.s.sachusetts primaries than I have ever taken from my friends on any political question since the first days of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, and that was nearly 12 years ago. . . I felt the same way about the first wild violent days of the FSM as I still feel about Jimmy Carter. In both cases my initial reaction was positive, and I have lived too long on my instincts to start questioning them now. At least not until I get a good reason, and so far n.o.body has been able to give me any good reason for junking my first instinctive reaction to Jimmy Carter, which was that I liked him. . . And if the editors of Time Time magazine and the friends of Hubert Humphrey consider that "bizarre," f.u.c.k them. I liked Jimmy Carter the first time I met him, and in the two years that have pa.s.sed since that Derby Day in Georgia I have come to know him a h.e.l.l of a lot better than I knew George McGovern at this point in the '72 campaign, and I still like Jimmy Carter. He is one of the most intelligent politicians I've ever met, and also one of the strangest. I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feeling for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . Or maybe "stupid" is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots. magazine and the friends of Hubert Humphrey consider that "bizarre," f.u.c.k them. I liked Jimmy Carter the first time I met him, and in the two years that have pa.s.sed since that Derby Day in Georgia I have come to know him a h.e.l.l of a lot better than I knew George McGovern at this point in the '72 campaign, and I still like Jimmy Carter. He is one of the most intelligent politicians I've ever met, and also one of the strangest. I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feeling for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . Or maybe "stupid" is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots.

And so much for all that gibberish. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are taking the whole thing away from me now, and anything else I might have wanted to say about Jimmy Carter will have to wait for another time and place. At the moment, failing any new evidence that would cause me to change my mind, I would rather see Jimmy Carter in the White House than anybody else we are likely to be given a chance to vote for. And that narrows the field right down, for now, to Ford, Reagan and Humphrey.

Carter is the only unknown quant.i.ty of the four, and that fact alone says all I need to know. Admittedly, a vote for Carter requires a certain leap of faith, but on the evidence I don't mind taking it. I think he is enough of an ego maniac to bring the same kind of intensity to the task of doing the job in a way that will allow him to stay as happy with his own mirror in the White House as he is now with his mirror in Plains.

There is also the fact that I have the Law Day speech to fall back on, which is a lot better reason to vote for him than anything I've seen or heard on the campaign trail. I have never thought the problem with Carter is that he is two-faced in the sense of a two-headed coin. . . But he is definitely a politician above all else right now, and that is the only way anybody anybody gets into the White House. If Carter has two faces, my own feeling is that they are mounted one behind the other, but both looking in the same direction, instead of both ways at once, as the friends of Hubert Humphrey keep saying. gets into the White House. If Carter has two faces, my own feeling is that they are mounted one behind the other, but both looking in the same direction, instead of both ways at once, as the friends of Hubert Humphrey keep saying.

It also occurs to me now and then that many of the people who feel so strongly about keeping Jimmy Carter out of the White House don't know him at all. And a lot of the people who accuse him of lying, dissembling, waffling and being "hazy" have never bothered to listen very carefully to what he says, or to try reading between the lines now when Carter comes out with some mawkish statement like the one he has used to end so many speeches: "I just want to see us once again with a government that is as honest and truthful and fair and idealistic and compa.s.sionate and filled with love as are the American people."

The first time I heard him say that up in New Hampshire I was stunned. It sounded like he had eaten some of the acid I've been saving up to offer him the first time he mentions anything to me about bringing Jesus into my life. . . But after I'd heard him say the same thing five or six more times, it began to sound like something I'd heard long before I'd ever heard Jimmy Carter's name. . .

It took me a while to dig it out of my memory, but when it finally surfaced I recognized the words of the late, great liberal, Adlai Stevenson, who once lashed it all together in one small and perfect capsule when he said ". . . in a democracy, people usually get the kind of government they deserve."

Rolling Stone, #214, June 3, 1976 #214, June 3, 1976 Address by Jimmy Carter on Law Day: University of Georgia, Athens, GA

MAY 4,1974 4,1974.

Senator Kennedy, distinguished fellow Georgians, friends of the Law School of Georgia and personal friends of mine: Sometimes even a distinguished jurist on the Supreme Court doesn't know all of the background on acceptances of invitations. As a matter of fact, my wife was influential in this particular acceptance, but my son was even more influential. This was really an acceptance to repair my ego. There was established in 1969 the L.Q.C. Lamar Society. I was involved in the establishment of it, and I think a lot of it. As Governor of Georgia I was invited this year, along with two distinguished Americans, to make a speech at the annual meeting which is going on now.

I found out when the program was prepared that Senator Kennedy was to speak last night. They charged $10 to attend the occasion. Senator William Brock from Tennessee is speaking to the Lamar Society at noon today. I found out that they charged $7.50 for this occasion. I spoke yesterday at noon, and I asked the Lamar Society officials, at the last moment, how much they were charging to come to the luncheon yesterday. They said they weren't charging anything. I said, "You mean they don't even have to pay for the lunch?" They said, "No, we're providing the lunch free."

So, when my son Jack came and said, "Daddy, I think more of you than you thought I did; I'm paying $7.00 for two tickets to the luncheon," I figured that a $3.50 lunch ticket would salvage part of my ego and that's really why I'm here today.

I'm not qualified to talk to you about law, because in addition to being a peanut farmer, I'm an engineer and a nuclear physicist, not a lawyer. I was planning, really, to talk to you more today about politics and the interrelationship of political affairs and law, than about what I'm actually going to speak on. But after Senator Kennedy's delightful and very fine response to political questions during his speech, and after his a.n.a.lysis of the Watergate problems, I stopped at a room on the way, while he had his press conference, and I changed my speech notes.

My own interest in the criminal justice system is very deep and heartfelt. Not having studied law, I've had to learn the hard way. I read a lot and listen a lot. One of the sources for my understanding about the proper application of criminal justice and the system of equity is from reading Reinhold Niebuhr, one of his books that Bill Gunter gave me quite a number of years ago. The other source of my understanding about what's right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. After listening to his records about 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" and "Like a Rolling Stone" and "The Times, They Are a Changing," I've learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society.

I grew up as a landowner's son. But, I don't think I ever realized the proper interrelationship between the landowner and those who worked on a farm until I heard Dylan's record, "I Ain't Gonna Work on Maggie's Farm No More." So I come here speaking to you today about your subject with a base for my information founded on Reinhold Niebuhr and Bob Dylan.

One of the things that Niebuhr says is that the sad duty of the political system is to establish justice in a sinful world. He goes on to say that there's no way to establish or maintain justice without law; that the laws are constantly changing to stabilize the social equilibrium of the forces and counterforces of a dynamic society, and that the law in its totality is an expression of the structure of government Well, as a farmer who has now been in office for three years, I have seen firsthand the inadequacy of my own comprehension of what government ought to do for its people. I've had a constant learning process, sometimes from lawyers, sometimes from practical experience, sometimes from failures and mistakes that have been pointed out to me after they were made.

I had lunch this week with the members of the Judicial Selection Committee, and they were talking about a consent search warrant. I said I didn't know what a consent search warrant was. They said, "Well, that's when two policemen go to a house. One of them goes to the front door and knocks on it, and the other one runs around to the back door and yells 'come in.' " I have to admit that as Governor, quite often I search for ways to bring about my own hopes; not quite so stringently testing the law as that, but with a similar motivation.

I would like to talk to you for a few moments about some of the practical aspects of being a governor who is still deeply concerned about the inadequacies of a system of which it is obvious that you're so patently proud.

I have refrained completely from making any judicial appointments on the basis of political support or other factors, and have chosen, in every instance, Superior Court judges, quite often State judges, Appellate Court judges, on the basis of merit a.n.a.lysis by a highly competent, open, qualified group of distinguished Georgians. I'm proud of this.

We've now established in the Georgia Const.i.tution a qualifications commission, which for the first time can hear complaints from average citizens about the performance in office of judges and can investigate those complaints and with the status and the force of the Georgia Const.i.tution behind them can remove a judge from office or take other corrective steps.

We've now pa.s.sed a Const.i.tutional amendment, which is waiting for the citizenry to approve, that establishes a uniform Criminal Justice Court System in this state so that the affairs of the judiciary can be more orderly structured, so that work loads can be balanced and so that over a period of time there might be an additional factor of equity, which quite often does not exist now because of the wide disparity among the different courts of Georgia.

We pa.s.sed this year a judge sentencing bill for noncapital cases with a review procedure. I've had presented to me, by members of the Pardons and Paroles Board, an a.n.a.lysis of some of the sentences given to people by the Superior Court judges of this state, which grieved me deeply and shocked me as a layman. I believe that over a period of time, the fact that a group of other judges can review and comment on the sentences meted out in the different portions of Georgia will bring some more equity to the system.