Jimmy Carter Library and Museum
Carter's team
Running for president in the bicentennial year of 1976, Jimmy Carter
-- peanut farmer, born-again Christian, and one-term governor -- played
the role of Washington outsider to perfection. But his approach was
more than a campaign strategy. The new president intended to govern the
same way, and to carry that out he brought a whole team of outsiders to
the White House, collectively nicknamed the "Georgia Mafia."
"You dance with the ones that bring you,"
comments journalist John A. Farrell on Carter's approach to staffing.
"They were a very close-knit band of brothers. They did not have a lot
in common with the national political party, they did not have a lot in
common with the Congress. And they were pretty cocky guys as well."
Georgians With Connections
Jimmy Carter Library
Carter kept an inner circle of trusted advisors
Most
of the key positions in the executive branch were staffed by Georgians
who had some connection to Carter: budget director Bert Lance;
communications director Gerald Rafshoon; domestic policy advisor Stuart
Eizenstat; Attorney General Griffin Bell; appointments secretary Phil
Wise; Congressional liaison Frank Moore; White House counsel Robert
Lipshutz. The closer one came to Carter's inner circle, the longer and
deeper the connection. At the core were Carter's press secretary, Jody
Powell, and
de facto chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan.
Loyalty -- and Inexperience
In a profile of Jordan and Powell for Rolling Stone
magazine, Joe Klein wrote, "They had been plucked by Carter from towns
in the Georgia backwoods no more than forty miles from Plains, and
programmed for total loyalty to Jimmy. He had taken up all their adult
lives. There were no other allegiances possible... or even fathomable."
Besides loyalty, the young pair brought to their jobs intelligence,
irreverent humor, hard work -- and absolutely no experience in national
government.
Jody Powell
Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University
Jody Powell
Jody
Powell had grown up in rural Vienna, Georgia, the son of a farmer and a
high school teacher. "He was the All-American boy: the smartest,
cleverest, best-looking, most popular kid in school," wrote Klein. Like
many other promising southern boys, his future boss included, Powell
earned an appointment to one of the elite military academies. He was on
his way to becoming an Air Force pilot when he was expelled in his final
year for cheating on a history exam. "After getting kicked out for
cheating," Powell later joked, "politics seemed like the next best
thing."
Powell finished his degree at Georgia State
in Atlanta, tried his hand at insurance, then ended up as a graduate
student in political science at Emory University. In 1969, he sent a
paper on southern populism to Jimmy Carter,
then in the midst of a four-year campaign for governor. He soon found
himself sharing hotel rooms and countless hours on the road with Carter
as his driver and political handyman, and a strong bond formed between
the two men. When Carter won the governorship Powell became his press
secretary, a role he would play for the next ten years. During the 1976 campaign and in the White House, Powell earned a reputation with reporters for his sharp sense of humor and fierce loyalty to Carter.
Hamilton Jordan
Compared to Powell, Hamilton Jordan was a
city boy, born and raised in the town of Albany, Georgia. Schoolmates
remembered him more for his affable personality than for his performance
in the classroom or on the athletic field. He grew up in a political
family -- his classmates voted him most likely to become governor some
day -- and remained proud of his southern heritage, even when the civil
rights movement came to Albany in 1961 in the person of Martin Luther King Jr. After graduating from the University of Georgia, he spent six months in Vietnam
before being sent home with black water fever; his tour of duty was
long enough for him to conclude "there was no escaping the fact that the
war was wrong." Back home in Albany in 1966, hating his job at a bank,
Jordan started volunteering for gubernatorial hopeful Jimmy Carter.
Though Carter lost, he had found a natural political talent in the
twenty-four year old. Four years later, with Jordan managing the
campaign, the outcome was different.
Jimmy Carter Library
Hamilton Jordan
"After
Jimmy became governor and Hamilton was his executive secretary,
Hamilton was like the dog who chased the car and caught it. He didn't
know what to do," commented one Atlanta reporter. Jordan found his
stride, though, when Governor Carter set his sights on the White House.
Beginning with a remarkably astute 72-page memo in November 1972, he was
the primary architect of one of the most brilliant campaigns in
American political history.
Once in the White House, Jordan again struggled to find a balance between policy and politics. Time
magazine captured the confusion over his role when it observed, "He is
everywhere because of his access to the president. He is nowhere because
he has no line of responsibility and can put himself in or take himself
out as he -- and the president -- want." Admittedly a poor
administrator, and with Carter intent on running his own White House,
Jordan did not officially become chief of staff until a major
reorganization in the summer of 1979, after the Carter administration
was already in big trouble.
"Each is a funnel to the president: Jody from
the outside, the media; Hamilton from the inside, the staff," wrote
Klein, neatly summing up their White House roles.
Down-Home Style
Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University
Carter relaxes with his advisors
Powell and Jordan were also, as
Time
magazine noted, "the living image of [the administration's] down-home
style." This laid-back aura had been an asset during the campaign,
making the straight-laced, born-again Carter more appealing to young
liberals. "They all had shaggy hair, they were known for partying late
at night," remembers historian Douglas Brinkley. "There was a kind of
youth culture around the stern father figure of Jimmy Carter, which
slowly started winning over advocates to his campaign." But this style
didn't play as well in a city governed by strict, though unwritten
rules. "They clashed with the Washington social scene, [the] more
sophisticated Georgetown dinner party crowd that wanted to get their
hooks into the new president," says Brinkley. "And here you had these
Georgians who were quite happy going around in blue jeans and going to
Willie Nelson concerts. They did not fit into the Georgetown scene at
all."
Conflicts With Congress
This refusal to play by the rules of
Washington also contributed to the Carter administration's difficult
relationship with Congress. Jordan and Frank Moore, in particular,
feuded with leading Democrats like House Speaker Tip O’Neill from
the start. Unreturned phone calls, insults (both real and imagined),
and an unwillingness to trade political favors soured many on Capitol
Hill and tangibly affected the president's ability to push through his
ambitious agenda.
"There was an innocence, and an arrogance,
about the idea that you could run the country with your Atlanta
statehouse team -- you just couldn't," concludes historian Roger
Wilkins. "Every president brings his people, but most presidents bring
people who are seasoned people who really understand Washington and know
how to move around the city. That just wasn't true of Jimmy Carter. You
hate to say it, but it was often, it seemed, very amateurish."
