Carter's three bills passed

A few years ago, at this time of the year, I had to go to Stockholm and while I've learned not to trust anybody's second impressions of a new country, there is always a first impression that is true. The trick is to know which first impressions are true and which are simply preconceptions that you brought over with you.

In the brief time I was in Sweden, once in October and again in December, I picked up one impression about the workings of Sweden's political system. It was that no other democracy that I was acquainted with performed the job of law-making in such a calm, orderly, almost humdrum way. Now this was at a time when Sweden had voted socialist for, I don't know, 20, 30 years without a break. But nobody I talked to seemed afraid that such an extended stretch of power would strangle the healthy tussle of party politics and establish one large, immoveable bureaucracy. Certainly if one party ever held office in Britain or America for thirty years, I think the opposition would either lie down and die or, after ages of frustration, get up and howl. 

But there seemed in those days in Sweden no sign of death or rebellion. The government droned on, the opposition was comatose and the people seemed resigned. A little later on, of course, it all changed. At least, the government changed but not, I believe, the tempo of government or the humdrum acceptance of whatever the party in power had in mind. 

I hadn't thought about Sweden in all those years except to keep on marvelling about its high cost of living. In a recent Common Market survey, Stockholm was again at the top, followed closely this time by London, as the most expensive city in Europe. But during this past week I thought back to that impression of Sweden when we experienced here, in Washington, a sudden stampede of law making and nick-of-time votes after all-night sessions and cots being dragged into the Senate to give the senators a life-saving catnap or two in the intervals of rushing through bills, laws, that President Carter has been begging the Congress to pass for the better part of two years. 

If a Swede had been looking in on Congress, he could well have had the comment attributed to... was it Lord Melbourne, when he sat in a box and watched for the first time the closing scene of 'Othello'. As the noble Moor strangled Desdemona and a gasp of horror whistled through the audience, Lord Melbourne turned to his neighbour and sighed, 'How different from the private life of our own dear Queen'. Well, Americans, unlike the Swedes, seem not only to love pressure and tension, they almost demand it as a necessary preliminary to ending a political battle. Issues must become burning issues before they are frozen or cooled by a sudden midnight vote. 

What made both the Senate and the House rouse themselves this time from months of debate and logjamming was a deadline set long ago for the final adjournment of the 95th Congress. This is a congressional election year. The election is only three weeks away and a third of the Senate and all the House is up for re-election. 

Now they've known this for months, and for months the president has been threatening something close to a paralysis of government if the Congress didn’t act on his tax-cutting bill, on a full employment act, and on his yearned-for energy bill. Of course, no president gets the bill he first sends to Congress. It's always trimmed and pared down and the question for him is just how much trimming and paring he can accept without threatening a veto and daring them to come back and try again next year. 

A presidential veto is very impressive when an election is far in the future but if he'd vetoed these three urgent bills three weeks before the election, he'd have been handing the Republicans on a platter the argument that he was an ineffective president unable, even with sizeable majorities in both Houses, to have his way. 

So I imagine that nobody was more excited than the family in the White House when the word came from the Democratic leader in the House, who is also the Speaker, that the House would start debate on the energy bill at 2.30 in the morning and would probably pass it, as it did, by the dawn's early light. The Senate had passed it just after midnight and staggered off to a virtuous bed after a gentleman from South Dakota called off a 14-hour filibuster against the proposal to let the price of natural gas float free uncontrolled in the 1980s.

On Sunday morning, the Senate passed the tax-cutting bill – eighteen and a half billon dollars cut, but much less than the president wanted – by nine o'clock. It went at once to the House and, by late afternoon, it was law. 

And so, after 18 months of drafting and redrafting, of presidential appeals and presidential threats and thousands of hours of committee work and wrangling and debate, in 36 hours the Congress passes some acceptable version of what President Carter had said, all along, were the three measures by which his administration would choose to stand or fall. 'Fall' is perhaps the wrong word since short of assassination, impeachment or hopeless physical disability, once the president is elected, his administration will stand, however shakily, for at least four years. 

So now, the capital city, which a week ago was cluttered with caucuses, roaring with rhetoric, seething with congressmen and lobbyists, is suddenly a quiet, majestic place leaving the residents and the tourists to stroll through the bright foliage of the fall and nary a congressman in sight. The only lawmakers about are those 66 members of the Senate who are not up for re-election and can lean back on their oars or their bourbon and branch water. 

The congressmen have fled to the grass roots, to pound the highways and byways of their home districts, bulge their veins in their necks in the effort to prove either that Jimmy Carter is just what he'd always said he was – a Daniel come to Judgement – or is the president so timorous, so lacklustre, so lackadaisical, that to return any more Democrats to Washington would surely condemn the republic to death and damnation. 

And yet, in spite of the orgy of emotion that is going to be pumped up in the next week or two, if you get some of the professionals aside of either party, you will hear that they do not expect more than about 35 per cent of the eligible voters to go to the polls. 

For if there's one statistic that very few politicians care to challenge, it's the sad one that about two-thirds of all American voters are disillusioned with both of the big, political parties and are expressing their distrust in the sulky fashion of children who can't play the game their way. Thirty-five per cent of voters who care are an alarming figure and what it portends for the future, I don't care to guess. 

For the present, it strongly suggests that the normal reaction against an administration after its first two years is not going to work. In other words, the Republicans need an avalanche of angry voters and there doesn't seem to be enough anger around. So the prospect now is for an even bigger majority of Democrats in both Houses which will prove to the White House that Jimmy Carter is on his way to a second term and, to the Democrats, that they are, after all, the party of the people. 

If it happens, I'm afraid what it will really mean is that the Democrats are a little more popular with the active voters than the Republicans are. What the other two-thirds of the people are thinking, or hoping for, is something too sombre or at least too hidden for us to know about. 

But, talking about the American love of tension, of postponing a showdown until the eleventh hour when everything has to be settled in an air of stimulating crisis. The same impulse implies to the settling of strikes, not to mention the settling of the baseball championship. The strike of the two morning New York newspapers, the New York Times and the New York Daily News, began with alarms and threats – that it would happen, that it wouldn't happen – then when it did, the two sides sat pat. 

Then they got together with a federal mediator, then they walked out on each other and, week after week, the managers and the press men seemed to delight in announcing that they were the polls apart. They broke off negotiations time and again. Then they got together in a leisurely way. 

No settlement was in sight until they brought in a famous independent arbitrator, Mr Ted Kheel, who always comes in late, always tells both sides that the best either can get is half a loaf, goes on repeating this simple truth that in any battle between labour and management, the eventual settlement is bound to be a compromise. It takes days, sometimes weeks, for this to sink in. 

And then one fine day when both sides are close to exhaustion, they get serious. A serious negotiating session in an American strike may be defined as one called for 6 p.m. with the promise that coffee and sandwiches will be available at midnight and again at 6 a.m. When this happens two nights in a row, when the guarantee can be given to both sides, that they will get no more than a couple of hours' sleep in 48 hours, then you may be sure a settlement is imminent. 

In the World Series, the baseball championship, I won't reveal the result since everyone around the world, including the Japanese, who has the least interest, is already in ecstasy or deep depression. It seemed to me a typical American note was struck when the Dodgers appeared for the first game, all wearing on the left upper arm of their shirts, a number – the number 19 – on a black disc. It was the number of a beloved Dodger who'd just died. They dedicated the series to him. And when one of their heroes made the first home run, he ran to home plate with his finger pointed to heaven. 

Now this might appear sentimental to the casual onlooker but when the Dodger captain was interviewed about the dead man and asked to explain why his nickname was 'the Devil', he ruminated for a moment and said, 'The Devil, it was the right name for him because he was smooth and sly and shifty and one hell of a man.'

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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