Word: first
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...drive out from the Albany, Ga., airport in a rented car, 40 miles north toward Plains, the first clear fact is that the country hasn't changed-not the physical country, not hereabouts. The meticulously tended pecan groves stand on in the clean light; the well-grazed cows are still marching barnward in neatly spaced lines as if in rehearsal for their next state fair. The two crossroad towns, Leesburg and Smithville, show a little new paint on the old stores. But otherwise the stretch looks much as it must have all Jimmy Carter's life-no billboards...
That's the first surprise, how the subject of Jimmy has vanished like dew. It is literally true that in four days of engaging random citizens and family relations in casual conversation, I never heard the President mentioned until I brought him up. The silence didn't seem a result of gloom, and certainly not of shame or humiliation. Billy's breakfast hangout, the Best Western Inn of Americus, did list crow on the menu of Nov. 5; but that's only consistent with the air of amused and stoic relief that greeted all my inquiries...
...flowed into the drab transition headquarters. FBI agents conducted background checks. There was feverish speculation in the corridors of the bureaucracy, as well as in the daily accounts of newspapers and TV news broadcasts. But when the moment came for Ronald Reagan to announce his first eight selections for Cabinet-level jobs, it was an understated affair. The President-elect, true to his low-key posture since Election Day, stayed holed up in Blair House, the capital's elegant residence for VIP guests. It was left to transition Press Spokesman James Brady to introduce the nominees...
...willingness to consider innovative approaches may be sorely needed. In their memo to Reagan, Stockman and Kemp raised the threat of "an economic Dunkirk during the first 24 months of the Reagan Administration." The Congressmen foresaw a multisided crisis: a new recession and rising unemployment brought on by skyrocketing interest rates; "hemorrhaging" federal deficits that would 'fan an already raging inflation; a "credit crunch" caused by excessive Government borrowing to cover the deficits, leaving little loanable money for businessmen and consumers. They also prophesied that unless the Iran-Iraq war ends speedily, world oil inventories will disappear by February...
That longstanding mutual admiration is a prime reason why the President-elect last week named Caspar Willard Weinberger, 63, to be Secretary of Defense. To some officials in Washington, "Cap the Knife" seemed an odd choice. The expenditure-cutting ax he wielded so zestfully first for Reagan in California and then for Nixon in Washington may gather some dust at the Pentagon, where Reagan plans a huge military buildup. Moreover, Weinberger's firsthand knowledge of weapons and military strategy apparently is confined to whatever he picked up poring over Defense Department budgets eight to ten years ago; his current...