When President Jimmy Carter Came to Torrance

'Town Meeting'
Is Carter's Centerpiece

By Edward
Walsh

October 2, 1980

Jimmy Carter
was never a high school basketball star. He is not tall, and even as a boy his
taste in running was for the space and solitude of the distance events, not for
jostling with nine other kids up and down a 74-foot strip of hardwood floor.

But now that he
is a man and the president, Carter has become at home in the high school
gymnasiums of America. Already in the fall campaign he has visited the gyms at
Truman High School in Independence, Mo., Moody High School in Corpus Christi.,
Tex., and North High School in Torrance, Calif.

And today,
which happened to be his 56th birthday. He was in the gym at Northern Community
High School here, home of the Vikings, where he was as comfortable and at ease
as any member of the girl's basketball team, winners of 56 straight, state
champions the last two years.

The president
was holding another of his "town meetings" and, as usual, it was an
event.

The walls of
the building were plastered with signs welcoming him, praising him, wishing him
happy birthday. At one end of the gym, the school band sat cramped in a section
of retractable wooden bleachers, poised to play "Hail to the Chief."
There would be no basketball game here this afternoon, for the gym floor was
covered with folding chairs where the respectful citizens of Flint would sit
and listen to the president.

This was
Carter's 22nd "town meeting" as president, and the fourth he has held
during the one month of the general election campaign against Republican Ronald
Reagan. The president told the cheering crowd that it was no accident he
decided to come today to Flint, where he ended his 1976 campaign.

It is also no
accident that the "town meeting" — a format in which the president
makes opening and closing statements and in between answers about a dozen
questions from randomly selected citizens — has become the centerplace, the
main event, of the Carter campaign on the road.

The president
is running as tightly a controlled campaign, and is at least as shielded from
questions from the traveling press, as is Reagan. But it is part of Carter
strategy to portray Reagan as a man out of his intellectual depth when it comes
to national issues and to accuse the GOP nominee, as Carter did in a speech
Tuesday night, of being "muzzled" by a staff that does his thinking
for him.

The "town
meeting" is the device the White House has hit up to contrast the
"open" president with his "muzzled" opponent. Carter has
used the device since the beginning of his presidency. He is more comfortable
with it than with news conferences, and he is extremely skillful in exploiting
the format.

Like other
presidents before him, Carter has also said he gets better questions from
ordinary citizens at these sessions than he does from Washington reporters.
That, occasionally, is the case, but it is also true the questions posed at a
"town meeting" can be as silly and shallow as any asked during a White
House news conference.

Today's
hour-long "town meeting" at Northern Community High was another
virtuoso performance.

The first
questioner, who began her inquiry about Cuban refugees in Spanish, gave the
president a chance to show off his knowledge of Spanish, which won applause.

And elderly
woman said she was concerned about the future of senior citizens, to which the
president replied, "A lot of the future life for senior citizens will
depend on the decisions that will be made in the ballot boxes of voting places
on Nov. 4." He then launched into a discourse on his devotion to the
Social Security System and other issues of particular concern to the elderly.

A man
complained that Flint had not received due recognition as an automobile
manufacturing center. Carter quickly agreed, expressed sympathy for the city's
economic woes, and concluded by saying: " i was invited to meet here to
have a man-to-man debate with Gov. Reagan. I'm here — and anytime he's willing
to meet me back here on a two-man debate proposition, I'll make my sixth visit
to Flint, Mich."

Almost nothing
fazes the president at a "town meeting" not even the two questions
posed today about the economy of Flint, where last summer the unemployment rate
hit almost 26 percent and where more than 22,000 people are still out of work,
according to the Detroit Free Press.

Nor was Carter
rattled by the truck driver who challenged administration policy on a complex
issue involving umemployment benefits for workers in industries, such as
trucking, that are indirectly affected by foreign imports. There was no
suggestion of a change in policy from the president. Instead, he asked the man
for his name and address so he could "go back and talk to the secretary of
labor and give you a call."

The crowd loved
it. They loved it when Marlene Laro, 9, asked Carter to explain "the
difference between the Republicans and you so I can tell my parents how to
vote." And they loved it when Carter, after his long answer to Marlene
that he was more than happy to provide, shed his suit coat, a regular part of
the theater at these events.

At the end, the
crowd in the gym stood and sang "happy Birthday" to the president.
With a broad grin, Carter thanked them and then he was gone. He is off Thursday
to Dayton, Ohio, for another "town meeting."