The Presidency: The Road to Washington

In mid-October Jimmy Carter’s once commanding lead had been eroding daily, and the campaign itself was mired in loose talk of lust, and dirty jokes. It was in that atmosphere that I undertook a journey with R. W. Apple, Jr., of the New York Times.to try to get a sense of Carter and his associates, and of what animated their audacious march on Washington. What follows should be read in the context of those October weeks when neither the candidate and his entourage nor the traveling reporters understood exactly what was happening to this campaign or why.