THE CHARGE THAT JIMMY CARTER is "fuzzy on the issues" was first levelled by Mo Udall during last spring's Democratic primaries. Udall, who had carefully staked out traditional liberal positions on such issues as busing, unemployment, national defense and foreign policy, had grown increasingly frustrated as Carter won audiences--and primaries--with platitudes denouncing corruption in Washington and extolling the abiding goodness, kindness, compassion, honesty, decency, love and common sense of the American people.

In a striking confirmation of the old adage, Udall was soon joined in his pro-issues crusade by strange bedfellow Scoop Jackson. In fact, virtually the entire Democratic establishment united on the "issues issue" condemning Carter either as an opportunistic crowd-pleaser who possessed no convictions regarding the particular issues raised by his competitors, or as a cunning political operator who cynically and deliberately obscured his stands so as not to alienate potential supporters.

Although the Democratic regulars' charges were heavily tainted by the stain of sour grapes, their essential point was at least superficially correct. Carter and his aides freely admitted having deliberately downplayed the narrow, particular issues upon which the other Democratic candidates had focused their campaigns in favor of the more general, and in the Carter camp's view, overarching issue of governmental integrity and accountability, as personified by the President of the United States. Furthermore, national polls demonstrated profound differences of opinion among Carter supporters with regard not only to their own positions on such controversial issues as busing, but also in their perception of Carter's stands on these issues.

Although seriously weakened by the fuzziness charge, his "ethnic purity" gaffe, and, to some extent, by his image as the Democratic front-runner, Carter still managed to win the nomination without establishing--or at least emphasizing--definitive stands on particular issues. One notable exception. Carter's belated endorsement of the Humphrey-Hawkins bill illustrates a major weakness of the so-called "issues-oriented" campaigns with which the Carter candidacy has so frequently been contrasted.

The furor that surrounded Carter's initial refusal to endorse the Humphrey-Hawkins bill was a classic case of the confusion of issues with programs designed to address them--a syndrome to which any "issues-oriented" campaign is susceptible. The problem begins with candidates' reduction of the issue-program relationship to the level of a simple "if...then..." statement: if you favor a reduction in unemployment, then you should support Humphrey-Hawkins. Under the rules of logic, a statement's contrapositive must also hold true, and if Jimmy Carter did not endorse Humphrey-Hawkins, then, so the argument runs, he must not truly be committed to reducing unemployment.

Viewed in retrospect, the weakness of an if-then argument directly linking social, economic, and political problems with specific programs designed to alleviate them is glaringly apparent. The if-then framework oversimplifies the issue: it sets up a false dichotomy and thereby excludes alternative programs from consideration. Yet in the heat of political campaigns such specious reasoning is surprisingly effective; millions of Americans who had never heard of, much less read, the Humphrey-Hawkins bill were persuaded to accept it as a litmus test of a candidate's commitment to full employment.

Once the unemployment issue was framed in this way, Carter had little choice but to endorse Humphrey-Hawkins, as he eventually did. Although he acquiesced to its inclusion in the Democratic platform, Carter evidently is still rather unenthusiastic about the bill; as President Ford pointed out during the first debate, Carter passed up the opportunity to tar Ford with the same "pro-unemployment" brush that had been used against him only a few months before. Merely addressing an issue does not necessarily serve to educate the voter or provide him with the information required to make a rational decision.

Another weakness of "issues-oriented" campaigns is that they tend to place the challenger of the status-quo at a disadvantage relative to the defender--usually, the incumbent. The challenger invariably is confronted with the question "So how are you going to change things if you're elected?" To convince the voters that he really will produce the specific changes he has been calling for, the challenger must present the public with specific proposals to attain his ends. Recent political history suggests that most such proposals, hastily devised and based on inadequate information, do challenging candidates more harm than good: George McGovern's opponents repeatedly cited his $1000-per-person guaranteed income plan as evidence that he was a wild-eyed, fuzzy-headed radical; Ronald Reagan's proposal that the states assume responsibility for social welfare programs presently operated by the federal government was received comparably.

In fact, in the two most recent elections in which the challenger has won, the overriding factor seems to have been the candidates' personalities rather than any one issue. In 1960, John F. Kennedy's enumerated positions differed only slightly from Richard Nixon's. However, Kennedy's public image was that of a young, dynamic, progressive leader while Nixon's campaign persona more closely resembled that of an elder statesman. Similarly, in 1968 the "New Nixon" beat Hubert Humphrey, whose tenure as Lyndon Johnson's vice-president had so eroded his liberal credentials that many of his former supporters rejected him as a hypocrite or a fool.

IT'S PARADOXICAL, THEN, that in the two months since he secured the Democratic nomination, Jimmy Carter has shifted his tactics, vigorously attacking Ford's stands on defense, unemployment, agriculture and foreign policy; Ford, on the other hand, has--with the exception of the televised debates--striven to appear somewhat aloof and presidential. It is now Ford who is conducting an image--rather than issues--oriented campaign.

The American political system encourages candidates to obscure their stands on controversial issues so as not to alienate voters. Coalition politics is the name of the game, and so far, both Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter have--each in his own turn--been playing for all they are worth.

Still, personality politics is not an adequate substitute for substantive discussion. Superficial or cleverly contrived impressions are often deceptive, while rigorous debate can reveal both the men and the issues.