American politics

Mr Ford fumbles

Leslie Finer

Washington The American political writer Richard Reeves, an expert White House watcher, has written a new book with a whimsical title. It is called A Ford, Not a Lincoln, Not that even the best friends of Gerald R. Ford, by grace of Watergate the thirty-eighth President of the United States, would claim for him the virtues of a Lincoln. But, joking apart, the question now being seriously discussed here is not Merely whether he will achieve a second term of office, but whether he will even be the kePublican candidate when America chooses Lt s next President in November 1976. His main opponent for the nomination is, of course, the former B-film star and former Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, who has just recently declared his challenge at a Washington press conference followed by a crowd-pleasing tour of five states across the country where the first of the long series of Primary elections will be held. Reagan's bid to replace Ford as the official Republican nominee has been much publicised, sometimes in a manner which suggests that a challenge to the nomination of an incumbent President is rare in American history. It is not. Eugene McCarthy oPPosed President Johnson in 1968. Estes Refauver opposed President Truman in 1952. And, back in 1912, the Republican Party was Split when Theodore Roosevelt tried to block his former friend President Taft. It is true, however, that if Reagan or anyone else were to succeed in grabbing the Republiccan nomination from Ford, it would be the first time since 1884, when it happened to a President called Chester A. Arthur, that the Party will have denied a President the chance to stand for a second term. That possibility, unthinkable as it still is to the public at large, is now regarded as a fifty-fifty prospect by marTY Political analysts in Washington. By some, including Richard Reeves, it is considered a near-certainty. Nor is that the ivory-tower Conclusion of a professional Washingtonian isolated from the public pulse. On his return from a sweep across the country (to publicise b f",is book) Reeves says: "I came back thinking that the popularity, stature and prospects of Gerald Ford are figments of the imagination of George Gallup and the Washington press corps."

Even if this assessment is overstated, we still need to explain how the popular image of the _President who replaced the disgraced Nixon little more than a year ago has clouded so rapidly. The reasons are many and various. _ The initial reaction to the succession of Mr ,Ford was bound to be favourable. After the norrors of Watergate and the revelations of deceit and crime, the very fact that Ford was ,obscure, colourless and to all appearances honest and "open" was balm to the bruised b_°cly politic of America. But no President can ,e.xPect to keep his place in the ratings simply on !Ile strength of the claim that he is someone Something whom you would buy a second-hand car. 'something more positive is needed. Among those Americans who, irrespective of Party sympathies, were genuinely shocked by i\ 13(°n's Perfidies, distrust of Ford was quickly

created by that inexplicably rapid pardon. The impression that Ford was, after all, 'One of them' — the White House Mafia — is still strong in many minds.

Nor is everyone satisfied that Ford has done much to change the style of government which, under previous Presidents, has created the notorious 'credibility gap'. In his inaugural address fifteen months ago, Ford made a big impression by declaring: "Truth is the glue that holds government together," and he went on to promise to "follow my instincts of openness and candour with full confidence that honesty is the best policy". Yet commentators in recent months have repeatedly pinpointed instances when White House spokesman Ron Nessen has fallen back on the old style of prevarication and where the President himself has made statements which later proved to be "inoperative-. This has happened particularly over Ford's obstinate insistence, later modified, that there , would be no federal aid for bankrupt New York, over his dubious claim to have made the "biggest tax cut in American history". By juggling with finance statistics, and over his equally challengeable claim to have reduced the staff of "muscle-bound" federal civil service. Nor, after the recent "Sunday night massacre" when Ford made those sweeping cabinet changes (of which more later), did everyone conveniently forget his statement last August, after his first year in office, that he had completed his team and that there would be no cabinet changes before the 1976 election.

In addition to these failings, Ford has shown no signs of growing into the Presidency for which he was so ill-prepared. No amount of international summitry such as the recent excursion to Rambouillet or the projected one to Peking can disguise Ford's lack of stature on the world stage or his utter reliance on the prestige and skills of Henry Kissinger. If Kissinger were to decide (and many think he may) to resign within the next few months, the blow (even if ex-ambassador Richardson is lined up for the succession) could well be fatal to Ford's chances.

On public occasions, it is generally conceded, Ford is unimpressive and fumbling, not to say accident-prone. Stumbling down airplane steps or over wheelchairs is one thing (and even, for some, quite endearing). But it is an unforgivable lapse of concentration rather than a mere slip of the tongue when an American President at a state banquet toasts the health of the people of Israel when he should say the people of Egypt. The same lack of tact (or, more accurately, concern) was displayed last year on a much less reported occasion when, at an official banquet in Madrid, President Ford told his neighbour during idle dinner-time chat that he often failed to distinguish between .all the foreign leaders he was obliged to meet — and could quite easily confuse, for example, the Greek and the Turkish prime ministers. It could have been an appealing confession of human weakness were it not for the fact that (as Ford apparently did not know) the Spanish princess he was addressing was none other than the Greek princess Sophia (now Queen of Spain). All these doubts about the qualities and

'character of President Ford have hovered in the background almost since he took office. It was only after his recent cabinet purge that they have been focused sharply into a question demanding an answer: Is Ford competent enough to run the country? The question is one of Ford's own making, for the cabinet shake-up to give him a team of his "own guys" was clearly the prelude to the year-long electoral campaign and Ford's public declaration of his determination to be President again. For Ford's friends (and one of his problems is that he does not have many in the Republican Party's higher echelons) it must be disturbing to feel that, on the issue of mere competency to run the country, the President is in danger of suffering the rejection which others even more fancied (including Barry Goldwater and George McGovern) have experienced.

And Ford has other even deadlier difficulties to surmount. In normal circumstances, his deficiences, however serious, would be unlikely to cancel out the enormous advantages in any election of an incumbent President: the habit of according a second term almost as a matter of course, and reverence for the office of the Presidency as such. Ford cannot hope to claim these advantages in full. In the first place, as a non-elected President, in power by virtue of the 25th Amendment and not by virtue of popular support, he cannot rely on a second term "as of right". And secondly, by reason of the very circumstances which landed him in the White House, the institution of the Presidency has never been in such low popular esteem. Nor is this, in spite of the strong influences of Watergate, exclusively an American phenomenon. Here, as in most Western democracies, popular concern tends increasingly to be for the solution of "practical" problems — unemployment, inflation, crime and the like problems for which the declaration of general principles, loyalty to particular parties and the selection of one leader rather than another are seen to be more and more irrelevant.

In this climate of public opinion, it would be foolish for President Ford, no matter how much initial encouragement he appears to be receiving from the Republican Party machine, te count on the "automatic" advantages of office. It is for that reason also that more weight than it might otherwise merit must be attached to the frankly "populist" nomination bid of Reagan — a candidate who, in spite of his reputation for right-wing extremism (which many think is denied by his record as Governor), and in spite of the large gaps he reveals in his grasp of domestic and international affairs, is credited even by his enemies with magnetic public appeal.

It is generally conceded that Reagan has made a promising start. The precise scenario of his bid for the nomination cannot yet be written. But the tactics seem to call for swift blows in the early primaries from which the machinery of the party will be unable to save Ford when the later primaries are held in the bigger states. In the first of the primaries in New Hampshire on February 24, Reagan is said to hope for about 40 per cent support against Ford, with a stronger showing still in Florida on March 9 and an outright win in North Carolina (March 23). The coup de grace, according to this strategy, would be delivered on his home ground in the California primary — if, by then, Ford is still in the race.

If there are uncertainties on the Republican side, the fog on the Democratic side of the road is positively impenetrable. With at least ten possible candidates in the field (though not yet all of them officially), Hubert Humphrey improbably heads the queue — a surprised and somewhat reluctant prospect. Arid, in spite of the innumerable and presumably sincere disclaimers, there are many who would still place substantial bets at even money on the chances of Edward Kennedy being the next President. And he would surely win if, realising that to refuse a call might damn his hopes fcirever, Kennedy yielded to pressure and overcame his reluctance to stand.

Whoever proves to be the choice of the Democrats, he will hope for Reagan's success in his bid tro oust Ford — on the assumption, logical though not necessarily true in present . conditions, that Reagan would prevent the seepage of many Southern Democratic votes to Governor Wallace of Alabama.

Fascinating as these speculations may be for the professionals in Washington, there are those who hold that the prevailing public mood in America is one of apathy and indifference — not about issues, but about the choice of solutions by the electoral process. In a recent article entitled 'Who Cares Who's President?', George E. Reedy, dean of a college of journalism and former press secretary under President Johnson, claims that loneliness has become the occupational hazard of the political analyst, and asks: "Is anyone" out there listening?".

The image is certainly a change from the clich6 about the loneliness of power. That is the one which it has become fashionable to use when interviewing American Presidents. It was used in one interview with President Ford, who was asked whether as he sat in his office looking on to the rose garden and burdened with the great responsibilities of power, he was not sometimes oppressed with a sense of lineliness. '"Oh no," replied Ford, "I don't get lonely. In fact I often see as many as a hundred people in a day."

About a President who can be so lacking in sophistication there can be only one of two views: That he is either impressively honest or hopelessly dim. The American people will decide next November — provided he gets the nomination.