Gerald Ford: Off to a Fast, Clean Start

"The nation needs action, not words."

--Gerald Ford

Every morning last week, the President of the United States was driven into the capital from his suburban Alexandria, Va., home along with the stream of commuters who daily turn Interstate 95 into what Washingtonians sometimes grumpily refer to as "the world's longest parking lot." Preceded by a police car and trailed by four other vehicles, including a Secret Service station wagon and a press van, his limousine was hard to miss. Many motorists waved a cheerful if somewhat bemused good-morning as the Chief Executive, immersed in his morning newspapers, sailed past them in the lane reserved for buses and car pools. Gone was the public hostility of yesterday as Nixon's presidency foundered; now there was a new President, totally contrasting in manner, mien and style from his predecessor, and he was moving fast.

"We have a lot of work to do," Gerald Ford told the Congress and the nation last week in his first major speech. "Let's get on with it." So saying, he set off on a week of action perhaps unmatched in the White House since the most frenetic days of Lyndon Johnson. Though any new Administration is necessarily active, the casual Ford made it all seem unhurried, genial, low-key.

He declared the economy his No. 1 priority; he prescribed a balanced budget as the basic solution to the nation's economic ills--an old-fashioned remedy that his manner somehow made sound newly promising; he sharply criticized General Motors for its recently announced price increases of almost 10% (see THE ECONOMY). He gave much time to world affairs, including the crisis in Cyprus, met with the Soviet and Egyptian ambassadors, entertained the King of Jordan, accepted an invitation to visit Japan this fall, all the while continuing to reassure the U.S.'s allies that the basic foreign policy of the Nixon Administration remained unchanged (see box page 12). While mulling his choice for Vice President and the reorganization of the Executive Branch, he welcomed a remarkably large and varied array of visitors to the White House--Congressmen and Senators, mayors, Governors, labor leaders--as if to demonstrate at the outset his vow to create an "open" presidency.

Good Feeling. By his smooth acceleration into high gear last week Ford helped create a mood of good feeling and even exhilaration in Washington that the city had not experienced for many years, imparting the promise, at least, of a brilliant spring after a grim, dark winter. In part, the euphoria was a reaction to the dying agonies of the Nixon Administration, and there were whispered postmortems. "I tell you," confided one high official, "those last hours with the [former] President were the most painful that I have ever had to go through." But it was also created by the relief that the peculiarly closed and almost paranoid style of the Nixon White House existed no more.

Journalists, who found themselves suddenly popular at the White House again, rejoiced in the minutiae of the new Administration. Reporters were delighted that the new press secretary, Jerry terHorst, was not afraid to say, as his predecessors had often been, "I don't know, I didn't ask the President," photographers were startled to be allowed to snap the President's morning swim.

Nobody was happier than the Republicans, who found their prospects for the November elections transformed almost overnight. The party was "taking solid food again," observed Washington Post Columnist George Will. "We're in business!" shouted G.O.P. National Chairman George Bush. At Washington's Federal City Club those two chroniclers of reality in American political life, Richard M. Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg (in This U.S.A. and The Real Majority) eyed each other over lunch and began to rethink their thesis for their next book. "How's this for the introduction?" asked Wattenberg. " 'It has been a tragic time for America. The President resigned under a dark cloud, leaving behind him in disarray one of the world's great political parties--the Democrats.' "

Good sense, perspective and proportion were back in fashion. When, for example, the Fords' eldest son Mike, 24, was quoted as saying that Richard Nixon owed the American people a "total confession" of his role in Watergate, no red balloons went up at the White House. The President accepted the young divinity student's comment with equanimity. "All my children have spoken for themselves since they first learned to speak," he said tolerantly, "and not always with my advance approval. I expect that to continue in the future." And that was that.

The President arrived at the Oval Office most mornings at 7:45 and plunged into the day's work. At first he used his old vice-presidential office in the Executive Office Building, but by early last week he was shuttling between the Oval Office for small meetings and the Cabinet Room for larger ones. The only thing that seemed to intimidate him about the Oval Office the first day was the telephone. "I haven't figured this thing out yet," he acknowledged as he fumbled with the myriad buttons. The desk that had always been meticulously clean during the Nixon years was now cluttered with papers as Ford, wearing steel-rimmed reading glasses, pored over them.

Face to Face. One of the President's first visitors every morning was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The President was most concerned about the fighting in Cyprus, which directly affected two of the U.S.'s NATO allies, Greece and Turkey, but he was also anxious to follow up on his assurances that he would pursue the Nixon Administration's foreign policy. Toward that end, Ford had lunch with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy, then met with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, who cut short a vacation to return to Washington after Nixon resigned. Among other things, Ford and Dobrynin discussed the trade reform bill, which has been stalled in the Senate. The bill would confer "most-favored-nation" (in effect, normal) trading status on the Russians and was eagerly sought by the Nixon Administration as a means of advancing detente. But it has been vehemently opposed by several Senators who believe that, in return for trade concessions, the U.S. should insist that the Russians liberalize their laws regarding emigration rights and agree to end the harassment of Soviet Jews.

The Dobrynin meeting led in turn to one of Jerry Ford's most remarkable accomplishments of the week. A day later, he sat down to breakfast with three of the trade bill's staunchest critics, Senators Henry Jackson of Washington, Jacob Javits of New York and Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut. Richard Nixon had never met directly with Jackson or the other Senators to discuss the bill, and Ford's face-to-face meeting seemed to have paid off. White House sources said later that some sort of compromise appears to be in the works.

The nation's most vexing problem, obviously, is inflation and the President made it the principal subject of his first address to Congress. Freely admitting that "the state of our economy is not so good," Ford vowed in the speech--and repeated all week--his determination to hold down federal spending and to seek "a sense of self-sacrifice in this country." As earnest of his intention, he vetoed a bill authorizing a health research program. The amount involved was only $47 million, but Ford made his point.

The occasion for the speech was a mellow homecoming for Gerald Ford, a return to the well of the House of Representatives where he served happily for 25 years. He was cheered so long and loudly by his old friends from both houses of Congress that the President turned and said to his old friend Speaker Carl Albert, "You're wasting good TV time." Later he seemed determined to shake every hand in the House. "You know," Albert told him, the microphones picking up his aside over the roar of applause, "I'm afraid I might have called you Jerry instead of Mr. President last night." The President laughed.

His manner was clearly that of a Chief Executive who did not see himself as a caretaker President. He spoke of "my Cabinet officers" and "my White House staff." He declared, with little regard for the sensitivities of his deposed predecessor, "I began to put my Administration's own economic house in order starting last Friday." He even said flat-out, "God willing, I will have at least three more chances" to make State of the Union addresses--that "at least" being the strongest indication yet that he has abandoned his earlier contention that he would not seek the presidency in 1976. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott declared that Ford will have little choice but to run for re-election in 1976, because "the party will demand it."

Open Door. In his 32-minute speech Ford promised to work with his old friends as coequals: "My motto toward the Congress is communication, conciliation, compromise and cooperation . . . I do not want a honeymoon with you--I want a good marriage." He pledged to avoid some of the most grievous failings of the Nixon presidency. "I intend to listen," he said, not just to members of Congress but "to the people themselves . . . I want to be sure that we are all tuned in to the real voice of America." He will be as approachable as ever, he promised. "My office door has always been open, and that is how it is going to be at the White House" --providing, he added wryly, "you don't overdo it."

There were other words of reassurance. He paid tribute to "the absolute necessity of a free press." He pledged that "there will be no illegal tappings, eavesdropping, buggings or break-ins by my Administration" and thereby drew the loudest ovation of the session. He appealed to a constituency that included "women's liberationists and male chauvinists, and all the rest of us somewhere in between," and the members of Congress laughed and cheered. After the troubles of the recent past, they welcomed the President's efforts to heal the nation's wounds.

All week long the President summoned both old friends and old foes to the White House. On Monday morning, Congressman Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the Black Caucus in the House of Representatives, received a phone call that his secretary suspected was a put-on. "There's a call from somebody saying he's the President," she said. Then a familiar voice came over Rangel's line, "Hi, Charlie." It was Ford, responding to a request from the Black Caucus and suggesting that they confer with him "to work out problems of mutual interest."

Then the President reached out to his adversary, organized labor. He invited AFL-CIO President George Meany over to the Oval Office for a chat, and the crusty old Meany, who in the end had thrown the resources of his office into the effort to impeach Nixon, came away impressed. Two days later, the AFL-ClO's chief lobbyist, Andrew J. Biemiller, announced that labor was prepared to support Ford's proposal for a new Cost of Living Council with jawboning rather than regulatory authority. It was true that organized labor had felt "zapped" by Nixon's former council, Biemiller said, but it would go along with the new proposal because "today we have a new President. We have confidence in the integrity of this President." Before the day was out, Senators were speculating that Ford would get his council.

On Wednesday, Ford invited powerful Democratic Senator Russell Long of Louisiana over to the White House to talk. Long's support would be helpful to the President in achieving the compromise health-care program that Ford so firmly wants to get through Congress this year. In this area, as in his successful wooing of Senators Jackson, Javits and Ribicoff on the trade reform bill compromise, Ford seemed to be working at full speed to make the most of the honeymoon while it lasts.

"Start with Me." One day last week the mayors of 16 U.S. cities asked which White House aide they should deal with in the new Administration. Replied the President: "Start with me." To the 16 mayors, as well as to the 14 Governors he saw last week, he emphasized his commitment to carry on Nixon's revenue-sharing program, but he told the mayors that he would veto the $20 billion mass-transit bill as too costly.

When some Governors and county executives complained that they had had difficulty gaining access to the White House in the past, Ford urged them to take their problems to Domestic Assistant Kenneth Cole and promised that Cole would forward the matters to the President within two days or less. "And if Ken Cole is not responsive," added Ford, "then you can see me." The out-of-towners, who remembered that Richard Nixon's technique had been to deliver a well-framed monologue and then turn the meeting over to an assistant when the discussion began, pronounced themselves impressed. "The style of President Ford," said Washington Governor Daniel Evans, "is to be casual, informal, candid." Said San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto: "This was a great thing. It had been a long, long time since we had been in the White House"--almost four years, in fact.

Originally, Ford had hoped to announce his choice for Vice President by the end of his first week in office, but he failed to make it. Amid endless speculation, almost everyone agreed that the leading contenders were former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Republican National Chairman Bush. Others believed to be on Ford's list included former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, Governor Evans and former Attorney General Elliot Richardson. Former Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton, who was helping Ford with takeover problems, was also said to be a candidate, but Scranton described himself as "Mr. Temporary" and claimed that he would not accept the job unless "the nation was at war or something."

Rockefeller's prospects were buffeted briefly by a bizarre report, mentioned by Columnist Jack Anderson last week, alleging that Rockefeller money had been used to finance a "standby" group of "toughs" to disrupt the 1972 Democratic National Convention. The shenanigans were supposedly described in papers contained within seven mysterious boxes of Watergate "documents." This material, once supposedly held by Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt, was said to have been spirited away by a Nixon loyalist named Roy Sheppard following the Watergate break-in of June 1972. Sheppard later said that he burned the papers, but recently there have been rumors that either the originals or copies of the originals had not been destroyed.

Whether the so-called Sheppard papers ever existed is dubious. Rockefeller branded the allegations as "absolutely untrue" and signified his willingness to open campaign finance records to refute the charge. Rockefeller contributed $250,000 to the Nixon campaign that year with the stipulation, he said, that the money be spent only in New York state campaigns and only under supervision of Rockefeller associates. A telephoned tip to the White House, giving the location of a safe-deposit box supposedly containing copies of the documents, sent the Watergate Special Prosecutor's investigators scurrying, but the vault they were directed to proved to be empty. With that, the White House described the charges against Rockefeller as being "without foundation" and reiterated that Rocky was still very much "under consideration" for the No. 2 job in the nation.

At odd moments throughout the week, Ford retired to the small working office beside the Oval Office, took off his jacket, and shuffled through his notes on the vice-presidential appointment. When asked for the names of people whom the President was consulting, Press Secretary Jerry terHorst replied, "He's consulting himself." At week's end Ford was said to be still genuinely undecided. When informed by terHorst that some newspapers were saying that the President had narrowed the field from about 15 to only three, Ford quipped, "I'm glad you told me that. It'll save me a lot of time."

For almost two weeks, Ford had had a four-man "transition planning team" at work on his behalf. The team's members are all old friends: Scranton; NATO Ambassador Donald Rumsfeld, who had flown to Washington two weeks ago on his own initiative and was asked by Ford to head the team; Interior Secretary Rogers Morton, the former Republican National Committee chairman; and John O. Marsh, a former Democratic Congressman from Virginia. The team was said to be organizing a talent search, but its main task was to advise Ford on how to reorganize the White House staff and streamline its operations. Among the recommendations the team is expected to make to the President this week: drastically slim down the White House bureaucracy, which, under Richard Nixon, grew from 220 to almost 510; reduce the power of the Office of Management and Budget which, under Nixon, had usurped the policymaking functions of many departments and agencies; restore the operating authority of the Cabinet, which had atrophied considerably under Nixon.

Difficult Days. Rumsfeld might eventually replace Alexander Haig as White House chief of staff, but not right away. The President is said to believe that Haig performed an important service to the nation during the difficult last days of the Nixon Administration, and he announced that Haig would be staying on "for the duration." Asked how long that period would be a White House aide amended the phrase to read "for the indefinite future." Nonetheless, several of Ford's friends thought it likely that Haig would leave within a few months, if for no other reason than that they expect his functions to be divided sooner or later among four or five aides. "I don't expect a chief of staff on the Nixon model," said one Ford associate. "There'll be a great deal of access to Ford's door."

Among other appointments announced last week:

> Former Congressman Marsh, 48, as a White House Counsellor.

> Philip Buchen, 58, the President's former law partner, as White House counsel. The once inconspicuous post acquired notoriety when held by John Dean and J. Fred Buzhardt. It will probably regain its invisibility under Ford.

> Jack Hushen, 39, former Washington correspondent of the Detroit News and chief press aide in the Justice Department under Attorney General John Mitchell, as deputy press secretary.

> Rear Admiral William M. Lukash, 43, as the President's personal physician. Dr. Lukash is a specialist in gastroenterology and internal medicine who had been serving as assistant physician to former President Nixon.

Lukash described the President as an unusually healthy 61-year-old. "I'm blessed with a patient who has an understanding of the importance of physical fitness. He'll make my job easy." Without a White House swimming pool (the former one was turned into a press room by Nixon) for his 40 daily laps, the President will have to find another form of exercise. Says Ford: "The Oval Office seems very confining. I'd have to go to Burning Tree for golf, or to Camp David. I won't have a Key Biscayne or a San Clemente, but we will go to Vail [Colorado] to ski over the holidays."

Ford's first week ended with one of the liveliest White House evenings in years, a party for King Hussein and Queen Alia of Jordan. Betty Ford was well aware that guests are supposed to remain at White House dinners until after the President and the First Lady leave; the Nixons, as a rule, withdrew as soon as the entertainment ended. Mrs. Ford was having none of that: "I'm just going to tell the guests that they can leave whenever they want to," she said, because "nobody's going to get us off the dance floor at 10 o'clock."

"We love to dance," the President declared at the party, and proved it by dancing again and again with the beautiful Alia, while the King twirled Betty Ford round the floor. Later, as the royal guests departed, the Queen pronounced it "a swinging party," and the President kissed her on both cheeks.

After bidding goodnight to the royal guests, the Fords came back to dance some more. Guests applauded as the President, paired off with Cindy Nessen, the Korean-born wife of NBC Newsman Ron Nessen, improvised his way through Big Bad Leroy Brown.

Among the guests were Senator Mark Hatfield, a liberal Republican who had not been welcome at the White House for at least five years; World Bank President Robert MacNamara, who said that he had not been there since 1968; Mrs. Ogden Reid, wife of the New York Congressman, who marveled that she and her husband had been invited because "we are Democrats now"; and anti-Nixon Congressman Pete McCloskey of California. Also present were a covey of White House reporters, including one from the Washington Post, whose staffers nearly two years ago were being banned from even covering White House social events let alone, horribile dictu, participating in any of them. "Happy New Year!" Senator Hatfield shouted, and McCloskey called the scene the harbinger of "a new day."

New Mood. Some might have sniffed that this hastily planned state dinner offered beef `a la bordelaise and no special entertainment. But this party, coming only a week after the cataclysm, offered something far beyond entertainment: the signal of the new mood in Washington and in much of the nation, the satisfaction that came from having a new and relaxed man in the White House who had unaffectedly asked for the nation's prayers in saying, "I want to be a good President."

Enormous and evident problems in the economy and elsewhere confront him, and they will not be solved by mere good cheer. Yet unpredictably crises surely lie ahead, and in the first fine careless rapture of Gerald Ford's accession, no one can predict what kind of President he will prove to be. For the moment, after the miasma of Watergate, that could wait. Last week Washington and the nation seemed satisfied to rejoice in such simplicities as having a Chief Executive who worked in his shirtsleeves, who said what he meant and meant what he said, who by his honesty and accessibility was swiftly exorcising the pinched ghosts of the Nixon era from the White House. At the end of his first week, the President of the U.S. was still jumping to his feet and coming out from behind his desk to shake hands with Jerry terHorst whenever his press secretary, a friend of 25 years, entered the Oval Office.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.