Where Has All the Power Gone?

Between campaign appearances last week, President Ford:

> Postponed the formal signing of a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union only hours before the event was to have been beamed around the world via satellite television.

> Signed a bill to reconstitute the Federal Election Commission, though his lawyers told him that one of the sections of the measure was clearly unconstitutional.

> Presented Congress with a proposal for "sweeping reform" of federal regulatory agencies, though the plan calls for nothing more than a study leading to specific proposals over a four-year period.

While its principal occupant moved gingerly through mine-strewn primary-election fields, the Ford White House plainly reflected the ill effects of absentee landlordism and political-year preoccupation. Gerald Ford, after 21 months in the Oval Office, seemed further than ever from the Trumanesque image of decisiveness he so admires.

The most disturbing sign of political paralysis was the eleventh-hour postponement of the treaty ceremony, an act that prompted a Western ambassador to ask an American in Moscow, "Just what in the world is going on in your country?" Negotiated during 93 meetings dating back to September 1974, the treaty limits the size of underground nuclear explosions. For the first time, it provides for on-site inspections in both the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

The treaty was initialed by U.S. Ambassador Walter Stoessel Jr. in Moscow earlier last week, and to underscore its significance, Ford and Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev were to affix their signatures in live TV ceremonies in the White House and the Kremlin. Administration officials offered no formal explanation for the change in plans, but one was hardly needed: the President clearly was reluctant to antagonize even further the Republican right, already irked by the Ford-Kissinger policy of detente.

Since assuming the presidency in August 1974, Ford has frequently seemed weak, uncertain, vacillating. The nation is at peace, the economy is surging, and no one questions Ford's honesty and decency. Yet the White House appears rudderless. The Administration has come down on both sides of legislation to aid debt-ridden New York City, to permit a single picketing union to shut down an entire construction project, to strengthen antitrust laws, to reduce income taxes. When his since-departed campaign manager, Bo Callaway, greased the skids for Nelson Rockefeller's slide from the 1976 Ford ticket, the President's silence made him appear weak or devious.

Other than his plan for regulatory reforms, Ford's major proposal to Congress this year has been for a reorganization of foreign intelligence operations. Major foreign policy initiatives --such as support for black majority rule in Rhodesia--have been articulated by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, further contributing to Ford's bystander image even though Ford, of course, approved the policies.

Within the Ford White House, there is an aura of confusion and drift. The chief staff administrator, Richard Cheney, 35, gets generally high marks for making a wide range of people and conflicting ideas accessible to his boss. But the President has done little to ease the tension between Cheney, whose office has had an increasing influence on presidential speeches, and Robert Hartmann, a longtime Ford political adviser and chief speech writer. Recently Ford promoted Cheney Aide David Gergen, 34, to White House special counsel and assigned Stefan Halper, 31, to help Cheney and Gergen assess the political implications of Administration initiatives. However, both Gergen and Halper are former speechwriters, a fact that will do little to diminish the tension between the Cheney and Hartmann operations.

Part of Ford's failure to appear more presidential derives from his apparent inability to resist traditional barnstorming. Voters see him as campaigner often, as President only rarely. Not since Feb. 17 has he held a press conference in Washington, where the White House provides a setting still held in awe by millions of Americans. Instead, the President has opted for local press conferences, where he appears no more presidential than any other candidate.

Although considerable finger pointing has gone on, there is no minimizing Ford's responsibility for the White House blahs. As Cheney himself has said on previous occasions: "The President sets the style for this White House. And that's the way it should be."

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