Teaching What He Practiced

By Hugh Sidey

He was a 28-year-old academic tumbled by events to the center of power. On a spring day in 1975, he sat against the wall in the Cabinet Room and marveled at what he saw and heard. New York City's diminutive mayor Abe Beame, the state's combative Governor Hugh Carey and a phalanx of elegantly tailored and glowering financial advisers told President Gerald Ford that they expected the U.S. Government to rescue the city from its own financial mess.

"I'd never witnessed such arrogance," recalls Roger Porter, then executive secretary of Ford's Economic Policy Board. Ford had been President only nine months, and Porter wondered if he could stand up to the New Yorkers. The President straightened his shoulders and hardened his jaw, then picked up a memo that Porter had helped prepare. Was it true, Ford asked his aggressive visitors, that the city had a university with no tuition charge? Well, yes, they answered, but that was such an established practice that they could not change it. Other cities charged students some tuition with no dire consequences, Ford noted. The New Yorkers seemed to shrink a little, thought Porter. Ford read on, ticking off New York's extravagances in social spending and labor contracts. Finally, the President looked up and said very evenly, "Gentlemen, federal aid is not on the way." The next day the New York Daily News ran its famous headline: FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.

The city did not drop dead. Over the next ten years it cleaned up its mess. Roger Porter, now 39, filed the lesson away. Very soon he will be relating the episode to a new generation of Harvard students eager to learn how the presidency works. After a second White House tour--4 1/2 years as one of Reagan's assistants for policy development--Porter is returning to academe to ponder and write and explain.

Porter himself is worth pondering. After graduating from Brigham Young and studying in England on a Rhodes scholarship, he went to Harvard to teach government. One day he told his wife Ann, "I can't teach government unless I've been there." He applied for three Washington fellowships, won them all and accepted a spot as Vice President Ford's White House fellow.

On the day in 1974 that he headed for Washington in his Chevy, Porter turned on the radio and learned that Richard Nixon planned to resign. He reported for work at the height of the upheaval, suddenly coming face to face with Ford in an elevator as the Vice President hurried to the White House just before being sworn in as President. Within a few hours Porter was secretary to the transition team. He returned to Harvard during Carter's term, then came back to Washington at Reagan's invitation. Though little known beyond the inner circles of power and scholarship, Porter has already produced two thoughtful books (Presidential Decision Making and The U.S.-U.S.S.R. Grain Agreement). His writings on how to run the White House helped guide Chief of Staff Donald Regan's reorganization, in which eight Cabinet councils were reduced to three.

Porter is a moderate Republican, which portends some interesting shifts at Harvard, so long a bastion of Democratic liberals. He will be a professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and in a year will join Richard Neustadt in teaching the course on the presidency.

At the heart of Porter's teaching will be that lesson of New York City. "People underestimate their capacity for change," says Porter. "There is never a right time to do a difficult thing. No one is going to make a change that involves pain if they think they can avoid it. A President's job is to help people have a vision of their potential. A great disservice is done when we don't help them understand they have most of the responsibility for their lives."