In Quest of a Distinctive Presidency

Old friends from Alexandria, Va., gave Gerald Ford a cartoon recently that showed a pathetic-looking John Q. Public handing the President a cracked and scarred world globe and ordering him: "Fix it!"

That was a fitting admonition for a President who is energetically dealing with problems on several fronts. Last week he proposed a cautious 31-point remedy for the nation's economic ills that included a controversial 5% tax surcharge on middle and upper incomes (see THE ECONOMY). He underscored his desire for detente by meeting for the first time with a Communist leader, Polish Party Chief Edward Gierek. He took an unusual midnight ride with several Cabinet members to Andrews Air Force Base to demonstrate wholehearted support of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger by seeing him off on his latest trip to the Middle East (see THE WORLD). He lobbied scores of Congressmen on the eve of their campaign recess. He held his third press conference as President. He spoke at Republican campaign dinners in Burlington, Vt., Philadelphia and Detroit.

The strenuous 16-hour days graphically displayed Ford's developing style as President. He plunges into action, dealing personally with the maximum number of people and problems, both big and little. After two months in office, he is running meetings with more authority and acting more confident. But his whirlwind pace has also led to criticism that he spends too much time on the unimportant details of the presidency and not enough on the tough and complex decisions that he now must make. On three days, his schedule did not even leave him enough time to visit his wife Betty, whose two-week hospitalization for breast-cancer surgery ended Friday when she was discharged from Bethesda Naval Medical Center.

His public popularity has plummeted as well. The Gallup poll found that 50% of those surveyed in late September, shortly after Nixon's pardon, approved of Ford's performance as President, down 21 points since a similar poll conducted about a week after he took office. It was the most precipitous two-month drop in 35 years.

Personal Efforts. Ford's method of making major decisions has scarcely changed from his days as House minority leader, as was shown in the week preceding his economic message. He makes dozens of telephone calls to expose himself to many points of view and holds frequent meetings with his advisers. According to one participant, Ford "would come in and out of the meetings. He would ask for more information or ask for a certain person's views--for example, what did [Environmental Protection Agency Administrator] Russell Train think about something in the environment area. Or he might say, 1 want to think about that' and would give us his decision the following day."

Ford made clear during the week that his foreign policy will rest on personal efforts at diplomacy. Next week he will meet with Mexican President Luis Echeverria Alvarez at Nogales, on the Arizona-Mexico border. In November, Ford will travel to the Far East to visit with Japanese and South Korean leaders. During that trip he may meet with Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev, depending on Kissinger's success in an upcoming meeting with Soviet officials in Moscow. In December, Ford will hold talks with West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in Washington and later that month with French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing on the Caribbean island of Martinique.

If Kissinger has helped focus Ford's views on foreign policy, in domestic matters the President sometimes forgets the larger view now required of him as President. At his press conference, held in the Rose Garden to the accompaniment of a mockingbird in a magnolia tree, Ford candidly spoke his mind and twice got into trouble. Asked about the racial violence in Boston schools, he unwisely said that he disagreed with the court-ordered busing that caused the strife, thus appearing to ally himself with the white demonstrators (see story page 22). Then, asked whether he favored phasing out the controversial oil-depletion allowance, which gives tax breaks to oilmen, Ford forthrightly replied: "The answer is yes." Next day, jogged by angry Congressmen from oil states, Ford explained that he was for ending the allowance only if price controls were lifted from domestic oil.

Ford also found time to attend to both his staff and the welfare of the Republican Party, which faces a potential disaster next month (see cover story page 26). In a step that furthered the transition to a Ford White House, he accepted the resignations of two of Nixon's most brass-knuckled aides, Speechwriter Patrick J. Buchanan and Lawyer J. Fred Buzhardt. On three evenings he traveled to G.O.P. fund-raising dinners to cheer up dispirited party members and warn that "catastrophic defeat" of Republicans in November might destroy the nation's two-party system and result in a vetoproof Congress.

Ford encountered mounting criticism from political pundits who accused him of talking too freely to reporters, allowing policymaking in the White House to become chaotic and not properly rationing his time. Argued Columnist Joseph Kraft: "The President's men are going to have ... to make time for him to concentrate on the truly difficult problems which face the country."

Premature Criticism. Finding his own style of leadership is a greater problem for Ford than for his predecessors. He is the first President to enter office without going through the crucible of a national campaign. Moreover, he did not have the usual 21/2 postelection months to organize his Administration before taking office. Thus strong criticism of Ford's style seems premature. The real test will be the substance of his decisions as his presidency unfolds. Former Presidential Press Secretary J.F. terHorst, now a columnist for the Detroit News, describes Ford as "a Boy Scout in the White House" and "a man with a nice-guy reputation." The President is also a man who, right now, is still understandably struggling to get a total feel for his office.

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