A Time to Put the Big Jets to Rest

By Hugh Sidey

He was the dutiful son of Grand Rapids, remembering to a fault the basic decencies in which he had been reared. His manners were not from Emily Post, nor was his style out of the Washington salons. Jerry Ford's politeness and concern for his Asian hosts were pure prairie, the stuff that was nurtured on the Elm Streets by people who had to get along with each other.

The big, comfortable American galumphed over the red carpets as if he were out rabbit hunting, unconcerned about his too-short pants, searching the eyes of those he met for a human connection.

His appreciation showered down on all those he touched. "Thank you very much" was his standard line, and when he was particularly stimulated he said, "Thank you very, very much." He was a Rotarian without a red neck, and he was an Eagle Scout without self-righteousness. He was something new from the U.S. on the international scene.

Ford did not come like a god as Dwight Eisenhower did. There was little of the elegance that John Kennedy exuded in his triumphal march through Paris. There were none of those hilarious outrages which Lyndon Johnson relished, like yahooing in the Taj Mahal, passing out plastic busts of himself or, after viewing some of the best of Germany's modern art, asking if he couldn't pick up a dozen or so cut-rate paintings of beer- hall scenes for his Secret ServiceI agents. Nor was there the board-chairman bearing of Richard Nixon trailed by a phalanx of grim courtiers shooting Super-8 movies.

The President's crusted pipes were strewn about his quarters in the Akasaka Palace. There were the mixings for a good martini to get his blood circulating before the formal dinners and speeches. When Ford gathered his staff at the start of his Japanese stay, they threshed over the weekend football scores before they got down to energy, trade and nuclear weapons.

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When a Japanese Scout gave Ford a neckerchief, the President tried to put it on. The scarf got hung up on Ford's big dome, and for a second the little guy did not know just what to do. Ford finally got the neckerchief in place and leaned down and took the boy's hand; that "Thank you" from one Scout to another would have melted steel.

It would have been hard for a man of Ford's plain dimensions to fail in Japan and Korea, where his mission was one of apology and renewing affection (it will take months to get the true measure of Vladivostok). But even on this guided tour, there was the vaguely uncomfortable feeling all along the trail that the man was doing the right thing at the wrong time. Not for Japan, not for Korea, not even for the Soviet Union, but for the United States of America.

The stock-market slides rumbled through Tokyo. The vision of thousands of auto workers out of money for Christmas landed with a thump on Ford's palace doorstep. The rebellious spirit in Congress shattered one day's sightseeing with the overriding of two vetoes. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield's predictions of economic disaster made headlines in the Japan Times.

A nervous, though tentative worry began to build as Ford flew on. It was that the President, just like Nixon, was finding international junketeering far more pleasurable than the grind in the Oval Office. Perhaps he was beginning to succumb to the illusion that he could outrace domestic difficulties and bring home enough of the foreign huzzahsto dispel the leadership malaise.

One not so tentative observation was that the itinerant President was becoming so commonplace and even dubious a spectacle at home that the White House jets, once landed back in America this week, ought to be put in the hangar for a long time.

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