For every issue of TIME, our correspondents and reporter-researchers conduct scores of interviews. The results, carefully selected, appear in many stories as lengthy quotations or brief flashes of information, opinion and analysis. But at times we believe in presenting interviews at greater length, to convey not only information but the quality and style of a personality. This week's issue contains an unusual assortment of such interviews. Two of them are with the President and the Vice President. Visiting Gerald Ford in the Oval Office for a question-and-answer session last week were TIME'S Managing Editor Henry Grunwald, Chief of Correspondents Murray Gart, Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey and Correspondents Bonnie Angelo and Dean Fischer. Sidey and Angelo also caucused with Nelson Rockefeller to discuss his role in the Administration, while Fischer talked with White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld about the President's work style. When Judge John Sirica released key Watergate Witness John Dean from prison, the first interview he granted was with TIME'S Hays Gorey.

As the 94th Congress prepared to convene in Washington and President Ford struggled with his State of the Union address, TIME worked on its own analysis of the situation. Our cover story, written by Associate Editor Edwin G. Warner, evaluates the President's performance to date, the shape of his forthcoming proposals, and Congress's resolve to offer its own economic program. The story is illustrated by a portfolio of photographs of Ford on the job, shot by TIME'S Pulitzer-prizewinning Eddie Adams.

Besides these Nation stories, other sections survey various aspects of our economic malaise. Economy & Business reports on the sputtering auto industry; Behavior examines some secret desires to see recession slide into depression; while Press offers a critique of journalism's performance in reporting the "dismal science," economics.

Over the past few months some people have accused the press of exacerbating the nation's bearish mood. They argue that the public wants some basis for hope and faith. We agree. But we also believe that economic maladies, like others, require thorough examination and sound diagnosis as the first steps toward a cure. As Vice President Rockefeller put it: "Problems and opportunities go together . . . I have confidence that we are going to find the right answers."

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