Here, There and Everywhere

Gerald Ford promised an open presidency. It has indeed been open--and highly mobile. In less than nine months in office he has logged some 50,000 miles outside Washington, visited 28 states and talked to 40 Governors, over a dozen mayors and countless thousands of ordinary citizens. He is given constant exposure; an entire issue of the New York Times Magazine last week was devoted to a minute-by-minute chronicle of the six days that Author John Hersey spent with him in the White House. He was interviewed live for an hour on television by CBS'S Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid and Bob Schieffer. He took a 20-hour whirlwind tour to New Orleans that included his landmark speech on Viet Nam at Tulane University of Louisiana, an address to the Navy League of the United States, a hard-hat groundbreaking ceremony for a library at Lake Pontchartrain and a trip 35 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico to visit an offshore oil rig. Watching Ford pass by, a Louisiana schoolteacher remarked, "You get a different feeling about a President when you see him in person."

Nobody knows that better than Jerry Ford. Much of his time has been devoted to getting acquainted with the people who did not elect him President.

Mixed Record. The question is whether all this travel and presidential accessibility ultimately improves Ford's policies and decision making. The record so far is mixed. He has been forced to learn on the job, and because he listens to a wide variety of views, he sometimes changes his mind in response. That is surely better than a President so stubborn and isolated that his first conclusions are never challenged and corrected. But it also dilutes Ford's leadership because he can end up saying one thing today and another tomorrow. Thus the dismal State of the World address blaming Congress for the collapse of South Viet Nam was succeeded last week by his lofty Tulane speech consigning the tragedy of Viet Nam to history and calling for "a great national reconciliation." Earlier his battle against inflation became his battle against recession, though in that case events as well as second opinions helped produce the turnabout. Basically, conflicting demands are being made of the President. "He faces a peculiar dilemma," says a mayor who has met him. "The country wants a human, open, responsive, all-American-fellow President. At the same tune it needs a strong, dynamic leader."

Open House. When Ford is in Washington, almost every day at the White House is a kind of open house. Top congressional leaders of both parties regularly come by for chats. Ford's nine top aides have the liberty to barge in whenever they see fit. He talks with individual Cabinet heads on a rotating basis. Periodically, members of the intellectual and academic community, rounded up by White House Aide Robert Goldwin, come to lunch or dinner to exchange or offer ideas. The President is also in the habit of soliciting the views of trusted outsiders: longtime Presidential Adviser Bryce Harlow, former Congressman and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, former Wisconsin Representative John Byrnes, former Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton and William Whyte, a U.S. Steel vice president and lobbyist who also plays golf with the President.

Says White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, the keeper of Ford's revolving door to the Oval Office: "You can gain a lot from reading and thinking, but you're more likely to acquire a sense of the mood of the country by meeting with people. It's important that the President have a sense not only of the intellectual content of an issue, but also be exposed to its intensity."

Ford meets the press often, and the encounter is sometimes painful. He was brutally challenged by reporters after he granted the pardon to his predecessor. He has been bluntly asked on TV whether he is smart enough to be President, a rude question that would not have been asked of most of his predecessors. But Ford accepts the brickbats as part of his job. It would be inconceivable for him to cancel a subscription to a newspaper* that offended him, as John Kennedy did, or denounce individual reporters in the manner of Lyndon Johnson, much less put wiretaps on newsmen or have them investigated by the FBI as the Nixon Administration ordered.

To date, Ford has held a dozen press conferences and granted 16 exclusive interviews. He has also tried to make the reporter's life easier by accepting follow-up questions. "The President is willing to try anything with the press," says Press Secretary Ron Nessen. "I can't think of anything I've proposed that he's refused." Ford believes that the press, even at its most belligerent, serves a useful governmental purpose. Says Nessen: "Press conferences force more policy decisions than anything else."

Alarming Thought. Ford's accessibility has had an obvious influence on domestic decisions; his acceptance of the higher tax cut voted by Congress and his postponement of tariff hikes on imported oil were made easier by the advice he had been given. But critics feel that in the province of foreign policy, Henry Kissinger alone is in charge. After being reassured by witnessing the flow of diverse domestic advisers who met with the President, John Hersey was troubled to note that only Kissinger or his National Security Council deputy, Lieut. General Brent Scowcroft, gave most of the advice on foreign policy. It was, he wrote, the "most alarming thought I have had all week."

Hersey, who had spent a similar week with Harry Truman in the White House in 1951, scrutinized the President for any telltale "signals of stress under the calm exterior." But none were evident. The author speculates that Ford has so long been on the losing political side in the "national poker game" as a minority Congressman that he has learned to mask his feelings completely.

Though Hersey himself does not render the verdict, his meticulous accounting supports the impression of other President watchers: the Ford White House, for all its genuine warmth, ease and candor, is somehow lacking in ideas and depth. Ford emerges as a decent caretaker, bent on restoration but not renovation of a fine house that had lately fallen into bad hands.

-Ford goes through a dozen papers a day, ranging from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal to the Christian Science Monitor and the Grand Rapids Press. He also scans the newsmagazines and watches some television news.

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