Making Hay

It was pure Jerry Ford. Out in the Midwest, where he feels at home, a welcome if not a beloved figure, the President last week was relishing what he calls a "working vacation." He was doing what comes naturally: chatting with an earnest 4-H'er about the calories in a pineapple milkshake, patting the beefy flank of a prizewinning steer, comparing a wooden porch swing to the one owned by "a girl I used to court." But the brief Western trip had its serious side. The President's approval rating had dropped to 45% in the Gallup poll and to 38% in the Harris, so he was intent on explaining his policies wherever he went: touring an oil-shale plant with a hard-hat on his head or mingling with crowds at the Iowa State Fair with a button saying HOGS ARE BEAUTIFUL in his lapel.

The farmers to whom Ford was appealing have been growing increasingly restive over mounting opposition to the sale of 10 million tons of grain to the Soviet Union. AFL-CIO President George Meany spearheaded that opposition last week by announcing that the International Longshoremen's Association would not load the grain on ships until the White House provided assurances that the deal would not increase food prices for American consumers. Seeming to take the farmers' side at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Ford declared that a "sound, fully productive agriculture is a key element in this nation's quest for peace. Our sale of grain and other foodstuffs to the rest of the world is one of the brightest areas in our economy, a green harvest we all understand." Without these sales, he maintained, the U.S. would lose $12 billion in earnings from international trade.

Fervent Desire. From Des Moines, Ford flew on to Minneapolis, put on an American Legion cap and defended his foreign policy before the legionnaires' annual convention. Some 12 hours after attacks on his policy by Ronald Reagan and George Wallace at the VFW convention in Los Angeles, Ford emphasized that "Detente means a fervent desire for peace, but not peace at any price. It means the preservation of fundamental American principles, not their sacrifice. It means moderate and restrained behavior between two superpowers, not a license to fish in troubled waters."

The President suggested that he might not pursue detente forever if the Russians fail to reciprocate. If progress is not made in the SALT II talks, he said, he would have no choice but to raise defense spending, now at the "bare minimum," by $2 billion to $3 billion over the next two years. "This is one place where second best is worth nothing."

The legionnaires were cordial but not feverish in their applause, and so it went through most of Ford's tour. As one lowan put it: "He's like an inch and a half of rain in a dry year. Nice, appreciated, but not enough." But Ford likes this kind of campaigning--so much so that he plans to be out of Washington almost every weekend all fall. There will be fund raisers from Newport, R.I., to Seattle, Wash., a Baptist convention in St. Louis and, of course, the University of Michigan's football game against Michigan State.

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