Hoping to Win by Working on the Job

Official Washington last week was a relaxed capital, suspended in highly unofficial reveries between two holidays.

Congress was on vacation. For part of the week, President Ford was skiing in Vail. Then, like many a middleaged, Middle American couple, Betty and Jerry Ford welcomed the New Year by sitting at home in front of their television set, sipping champagne and swaying gently to the mellow music of Guy Lombardo. On New Year's Day, the Fords invited some of their Midwestern friends --Michigan Senator Robert Griffin, Wisconsin's John Byrne and Melvin Laird, Minnesota's Clark MacGregor and their wives--to a White House dinner. The point of the informal gathering was to watch Ford's alma mater, the University of Michigan, uphold the Midwest's football prestige by thumping the University of Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. But Michigan lost, 14 to 6.

At Ease. Losing is not a habit the President wishes to cultivate in the new year. By his own admission, he faces a stiff challenge in the approaching presidential primary elections from former California Governor Ronald Reagan.

But Ford called 23 Washington correspondents and columnists into his Oval Office for an effective low-key press conference at which he conveyed his optimism about his personal fortunes in 1976. At ease without live television cameras whirring, both Ford and the reporters avoided the usual press-conference showboating. Ford candidly predicted that he would get his party's nomination and then go on to defeat the opponent he expects to confront as the Democratic candidate:

Hubert Humphrey.

Still, would not the President be almost forced to withdraw if Reagan embarrasses him by winning some early primaries? As a log fire crackled, Ford declared confidently: "I like a good struggle, a good fight. Anyone who forecasts that I am going to quit in midstream doesn't know Jerry Ford." In the quiet room, the President's firm voice carried a ring of conviction.

The mood of holiday amiability was such that Ford managed to perform another of his sharp reversals of approach with only minimal questioning.

During much of his time in office, Ford had gone flying about the country in his long-tested, but previously localized campaign style. He had made speeches and appeared in parades that seemed more fit for a Congressman than a President. The main result was to cut into the popularity ratings he had achieved after succeeding the discredited Richard Nixon. Last week, without acknowledging that anyone had ever criticized his love of local campaigning, Ford talked as though he had discovered a new political truth. Said he: "The best way to preserve the dignity of the office and the best way, in my opinion, to convince the people that I ought to be the nominee and the President is to work at the job here." Sure, he would go out and campaign in some of the primaries, but he would devote far more of his time to affairs of state.

The campaign plan, Ford aides explained, is to make extensive use of various "advocates" to press Ford's candidacy while the President is busy in the White House. One such spokesman scheduled for heavy duty in New Hampshire and Massachusetts is Elliot Richardson, the incoming Commerce Secretary--and potential Vice President --who is popular in New England.

Ford's campaign aides concede that Reagan may inspire dedicated supporters in the campaigning that he will resume this week, but they insist that the Reagan force is relatively small.

They intend to concentrate on voter registration and large primary election turnouts to overcome Reagan's more zealous workers.

When Ford's hour-long conference turned to the sensitive subject of how critics and cartoonists are picturing the President as physically bumbling and intellectually inadequate, he exposed his more human and attractive side. Fleetingly, he dropped the politician's usual nothing-bothers-me stance. "Some of the things you read or hear or see ...

you know, it kind of hurts your pride a little bit because you know it isn't true," he confided. "But I have long felt that if you keep a high degree of composure and don't get rattled, and have total confidence in yourself, things work out pretty well." Ford added philosophically: "You have to have a sense of humor about this. You have to be a little thick-skinned--and I think that comes from some experience."

Crucial Months. Can Ford convince those many still doubting voters that he is indeed up to the job? The next few months may prove crucial as he unveils his fiscal 1977 budget proposals, sketches his outlines for America's immediate future in his State of the Union address, and at the same time tries to cope with a difficult primary campaign.

Before turning to football on New Year's Day, Ford assumed his more presidential stance by getting in planning sessions with his top advisers, including Alan Greenspan, William Seidman, Paul O'Neill, James T. Lynn and James Cannon. He worked alone on his State of the Union address. He also signed 14 bills and cast his 43rd veto on legislation that would have made the Secretary of the Treasury part of the National Security Council.

There are many who think that Jerry Ford prefers campaigning to the routine of the presidency and that he will be hard-pressed to keep his New Year's resolution to spend more tune at his desk in Washington. One not so reassuring sign: this week he will fly to St. Louis for yet another round of speechmaking.

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