Beyond the Facts & Figures

By Hugh Sidey

THE PRESIDENCY

"I am the first to admit that I am no great orator or no person that got where I have gotten by any William Jennings Bryan technique," Jerry Ford said a few days ago, proving his point even as he spoke. Then he proved it even more convincingly in his State of the Union address, with its ranks of square, gray sentences marching by.

Ford's sallies into international diplomacy have been marred by little things like tripping on the airplane ramp in Salzburg, or finding himself yucking it up with a geisha named Honorable Treasure Pleasure in Japan while the U.S. stock market plummeted and Chrysler Corp. announced it was closing five plants. His relentless political assault on the American people last fall is now regarded by almost every opinion analyst as a major factor in his year-end decline in the polls.

But last week he may have found his format. Of all things, it was the budget. He walked through its corridors of forbidding figures with brisk confidence. He expertly handled hours of briefings for officials and newsmen. He rarely had to refer to his notes or call on his aides. Ford not only knew his budget, he felt it, found romance in the balance sheets. There was a kind of boardroom eloquence about the President in this environment, moving from table to chart, talking of dollars and sense. Even those who disagree philosophically with Ford admitted that he had done a masterly job of presenting his case. One old budget bureaucrat who has seen Presidents come and go said, "God, but he is good at this."

Richard Nixon got angry when he was burdened with too many budget details and fired his budget director, Robert Mayo. Lyndon Johnson used to glaze over as his budget was discussed, reviving only to query bizarre items like the crotch size in the Air Force uniform trousers. Ford not only put the figures together; it is plain to almost anyone who reads the budget documents that here is a splendid profile of Ford himself, a statement of his personal and political philosophy.

The budget is the boiler room of Government. It is not beyond belief that Ford might choose to stay down there trying to make things work, the way he has drawn the plans. If he were to do that, he might not only shore up his sagging presidency but also present his strongest political side to the public.

It is a middle-class budget. Ford made no bones about that in his hundreds of hours of meetings with men like Jim Lynn and Paul O'Neill of the Office of Management and Budget. Feet on the desk, sometimes in the Oval Office, sometimes in the study, he puffed his pipe and scratched away with his felt-tipped pen. "I don't want to take anything away from the people who need it," he said about his tax proposals, "but if I have anything to give, I want to give it to the middle-income people." He believes the burdens of our society have grown disproportionately heavy for those in that bracket.

To the extent that Ford ever registers shock over anything on his benign face, he did when O'Neill told him there were 700,000 children below the poverty line who could not qualify for school lunches. Yet Lynn's kids at Bethesda's high-income Walt Whitman High School got a 23-c- subsidy for each meal at school. Ford ordered his proposal to cut aid for those who can pay and target it for the destitute.

His tax break for those buying stock rises from his belief in the old American axiom that everybody ought to own a piece of the country. More Americans, Ford mused, ought to understand the rewards of ownership--and the risks.

The President's proposal to raise Medicare costs for all participants but provide protection from catastrophic illness has been in Ford's middle-American mind for a long time. The fear of major illness, Ford told his people, is not only held by the old folks. It is also a specter to their children, who must assume such burdens just at a time when their own families need the most help.

Between the terse, simple sentences, a careful reader can find even more of Ford's soul. He has suggested a line where Government responsibility should end, family responsibility begin. He has described where he believes basic support should be provided for those who cannot make it on their own, but he also has declared that beyond this point, the competitive instincts of free men and women should carry them as far as their ability will allow.

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