Pork, Patronage and Promises

Gerald Ford is playing the jolly Santa Claus, like any other incumbent who wishes to stay in office for some more presidential Christmases. As shrewdly and crudely as Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon ever did, he is doling out patronage and pork to goad, frighten and lead Republicans to support him.

Shortly before the New Hampshire primary, Ford said that he intended to retain the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which the Defense Department had threatened to close. He announced to hard-pressed New England fishermen that he would fight to extend the territorial limit from twelve miles to 200 miles. He appointed New Hampshire's attorney general, Warren Rudman, chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Rudman comes from Nashua, a city crucial to Ford's victory.

On the stump in Florida, Ford claimed credit for helping Orlando land the 1978 International Chamber of Commerce convention. He promised that Brevard County would get "excellent consideration" as a site for a federal solar-research center. By funny happenstance, too, just before last week's election, the Air Force awarded an Orlando company a $33.6 million contract for missiles, and the Department of Transportation granted $15 million to launch a rapid-transit system for Dade County. In addition, Ford courted the Cuban vote by ordering more immigration officials to Miami to accelerate naturalization proceedings. He wooed conservatives by strongly suggesting to one of their leaders, Jerry Thomas, the party's 1974 gubernatorial candidate, that he would be named an Under Secretary of the Treasury.

The President carried a nice bag of gifts into Illinois. He gladdened farmers by proposing to raise the estate top exemption for family farms from $60,000 to $150,000. Despite his own pleas for cutting the federal budget, he also advocated more Government spending for agricultural animal research. And in Peoria, when a worried questioner asked why the Air Force was eliminating its ROTC program at Bradley University, Ford said he was "disgusted" by that "incomprehensible" step, and "we will do our darndest to rectify the error."

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