TEAM PLAYER MAKES GOOD

He is the prototypical Midwesterner --big, bluff, hearty, unassuming, everyone's favorite neighbor. Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr.--Eagle Scout, football hero, Yale Law School alumnus, 13-term Congressman, House minority leader, accidental President --never aspired to the office he inherited. Since Aug. 9, 1974, his strengths and faults have been on public display. If what makes Jimmy Carter tick still remains obscure to millions of Americans, Ford is no secret to anyone.

At this stage, Ford is unlikely to change his basic careful, conservative philosophy, but he has grown in office. He is less narrowly partisan than he was. Exposure to national and international problems has broadened his perspective. He no longer feels uncomfortable in the presence of such world leaders as West Germany's Helmut Schmidt and the Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev.

Ford is not often angry, but he is more easily irritated now than he was two years ago. He has realized the neccessity of rationing his time; when he is caught in open-ended discussions, he clenches his pipe firmly in his teeth--a sign of smoldering irritation. His infrequent outbursts are set off by issues that challenge his convictions. He startled an aide a few months ago by denouncing, in barracks-room language, Congressmen seeking to abolish covert activities of the CIA abroad.

Still, the friendly man from Grand Rapids has not let the White House go to his head. He would never experiment--as Richard Nixon briefly did --with dressing up the guards in comic-opera uniforms in the hope of evoking grandeur in the European manner.

If Ford is perceived as an honest and forthright man, a majority of Americans still do not feel he is a strong leader. After two years as President, he remains the slight underdog in a struggle with a man--all but unknown a year ago--who has no national record at all. Ford is not a dynamic President. He is sound, solid and steady--a known quantity. If his caution prevents him from providing exciting leadership, it also minimizes the risks. His composure is unlikely to crack under the strain of crisis. Ford was notably relaxed while handling the celebrated Mayaguez affair. "We've got a little crisis," he said casually to some visitors in the Oval Office. "I don't know why it is, but these crises always seem to occur on Monday."

But that does not mean he fails to show emotion. On the day that Army I, the presidential helicopter, lifted Richard Nixon away from the White House for the last time, Ford had to struggle to maintain his composure while he watched from the end of the red carpet on the lawn. During the hearings before his confirmation as Vice President, Ford testified in effect that it would not be proper for him--if he became President--to pardon Nixon. When Ford did just that by granting the pardon, he ended his honeymoon with the American people. But he and Nixon had worked out no "deal." Ford granted the pardon in part to get the Watergate mess out of the way and also because, quite simply, he felt it was the right thing to do. He felt a deep sense of compassion for the disgraced President.

Critics complain that Ford lacks compassion for America's unfortunates, noting that most of his 56 vetoes have been aimed at social welfare programs. But the vetoes reflect Ford's innate skepticism that big Government programs are the answer to society's shortcomings. Aides have often detected a hard edge to the President's voice in discussions of pending social legislation. One White House adviser describes him as "the kind of guy who would take his shirt off his back and give it to a poor kid he saw on the street and then walk in and veto the day care program."

The President's self-reliance and self-discipline have partially shielded him from an awareness that not everyone is capable of overcoming deprivation and performing a useful role in society. Then. too. the President's pals, like himself, are mostly upper-middle-class Americans who have achieved mightily. His closest golfing companions are Rodney Markley, a vice president of Ford Motor Co., and William G. Whyte, chief lobbyist for U.S. Steel Corp. Last week, in an admission that mildly embarrassed the President, Whyte said that his company had paid for five of Ford's golfing trips to New Jersey and Florida between 1964 and 1973 when he was a Congressman.

Ford's conservatism, like his candor, is deeply rooted in his background. Like Carter, he was brought up by strong-minded, warm parents who gave him a sense of confidence that he has retained throughout his life and that underlies his approach to the presidency. He has always been a superachiever who gets the most out of his native talents, which include a good but by no means brilliant mind and a knack for getting along with people, even those who oppose him. He is a team player par excellence; characteristically, he played the selfless position of center in football and did so well that his superjock record at the University of Michigan is now an important part of his persona, a probable political plus.

He never gives up. Rejected by Yale Law School (he had only a B average at Michigan), Ford stubbornly got a job coaching football and boxing at the university for three years before he was finally granted admittance. Once in a classroom, he grimly held his own, graduating in the upper third of his class. The first time he ran for public office --winning his congressional seat from Grand Rapids in 1948--he loved to campaign, to talk with people, relax with people, simply to be with people.

Ford was at home in the House of Representatives. He easily took to the traditions and the associations, the hearty camaraderie with its overtones of the locker room, the alliances formed and held to wage the good fight against the Democrats. "I am a child of the House," Ford would later say, and he was raised right, a superb team player who seems to have angered no one.

His bland exterior concealed a strong ambition and the confidence that he could fill any job on the horizon, including his ultimate goal: Speaker of the House. It is not his nature to seize power, but he readily accepted it when the opportunity came. Looking for a champion, a band of Republican young Turks easily persuaded Ford to join a revolt against the G.O.P. establishment. In 1963 Ford replaced Indiana's Charles Halleck as House minority leader. He performed better than many had expected--Ford has often exceeded people's expectations. Said G.O.P. Congressman Edward J. Derwinski: "He looks at you with a sad look in his eye, as if to say, 'Pal, I need you.' Sometimes you go along just to help an old pal."

Ford also revealed a new side of his character by becoming a relentless critic of the Democrats, while managing the neat trick of keeping his opponents' friendship. For all their differences, Speaker of the House Carl Albert declared: "He's a fine man to work with."

During his 25 years in the House, Ford established himself as a staunch conservative. He fought social welfare legislation and voted against federal aid to education, Medicare and anti-pollution programs. While he eventually backed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of" 1965, he initially endorsed weaker substitutes. For a while, he opposed federal open-housing laws. (Since becoming President he has mellowed considerably; he no longer opposes federal aid to education per se, and he advocates an insurance program against catastrophic illness.) In the House, Ford was also among the fiercest of hawks on Viet Nam --railing against President Lyndon Johnson for not prosecuting the war vigorously enough ("We're pulling our punches") and later supporting all of President Nixon's maneuvers, including voting against the amendment that banned U.S. bombing of Cambodia. A man who had worked his way through college by waiting on tables in his frat house, Ford had no use for the antiwar hippies and rioters of the '60s. Said he: "Today our so-called teach-ins a and peace demonstrations call for peace at any price, while the seeds of Communist atrocity take root. And yet the appeasers speak of morality." Ford supported a move in 1968 to cut off federal aid to college students who took part in campus disruptions.

In 1948 young Congressmen Ford and Nixon began a close friendship that was to influence the careers of both men. When Nixon became President, he could count on Ford to be his good soldier on the Hill. In 1969 Ford became Nixon's agent for a task of revenge. Liberal Democrats in the Senate had just turned down Nixon's nominations of Clement F. Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court. In retaliation, Ford called for the impeachment of Associate Justice William O. Douglas, one of the most liberal members of the court. Among other--charges, Ford accused Douglas of advocating, in a book titled Points of Rebellion, the revolutionary overthrow of "the Establishment." A special House subcommittee voted that there were no grounds to impeach Douglas, though Ford argued that "an impeachable offense is whatever the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history"--an embarrassing assertion for Nixon, it was to turn out.

When Spiro Agnew resigned the vice presidency in 1973, Nixon could confidently turn to Ford as a man of unswerving loyalty--someone the beleaguered President desperately needed --and a deep-dyed conservative who agreed with his policies. As expected, Ford soldiered on long after he might have turned silent. On Aug. 3, 1974, just six days before the President finally quit, Ford was saying, "I still believe the President is innocent of any impeachable offense." But by then, Ford had been told by White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig about the secret tapes that showed Nixon had covered up Watergate from the beginning.

Ford's basic conservatism, so well displayed on the Hill, prevented him from dealing with the problems of the economy swiftly or forcefully enough. He lost some prestige when he flip-flopped on taxes, first urging an increase to fight inflation (like a good Rotarian, he sported his WIN button--Whip Inflation Now). Then, going the other way, he agreed to a tax cut.

Confronted with the debacle in Viet Nam, Ford reacted in a manner that reflected a stubborn, even bellicose streak in his character. Though the war clearly was lost, he demanded another $722 million for military aid, implying that Congress would be to blame if it did not provide the funds and Viet Nam fell. The humiliation in Viet Nam was still on Ford's mind when he reacted strongly a month later by sending in a strike force to liberate the freighter Mayaguez, which had been captured by the Cambodians. The 39 crewmen had been freed unharmed by the time the shooting started. But 38 Americans were killed and 50 wounded in the operation, which Ford directed personally, once even ordering a strafing mission.

During the 1974 congressional elections, Ford became his old partisan self, claiming that unless the Republicans captured more seats in both Houses of Congress, it could mean "the destruction of the two-party system." But perhaps the most unpresidential actions by Ford were his zigs and zags last spring to stand off the challenge of Ronald Reagan. For once in his career, Ford seemed close to panic--dashing around the country and trying to out-Reagan Reagan on such issues as defense and detente.

When Reagan won a clutch of primaries, Ford told some congressional leaders, "Anybody who gets the impression we're going to quit is crazy as hell." Ford finally settled down, and his victory in Kansas City left him eager to take on Jimmy Carter. Says White House Photographer David Kennerly, a Ford favorite: "It's not that he has any personal animosity toward Carter. He just thinks he is better equipped to run the country than Carter."

Some of Ford's best and brightest assets in the campaign are the members of his family, who are eagerly barnstorming the country trying to extend his career. They were not always so enthusiastic. During his years in Congress Ford's constant--and willing--travels to help fellow Republicans imposed a burden on his wife Betty, which he only partially eased by flying home late at night when possible. Betty faced the task of raising four children alone. Her problems were worsened when she suffered a pinched nerve in her neck, which plagues her periodically. When pain-killing drugs proved unsatisfactory, she consulted a psychiatrist for a time.

Ford's three sons, aware of the pain their mother endured, resented their father's absences. Daughter Susan simply missed him. After the 1964 campaign, Susan, then 7, scrawled a poignant crayoned welcome, which her father found taped to the front door: "A party for are Dady. Hello Daddy we are so glad to see you home again. Hello Dad from Susan." Some unhappiness with politics still lingers. Jack, Steve and Susan have all said recently that although they hope their father wins, they would prefer to lead a more normal life outside the fishbowl of the White House.

In part because they are so closely knit, the Fords do not hesitate to have open discussions that occasionally produce disagreements. The President and his wife differ, for example, on abortion; Ford is personally opposed to abortions and to the use of government funds to finance them, and he favors a constitutional amendment permitting the states to decide whether or not abortions should be allowed. Betty Ford believes abortion is a private matter that should be decided by a woman and her physician. A family friend asserts that Ford's easy relationship with his wife and children helps the President maintain a healthy perspective: "His family hammers at him. They don't always fall in line with what he believes."

Ford's religious convictions are strong. An Episcopalian, he regularly attends Sunday services and a weekly Oval Office prayer session with two congressional friends, Minnesota's Albert Quie and Arizona's John Rhodes. These informal prayer meetings are never publicly announced. Says Quie: "The President feels very strongly about keeping his religious beliefs private. He feels that otherwise it would look like he was trying to use religion for political gain."

When Betty was hospitalized for a mastectomy, the President and his son Mike, a divinity student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, prayed and read the Bible together on a helicopter en route to her bedside. Ford's friendship with the Rev. Billy Zeoli, a flamboyant evangelist who spends his autumn Sundays conducting chapel services for professional football teams, adds a dash of evangelical fervor to the President's restrained Episcopalianism. Each week, Zeoli, a resident of Grand Rapids who has known Ford for 15 years, sends the President a memo containing a passage of Scripture and a personal prayer.

Ford's ponderous, deliberate manner has naturally raised questions in the public mind about his intelligence. Unlike Jimmy Carter, he is not a quick study, but he plows through his homework and retains the facts. Before making a decision, he consults with a wide range of advisers--trusted White House aides such as John Marsh, Robert Hartmann and Philip Buchen--as well as former congressional cronies Senator Robert Griffin and Congressmen Rhodes and Barber Conable. Ford rarely reveals his own views, and no single adviser can ever be certain how much weight the President gives his words.

He is unafraid to question his counselors. In contrast to Johnson and Nixon, Ford does not have a psychological need to seek reassurance from subordinates. His tranquillity and self-confidence are reflected in his frank assessment of his own strengths and weaknesses. "It doesn't bother him to say 'I don't know,' " observes White House Aide Michael Duval. Much to the distress of some of his advisers, Ford has been largely content to allow Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to dominate the headlines on foreign affairs. "He just doesn't feel the need to compete with Henry," says a senior aide.

One of Ford's great weaknesses is a tendency to surround himself with men who do not have the traditional passion for anonymity so necessary for effective service in the White House. Feuds between bickering staffers have afflicted his Administration from the beginning, contributing to an impression of general disarray.

The President agonizes over these internal disputes and confides to intimates that he finds it hard to discipline his staff. "He's not tough enough," complains a senior adviser. "He's too nice a human being, and some people around here take advantage of him." Moreover. Ford, accustomed to the informality of Congress, never had to administer a large staff before. He is uncomfortable with bureaucracy and finds military-style staff operations unnatural.

Adversity does not deter Ford--he has lost too often for that. In his senior year, the Michigan football team dropped all but one game. While he was the minority leader in the House, Ford was defeated time and again. He does not brood about a failure, nor does he second-guess himself after making a decision. His mind just does not work that way, and never has. He is simple and direct, and by nature optimistic, a feeling understandably reinforced by the experience of his own life. Ten years ago --five years ago--it would have been inconceivable to think Jerry Ford could ever become the President of the U.S. He made it to the White House by playing the game and having some luck. He thinks he will stay there.

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