The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

Starring this week in Grand Rapids: Chevy Chase, Pat Paulsen, Robert Klein, Art Buchwald, Mort Sahl, Mark Russell and Jerry Ford.

Grand Rapids? Jerry Ford? "Having a humor seminar at the Gerald Ford Museum is overstating the obvious," snorts Russell, who plans to do a duet with Betty Ford. "If you want laughs, you go to Grand Rapids."

Of course. Chevy Chase in his tux intends to perform his Ford-the-Klutz routine of stumbling and bumping, the old Saturday Night Live act that helped catapult him to national notice. "But I've got to be careful," warns Chase. "I've got a couple of squashed disks in my back now, and I can't take falls like I used to." When Ford first called to ask him to join in the presidential hilarity, Chase thought there had been a mistake. "After all, I'd been pretty mean."

No mistake. "Presidents are sitting ducks," says Ford. "You don't like to hear what they say or see what they draw, but it is stupid to fight it. You have to relax and laugh."

So he did. And last year he decided that humor was a great presidential virtue that needed more study. So he scheduled a serious (sort of) symposium at his museum titled "Humor and the Presidency," then began badgering comics, cartoonists, gag writers and anybody else who had laughed with him--or at him. Ford's pitch: You guys made your living off me; now you owe me one.

They couldn't say no. Wednesday they will roll into Grand Rapids by plane, flivver, oxcart and unicycle for two days of laughs and an occasional serious thought if they can't stop it before it gets out.

"I'm going to get up and tell them not to analyze humor," deadpans Paulsen. "Then I'm going to my room. I've been denying I'd run for President since 1967. But I'm mayor of Asti, Calif. (pop. 7), now. That's a stepping city to the presidency." Ford's former press secretary Ron Nessen has put together a film of Ford falling down the plane ramp, announcing the swine flu vaccine program, falling on the ski slopes, liberating Poland in the debate with Carter, and showing off his WIN (Whip Inflation Now) button. "The media got those things all wrong," chortles Nessen. "Take the ramp incident. There's Ford down on all fours. He was just doing what the Pope does."

The rest of the country will hear about the goings-on in Grand Rapids. Good Morning, America is moving in. HBO plans a show. Arbor House is scheduling a book. The President's foundation gets the profit from the $500 dinner tickets and $10-to-$25 tickets to the public sessions.

Washington political satirists, the Capitol Steps, will be on tap: "Hark, when Gerald Ford was king,/ We were bored with everything./ Unemployment 6%./ What a boring President./ Nothing major needed fixin'/ So he pardoned Richard Nixon." House Speaker Tip O'Neill is coming from the capital. Mercifully, he promises not to sing. Ford will wander in with his old football helmet under his arm, the one Lyndon Johnson claimed Ford never wore.

"It really is nice to have an ex-President give us this legacy," says the Chicago Tribune's deft cartoonist Jeff MacNelly, who harpooned Ford relentlessly. MacNelly has a long-hidden confession: "I was the only living cartoonist in Salzburg when Ford fell down the plane ramp. My only thought was 'Gee, I hope he didn't hurt himself.' When I got back to the U.S., every other cartoonist had had a field day. I never did catch up."

There will be stuff on the history of cartooning and how Presidents have handled humor down through the years. Pollster Richard Wirthlin will tell how laughter can ease national pain. Bob Orben, one of Ford's former gag writers, may be the one to put it all in perspective. As he packed his wit and headed for Grand Rapids, Orben noted, "I'm afraid of people who don't laugh."