A Ford, not a Lincoln

Posted by William Neikirk at 6:05 a.m. CST

So many stories have been produced in the past week putting Gerald R. Ford's presidency in perspective. He was a creature of Congress thrown into the maelstrom of Watergate, and he helped heal the country.

Unable to get more money for the war effort, he presided over the end of America's involvement in Vietnam. He was strong on international human rights and nuclear arms curtailment.

He was not always perfect. But his essential decency and humility, so disarmingly fetching for the world's most powerful man, gave his presidency the great lift that his oratory and rather ordinary demeanor could not.

In this 1975 interview in the Oval Office, President Ford tells Tribune reporters and editors that being nice doesn't make him weak, and that he wants more money for Vietnam.

Though he could talk about heavy matters, there was a lightness about him, lightness in the good sense. You felt you could ask him any question, even rude or embarrassing ones, and it wouldn't phase or anger him.

I covered the Ford administration as a reporter for the Tribune, and had a chance to speak with him a few times. It was like speaking to your brother or sister or a friend. The picture above is from an interview that the Chicago Tribune had with him on Feb. 6, 1975, roughly six months into his presidency.

We were still trying to size up Ford's presidency at the time, and he was still trying to get past some major problems. By this time, he had pardoned Richard Nixon, and still suffering criticism from it. But he was also trying to develop an energy program and get the economy moving again, while dealing with the thorny problem of Vietnam.

Many people thought he was plodding and inarticulate, and wooden on television, even though reporters who covered him genuinely liked him. That personal warmth translated with a lot of Americans, but at the time those of us schooled in conventional wisdom discounted these qualities in an electoral sense.

This interview told me a lot about Ford. He could be firm while being nice. He could also be wrong about things. In this interview, he defended his administration's plan to keep funding Vietnam economically and militarily for another three years, not exactly a popular idea at the time.

He told us that the U.S. ambassador in South Vietnam had assured him that three years would be enough to save the country. In fact, only a few months later, Saigon fell, a painful moment for the U.S. On the other hand, it was fortuitous in another sense. The country got past the Vietnam era, just as Ford had helped us get through Watergate.

Also in this interview, our White House correspondent, the late Aldo Beckman, quizzed him on how his reputation as a nice guy might cause others, including members of Congress, to take advantage of him.

"I don’t see how being a nice guy there has any importance," Ford answered. "I can get along with people and still seriously differ with them. I did that in Congress. That doesn't destroy my personal relationship with them. But that friendship doesn't permit them to roll me over, and I can say no to them just as easily as I can say to some person I don't like, and there aren't many I don't like. But I don't see any problem because I am alleged to be a nice guy in trying to get action out of Congress."

We asked if he were too nice to fire holdover Nixon people, as had been rumored. "I don't like to cut someone off in a brutal way, but I have never hesitated to do it when I thought it was necessary," he responded.

There were rumors that Nixon might want to campaign for Ford in the 1976 election, and we wondered if he welcomed that (a naughty little question). His answer was highly diplomatic, since Nixon had refused Ford's request that he apologize for his role in Watergate. "I am not going to advocate or oppose it," he said of Nixon's proposed campaigning. "It is up to his judgment." This seemed to be a clever signal to Nixon--please don't. So much for straight talk. Ford could be subtle, too.

There were reports that some Republican senators were thinking of running against him in the 1976 race (later Ronald Reagan did). "It doesn't bother me, because No. 1, there isn't much I can do about it. People have ambitions, and I respect it. It is a free country." This was certainly a nice, aw shucks answer, but at the time it was hard to believe it did not bother him.

We also asked if Donald Rumsfeld, his chief of staff, was picking the Cabinet and not himself, since Rumsfeld was heavily involved in the process. "I am picking the new Cabinet, or changes in the Cabinet," Ford said, setting the record straight. But Rumsfeld later became his defense secretary and a young Rumsfeld friend, Richard Cheney, took over as chief of staff.

I look back upon those times and I realize that Ford made a much different impact on the country than I realized at the time. Though he has been justly eulogized over the past week as a decent human being who healed the country, he had his struggles, too. It was not all perfection. Reagan saw weakness and thought Ford could be beaten, and ran a tough race. At first Ford turned the other cheek, but as the campaign grew more intense, he, too, went on the attack.

Being a nice guy is a grand and a wonderful thing to see in a president. But Ford showed, too, that he could be a tough partisan and political infighter when he was forced into a corner. Those Midwestern values didn't always show when self-preservation was at stake. That's the way it is in politics.