Ford Drives for '76

Would he or wouldn't he run for President? That question has been debated on and off ever since Gerald Ford became the first appointed Chief Executive under the 25th Amendment. Although the President has often said that he would be a candidate in 1976, doubts have persisted. Last week, with former California Governor Ronald Reagan increasingly looking as if he might challenge Ford, the President grasped the reality that he must act more forcefully like a candidate and start a campaign organization rolling.

Thus, the President moved to give his most definitive answer to date on the question of his own candidacy. Yes indeed he would run, he said at his press conference, although he stopped just short of a formal declaration. "I intend to be a candidate. I believe that I have the best opportunity to solidify the Republican Party, getting strength from both the right as well as the left within the Republican spectrum, and to put on a good campaign against the individual that the Democratic Party nominates."

The day after Ford's press conference, a newly formed steering committee met to start mapping strategy. The committee is a careful blending of G.O.P. factions. Representing the party's right wing are Dean Burch, who was a key strategist in Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, and Richard L. Herman, former national committeeman from Nebraska. From the left are former Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton and Robert Douglass, a New York attorney who is close to Nelson Rockefeller. In the center are Bryce Harlow, an old White House hand (now a lobbyist for Procter & Gamble) who was an adviser to Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon; former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, a longtime congressional ally of Ford's; and another old friend, Leon Parma, group executive for Teledyne, Inc. in San Diego, who served as the top staffer on the G.O.P. congressional campaign committee for twelve years.

Biggest Threat. The first meeting failed to name a campaign director. Laird was everybody's first choice, but he declined, preferring to stay on as a troubleshooter for The Reader's Digest Association Inc. Another possibility is Donald Rumsfeld, White House chief of staff. Rumsfeld might be reluctant to give up his powerful post for the rigors of managing a tough campaign, but if he thought the President was in serious danger of losing, he would probably make the plunge. George Bush, chief of the U.S. liaison office hi Peking, has also been mentioned. An adroit U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for two years, Bush won broad popularity within his party for the tact and loyalty he demonstrated as national chairman in the worst days of Watergate. A third candidate is Herman, who won his organizational spurs by deftly moving the 1972 G.O.P. National Convention to Miami Beach from San Diego, where it had fallen under the cloud of the ITT contribution scandal.

Looking ahead, Ford's campaign advisers discern the biggest threat from the right. Reagan is traveling around the country and obliquely criticizing the President for his budget deficit, his compromises with Congress on spending and his fairly liberal Cabinet appointments. The conservative Californian has logged approximately 65,000 miles in visits to 30 states. He is also given wide exposure by a twice-weekly column carried by 195 newspapers and a radio broadcast every weekday over 274 stations. Among nine candidates in the latest Gallup poll, Reagan got 22% of the Republican vote, v. Ford's 34%.

Presidential advisers are encouraged by private polls that show Ford's approval rating rising in areas that he has visited, for example, Topeka, Kans., and heavily Democratic Miami. In a nationwide sampling the President did not score very well with older voters, perhaps because of inflation, but he got a surprising 53% approval rating from people aged 18 to 24. "He needs this eye-to-eye, face-to-face, hand-to-hand contact," says presidential Counsellor Robert Hartmann. "The more the better. He can read Shakespeare to people if he wants to. But he has to get out there."

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