Courting Bear Hugs and Invitations
By Hugh Sidey
Washington is becoming Gerald Ford's town.
The city has not belonged to a President since 1966, when L.B.J. lost it over Viet Nam. But last week the capital cared what Ford did and said, and where he went and who was there.
One of the subtle but important dimensions of governing is to capture the rapt attention of Washington--an organism that can discourage and thwart presidential ambitions, or encourage and help them. Nixon could have reigned had he wanted to. But Nixon considered Washington his enemy. When he needed help the city did not want him. Ford was Nixon's man, and at first was given only the cool rites of official protocol and power. Now, he is becoming something on his own.
Ford's new presence has been built on many things--his big smile, his astonishing honesty and openness, the realization by many that his pardon of Nixon may have been more right than wrong (because it helped refocus the nation's attention on other problems), his program on the economy, which has forced the hostile Congress to move, his energy program, and his quick and successful response to the Mayaguez hijacking. Whether he has been right or wrong in his decisions is
not so important as the fact he has been there, the prime actor in all these dramas.
Such acceptance is a fragile thing, of course, easily swept away in the morning mists by the caprices of Arabs or Asians or even one of the Capitol Hill dragons, like Mississippi Senator James Eastland. But right now Ford has pre-empted Georgetown dinner talk, set covetous social climbers to plotting White House entries, and made Congressmen and influence peddlers worry about what is on his mind.
"I got bear-hugged by the President," beamed Jack Valenti last week. Valenti, now the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, used to experience such cordial acts all the time, when he was Johnson's confidant. After his White House days, such moments did not occur that often, and Valenti might have run the other way had he seen Nixon headed toward him. But when Ford traveled across Lafayette Park to see Candice Bergen in a picture about Teddy Roosevelt's days called The Wind and the Lion, Valenti's beaming puss was captured for the morning readers right alongside Ford's. "It was just great," he said.
Robin West was a young man who fled the Nixon White House in horror when he saw what was happening. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress back in Pennsylvania and then was asked back to the White House under Gerald Ford. "Why in hell would you want to work for Jerry Ford?" he was asked at dinner last fall. Now he does not need to explain. "It must be fun," a friend told him the other night.
The Washington Post played the formal white-tie dinner for the Shah of Iran as if Jackie Kennedy had given it. Even Reporter Sally Quinn, late of CBS and a kind of Catherine the Great of the Post newsroom, took enthusiastic notice in a lengthy and detailed article on the Shah's interlude in Ford's Washington. And one White House aide said with some pride that "the power brokers damned near broke down the White House door trying to get invitations to the Ford dinner."
Ski clothing manufacturers claim that sales are up because of Ford's well-publicized skiing interest. Pipe and tobacco dealers have visibly benefited. The old-fashioned martini is again an honorable drink after the long, dark season of the daiquiri (Kennedy), low-calorie root beer (Johnson) and skimmed milk (Nixon).
Ford's office is inundated by requests for appearances anywhere and everywhere. Congressmen plead and threaten for audiences. And in the mail the other day came a dispatch from Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist who has performed verbal lobotomies on many of the world's great men, the newswoman who warmly coaxed Henry Kissinger into describing himself as a kind of diplomatic Lone Ranger. Oriana Fallaci has found a place in her crowded schedule to request an interview with Jerry Ford.
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