'This Is the Toughest'

By HUGH SIDNEY

There was a touch of Uncle Jerry about the President when he talked of Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter last week. Reagan was a professional performer. "That's been his life," mused Ford in the Oval Office. "He's been very skillful in picking several very emotional issues," he continued. "And the combination of his performance and the use of certain issues has generated a lot of public support... but I certainly hold no grudge against my Republican opponent, and I don't believe he does as far as I am concerned. I can remember some political campaigns that were rougher than this one ..." Too much TV, too much show biz? Ford was asked. "Well, I wouldn't put it that way," he said. "But I wish that we could get down to the real substantive issues and discuss them in detail." Ford wouldn't go for the traditional political debates. "Two candidates wrangling -that's what most of them end up being. I don't think they are too helpful. But questioning by knowledgeable, skillful people, I'd be glad to do that. I enjoy that."

"I'm a better President than a campaigner," Ford insisted. "I have a deep belief that the historians writing of the first 24 months will say that the decisions were good and the results were effective."

And Jimmy Carter? "It just doesn't seem to me that he's ready for this big league," said Ford. Right then in the Oval Office, it was so quiet the ticking of the grandfather clock sounded like a hammer. "I don't think he is dangerous," mused Ford. "I don't think he is focused on the complexities of the problems we have, or ready to face up to the hard decisions that have to be made." Didn't he like the Carter smile? "It doesn't bother me."

Defeat? "I have not even considered the possibility," Ford said. He had never talked it over with Betty or with the kids. No, he said, never. It was just out of his mind. But when pressed, he allowed as how he could be defeated and still hold his head up. "Oh sure, as long as I am convinced that what I've done while being here was right. And I have absolute confidence in the decisions I have made. If you feel you've done the right thing, defeat doesn't gnaw at you, it doesn't keep you from sleeping at night." He could go back to Grand Rapids, he nodded, if it were necessary.

Some 28 years and 14 campaigns ago he thought he might get beaten because he was running against a nine-year incumbent in the Congress. He beat him. "From that time on, I never had any race where I got less than 60% of the vote," he said, "This is the toughest." But within a month of becoming President he decided he would stay on the job, that it would take more than two years, "that I would stay and fight it out and get elected in November of 1976."

He could trace his current political dilemma all the way back to the first days when he came into the White House, Ford explained. He wanted from the start to get away from "the old politics, maybe start a new course where I could honestly say that I wasn't promising more than I was producing ... The whole tone was that I was going to do the best that I could without any relation to political consequences. I believe that I have followed that pretty well -made hard choices that weren't necessarily political choices."

A lot of people did not seem to understand his approach, admitted Ford. "Well, it is such an abrupt change from the old politics we have had for 40 years, they are not accustomed to it. They are accustomed to eight-point programs, or ten-point programs, that don't have any liabilities."

But that was not Reagan's style, was it? "What has he done?" Ford challenged. "He promised a $90 billion reduction in the federal budget. There is not a man in government or the news media that believes he can produce on that. There isn't one. That's a variation of the old politics, but it is the same thing.

"I'm the first to admit that I'm not an accomplished public speaker," Ford said about his inability to get across his message and rouse some of his audiences to fervor. "My own speechmaking ability from a text is not first class. Some of the texts have not been good. I've used that format, and the consequences are I have developed a bad reputation both as to speeches and presentation. I'm not sure the reputation is as bad as it's written about, but be that as it may, that is the way it is written."

There was no real anger against anybody. Not the primary system, not the press, not the world, although he could identify two jolts along the primary route -turning points, he called them -that had brought them to their current state. "One was North Carolina, the second Indiana." He lost both. "I don't like to lose," he said. "Don't get me wrong. But I've had enough experience in athletics to know you can lose. You have to take it like a man, can't lose your composure, have to figure out why you lost and try to correct it. I think we have benefited from these primary losses." And yet Ford says there will be no dramatic changes in people or speeches or strategy in his campaign. "I'm frank to admit, we have been outorganized, particularly in the convention states. That does not relate to my ability to speak or the speeches I make. That's just pure organization ... I have to spend the vast majority of my time running this office. The true candidates who are left spend almost all of their time in a campaign posture, so they have been better organized. But that doesn't excuse some mistakes we've made."

Ford's faith in his party is basically sound, perhaps dented. "There is a hard core in the party that is very dedicated but very much in the right wing. They get out and do the job, have deep feeling. But they don't represent the broad spectrum of the middle of the road, where I think most Americans are -most Americans in the Republican Party and most Americans in the Democratic Party. The tragedy is that part of the spectrum of the party don't have the same zeal to go to party caucuses, go to the conventions, even to get out the vote."

He has wondered often, he confessed, why the dramatic improvement in the economy has not yielded more political support for him. "I wish we could make people feel that what we've done has been beneficial to them ... The people in the middle [politically] are sort of apathetic. How to regenerate them -we haven't found an answer."

Ford sipped his iced tea. The afternoon light began to fade across the south lawn. He had had his ups and downs over the last week. He was a bit more tired than usual, just a shade more subdued. But he was still a believer. "I'm an optimist," he said. "It's a great thrill being President... Betty and I are well adjusted [to White House life]; the children have gotten along well; I think it has brought our family closer together. Our children have matured very well in the White House. It's been helpful to them. I'm absolutely enthusiastic about the job."

Would he be writing all this in a book some time? "I don't expect to for a few years," said Gerald Ford.

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