Trying to Shift the Spotlight

Soon after Jimmy Carter clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, Gerald Ford telephoned him at his Americana Hotel suite. The President congratulated Carter, and teasingly asked about his choice for Vice President. (Carter would not tell him.) Then Ford expressed his hope that the presidential race would be high-toned.

The President watched little of the convention on television. But he did read a special summary of each day's events, and it was clear that he was doing his best to draw attention away from the assembled Democrats in New York.

As Ford's White House week began, he greeted members of the Washington police department and the FBI who had pulled off two spectacular fake fencing operations. In both cases they set up storefronts and posed as hoods to buy stolen goods and then arrest the thieves (see THE LAW). The first operation was known as "the Sting" and the second as G.Y.A., for "Got Ya Again." Tuesday evening Ford flew to the All-Star baseball game in Philadelphia, keenly aware that ABC's televised broadcast of the game was expected to outdraw NBC'S and CBS's convention coverage. (Indeed, ABC dominated the evening with a rating of 27.1, compared with NBC's 5.4 and CBS's 5.9.) Despite his reputation for being poorly coordinated, Ford accurately tossed out two balls, one with his right hand, one with his left.

Wednesday morning Ford underwent his semiannual physical examination, and White House Physician Dr. William Lukash pronounced him in "excellent health." Later, to celebrate her husband's 63rd birthday, Betty Ford took him to the posh French restaurant Sans Souci. The rare public lunch proved to be a huge headache for the Secret Service but a field day for reporters (four of them feasted at a nearby table). Ford downed two martinis and a chefs salad; his wife sipped gin-and-tonics and ate Dover sole. The tab came to $25.36, and Betty Ford picked it up.

On Thursday, Ford began three hours of talks over two days with visiting West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, discussing NATO's southern flank, Communism in Western Europe and the world economic situation. Schmidt urged the President to resist pressures to withdraw U.S. troops from Europe. On Friday Ford went to Baltimore to visit Schmidt aboard the square-rigged West German ship Gorch Fock.

Ford also took one important step designed not to generate publicity but to improve it. Plagued by squabbles among his staff and an image as a weak leader, Ford shook up his publicity operation. Swedish-born Margita White, 39, taciturn director of the White House Office of Communications, was nominated to a seven-year term on the Federal Communications Commission. The President replaced her with David Gergen, 34, a former Nixon speechwriter and highly regarded special counsel to Ford, and made it clear that the Office of Communications would wield considerably more power; it is expected to grow from half a dozen professional staffers to as many as 20.

Gergen, who joined the Nixon White House in 1971, was brought in to improve coordination among Administration spokesmen. He will also continue to perform a delicate but important role--helping to sharpen the President's public statements. Ford, an uninspiring orator, has generally depended for his texts on his old friend and former congressional assistant, Robert Hartmann, Counsellor to the President and his chief speechwriter. Some critics have found Hartmann's drafts to be thin and full of platitudes. Gergen is expected to upgrade presidential pronouncements, though he will still not have direct authority over Hartmann.

Narrow Margin. If Hartmann was a bit nervous about Gergen's expanded role, Press Secretary Ron Nessen was a bit defensive about the newly fortified communications office. Some newsmen have harshly, often unfairly, criticized Nessen--an ex-TV news correspondent for NBC--for his lack of knowledge about White House thinking; some Republicans have accused him of undermining Rogers Morton, Ford's campaign director, whose tendency to put his foot in his mouth has sometimes made it difficult for the White House to support him. But Gergen insisted that his appointment was not designed to undercut anybody.

As Gergen put it to TIME'S Strobe Talbott: "We've all been concerned that the President's record, what he stands for and his vision for what he wants to do have not been getting through to the American public. This reorganization is an attempt to make the entire White House more professional in getting those messages across." Gergen's big problem, of course, is that the G.O.P. Convention is only three weeks off, and his boss still leads Challenger Ronald Reagan for the presidential nomination by an extremely narrow margin. At week's end Reagan won Utah's 20 delegates and Ford completed his sweep of Connecticut's 35. According to TIME'S latest reckoning, with 1,130 votes needed to win the nomination, Ford has 1,108 delegates and Reagan 1,090, with 61 undecided.

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