Honeymooning With the Bathrobed Man

IN AN EFFORT to straighten out some points about President Gerald Ford, a panel discussion was organized to include a number of journalists from the nation's leading newspapers and magazines. Excerpts follow:

Moderator: Gentlemen, there have been some rumors going around lately about our new president that we thought you might help to clear up. First of all, it has been said of late that President Ford is an unwavering friend of the Pentagon and is firmly opposed to any and all cuts in the defense budget. Does the president's record in the House of Representatives support that statement?

Time Magazine Reporter: I don't know if the record supports that, but I do know, and I know this for a fact, that it supports the statement that Mr. Ford gets up at sunrise every day to cook his own breakfast. As a matter of fact, last Thursday, the day when Nixon resigned, he got up at 5:30 a.m., came out in blue bathrobe, picked up his Washington Post, and went inside to cook some scrambled eggs for himself and his son Steve.

Moderator: Yes, I see. OK, we have also heard that Mr. Ford has a less-than-positive record on civil rights, and that he has voted for rights bills only after trying to weaken them by adding harmful amendments. Is there any truth to that rumor?

Wall Street Journal Reporter: Maybe so, but I know that just the other day the president called up Congressman Charlie Rangel, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, to arrange to have a meeting. He called Rangel himself. Charlie's secretary was sitting at her desk when the phone rang. She picked it up, and when she heard it was the president on the other end, she put her hand over the mouthpiece, like this, and said to a fellow office worker, "You're not going to believe this, but it's the president on the phone."

Moderator: Very interesting. Another question, gentlemen. Have any of you come across reports that throughout his congressional career Mr. Ford opposed funds for public education?

New York Times Reporter: If he did so, I'm sure he did it with the utmost candor and integrity, exuding a self-assurance and even-handedness that have helped to establish a widespread and deeply-rooted faith in his honesty. What's more, I was talking the other day to a steelworker in Indianapolis. He had to talk loudly because of the noise of the steaming blast furnaces that were spewing forth their glaring sparks a few yards away. He had very heavy eyebrows, and the T-shirt covering his thick chest was soiled with sweat. "You know," he said, "this guy Ford is real candid..."

L.A. Times Reporter: Sorry to interrupt, but we gotta go.

Moderator: Go? Where to?

L.A. Times Reporter: We're booked on a flight to Niagara Falls. Jerry made plane and hotel reservations for all of us, and we don't want to disappoint him...

Reading the national newspapers and news magazines in the week since Gerald Ford became president has been like glancing at a notice in big black letters: CLOSED FOR HONEYMOON. At this crucial point of political transformation in Washington, we eagerly look to journalists to continue the superb reporting that has characterized the Watergate era. Instead, we are assaulted by a swarm of sugary platitudes that would lead us to believe that Shirley Temple has just been installed as our 38th president. Rather than reading about Gerald Ford's congressional record on civil rights, his position on welfare, his views on economics and foreign affairs, we get the scoop on Betty Ford's wardrobe, stories about Jerry's jut-jawed years as a college football player, vignettes of ex-neighbors in the president's home town, and inside reports on the crowds gathered in Lafayette Park across from the White House.

A honeymoon between a newly-installed president and the press is traditional, and reporters have referred to it openly (and jokingly) in their stories of the past week. A trial period for a new man in office is only fair, of course--he must be allowed time to prove himself. Thus, in a now-famous 1968 cartoon for The Washington Post, Herblock captioned an empty barbershop chair, "Everyone who enters this shop receives a clean shave," signaling the suspension of a long-held grudge against incoming President Richard Nixon.

But removing the surface whiskers that have grown as a result of past conflicts and struggles should not mean obliterating the entire face. We want to be familiar with all its features, both beauty marks and blemishes, so that we won't be forced to deal with a stranger. Yes, the press must be fair, but to its readership as much as to the president.

The public certainly deserves better than recent articles in The New York Times dismissing Ford's extremely conservative 25-year House record as secondary in importance to his pragmatism and spirit of cooperating. An article last Sunday describing Ford as a "hard-line, Pentagon-oriented cold warrier" and citing his "stinginess toward domestic social programs" (including fights against Medicare, housing bills, minimum wage raises, mass transit funds, and the poverty program), goes on to declare that "in spite of his votes, his partisanship and his public appearance, Mr. Ford had the foresight and flexibility to make some necessary changes in the Republican way of doing things in Congress." His naming of certain moderates to a Republican research committee is taken as sufficient evidence to "suggest a willingness to compromise, as President, in the spirit of his 25 years as Congressman."

A TIMES EDITORIAL on the day of Ford's inauguration takes a similar tack, minimizing his record (termed "far to the right of center") because, in the article's words, "whatever limitations that record may suggest...there is little question that Mr. Ford brings a dogged determination to the Oval Office. From the playing fields of Ann Arbor to the grinding hours he logged in Air Force Two serving the Republican party and defending its leader, Mr. Ford has displayed enduring grit." ("Let them eat grit," Marie Antoinette once said.)

The Wall Street Journal handles Ford's harsh line toward civil rights legislation with kid gloves. In last Friday's issue Norman Miller, after discussing Ford's views on race relations, pardoned Ford's attitudes as due mainly to "pragmatism." As House minority leader, writes Miller, Ford, by maneuvering his colleagues, "enabled the GOP to accumulate Dixiecrat IOUs that Mr. Ford could call in on other bills."

Time Magazine was guilty of perhaps the worst ordering of priorities. Its lead story on Ford, entitled "A Man for This Season," traces his rise from a humble Michigan childhood to the most powerful office in the world. "Gerald Ford is Middle America," Time declares, and "his roots reach deeply, tenaciously into the thrifty, hard-toiling community of Grand Rapids." We follow Ford's path from his days as a waiter during the depression, his career as a B student at the University of Michigan, his years as a law student and football coach at Yale, where he almost married a model ("Nothing quite so frivolous has since intruded on his well-regulated life," we are assured), through his election to Congress in 1948 and his ascension to the House minority leadership. Only after this tidal wave of anecdote are we given any glimpse of Ford's political attitudes, and then it comes in the form of a separate box and provided with less than half the space devoted to his biography. Meanwhile, four pages of color photos depict Gerald Ford eating breakfast with his family, swimming in his pool, making a speech against the backdrop of a tremendous American flag, and relaxing with his wife.

In these few samples selected from a large number of similar articles, tone is championed over talk, mood over fact, surface over substance. James Reston spoke for most of the national press when he wrote in last Sunday's New York Times that "in the Federal capital, the character and style of the President, whoever he is, determines the attitudes of the Cabinet, the Civil Service, the Congress and the press." How many times have we read the unvarying elements of Gerald Ford's "character and style"--candor, integrity, fairness, sincerity, Grand Rapids roots, family, breakfast, bathrobe, swimming--and all at the expense of an in-depth look at what the man really stands for and how his mind really works. We want to know about his civil rights record, in addition to hearing about his plain-spokenness. We want to know about his past views on the economy, in addition to learning whether or not he ate English muffins.

What we are witnessing in this honeymoon period is barroom journalism come to the White House. With all of the glitter and gold, pathos and drama, tragedy and comedy that have enveloped the events of the past month, the presidency has taken on a color that in the past was found only in places such as bars and brothels. The deep wrinkles of a drunkard's face, the foul language of a brawny bartender, the sad eyes of a wasted whore are replaced by the president's level gaze, by the only glimmer from the chandeliers in the inaugural hall, by Martin Lefkowitz as the munches on a chicken wing in a park outside the White House, muttering, "Yep, Ford's gonna be all right."

Stories written about bars become tiresome after a while. The faces, the cigarette smoke, the chatter and chintzy music tend to blend into an indistinct, sickly blather. And the same, hopefully, will happen with what has become the "in" bar in Washington, the White House. Then, perhaps, the American public will learn what the new president is really like.