Ford: Lewinsky Affair Did Not Damage Office

Former U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, the Heffernan visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics (IOP), said yesterday in a campus press conference that President Clinton's extramarital affair with Monica S. Lewinsky threatened the institution of the presidency, but did not damage it.

On the last day of his stay at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (KSG), Ford, who was trailed by six Secret Service agents, met with student leaders and the campus press in a series of breakfast and lunch get-togethers.

In the discussions, Ford expanded on remarks he had made in a public speech at the KSG's ARCO Forum on Tuesday.

"The presidency has been undercut, [but] the presidency is strong enough so that there will not be a permanent damage," he said.

But Ford criticized those defenders of the president who argue that Clinton's transgression with Lewinsky is a private matter.

"I disagree," Ford said. "Anything that takes place in the Oval Office and the White House is open for public disclosure," Ford said.

Ford, who had urged Congress to censure Clinton in a series of opinion pieces he wrote for The New York Times, raised the possibility that a future Congress may reverse Clinton's impeachment.

"Another Congress could conceivably undo the impeachment indictment," he said.

Ford, a Republican, offered a positive spin on the possible candidacy of Elizabeth H. Dole for his party's presidential nomination, noting that Dole had served in his administration as a member of the Federal Aviation Administration.

"I think she is not only able, but she had good experience [in government,]" he said. When the primary season begins next spring, "I think she'll surprise [the other Republican candidates] and get a significant number of votes."

As he did in Tuesday night's speech, Ford criticized some members of the Republican party for embracing what he called the "hard right."

"I hope that our next candidate will espouse policies that are more to the middle than to the right," he said. "If the Republican Party in the next election is captured by the hard, hard right, they are guaranteed to lose the election."

He listed the candidates he said were to the right of the center, including J. Danforth Quayle, Lamar Alexander and Patrick J. Buchanan, and conservative Gary L. Bauer, "who I never heard of before" the race, he said.

Ford also discussed campaign fundraising, noting that when he was an office-holding politician in the 1970s, "soft money didn't exist."

"[It] has just totally distorted the current fundraising legislation," he said.

He also advised Americans not to be cynical about their politicians.

"I think it's wrong to start with the assumption that all politicians are crooked," he said.

The 85-year-old former Commander-in-Chief left the KSG at 1:30 p.m. yesterday.