The 'Ordinary Man' as President
GRAFF, HENRY F.
A PRINCE OFSERENDIP? The Ordinary Man' as President by henry f. graff The popular perception of Gerald R. Ford's advent as President is, of course, inextricably intertwined with Richard M....
...Truman succeeded an immortal figure who had died in the Easter season just outside the Promised Land of victory over the Axis...
...But the work was mine to do, and I had to do it...
...These accounts are in an old tradition, although never more incandescent than now: The public everlastingly expects a fresh President to be a wonder-worker...
...in addressing the world, he does not have, as Truman had, a navy without rival or exclusive possession of the atomic bomb...
...Ford presents a picture of a man who shuns grandiosity and has no side...
...A great place, Wright City," Truman shot back, "it went for me in '48...
...The advantage for Ford is immeasurable...
...Even in his resignation speech, Nixon could not refrain from telling his listeners: "This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office...
...Self-confident, self-disciplined and generally united, the people were raring to go...
...President, did you know Reinie here also comes from the Ozarks...
...Americans are also weary of chiefs who wear glasses but who scheme to hide this terrible fact from the public, and we have had three such Presidents in a row...
...That dull task belongs to the chroniclers and compilers...
...But they have never discovered a formula for determining the skill of the driver in advance of his performance on the job, and in the case of Gerry Ford, restraint in judgment may be safer than exuberantly optimistic predictions...
...Like Ford, he was a child of the Hill, with a reputation for getting along with colleagues that far surpassed his reputation for generating new ideas...
...Truman came to power when America was at the zenith of its might and majesty...
...The day of the big Presidents may, in fact, have passed...
...Americans know that their history rides on tracks laid during several hundred years by millions of people...
...The issues confronting Chief Executives in our time are so overwhelming they make even big men look small...
...Like Ford, Truman had to self-prepare for taking over the Presidency...
...The company needed no one to point out the contrast between the worlds in which the two men had made their fame...
...Although stuck with television, Ford need not make it either a straitjacket or a personal toy...
...Among the guests was Reinhold Niebuhr, and as the table was being cleared the host remarked: "Mr...
...One effect of the lenses he wore was to magnify his eyes so that he gave the impression of being more seeing, indeed more far-seeing, than other people-An unplanned political dividend in return for simple personal honesty...
...Americans are tired of leaders incessantly building their own pyramids...
...They also know the man in the driver's cab can make a powerful difference in the pace of their travel, the joy of their ride, and the way they take the bumps...
...Years earlier, when Truman first arrived in Washington as a freshman senator from Missouri, a lawyer for a Congressional committee invited him to an open house at the home of Justice and Mrs...
...I recall standing in front of the Old Senate Office Building in 1945 a few hours before Harry Truman was to make his first Presidential address to a joint session of Congress, and inquiring of a Capitol policeman if he knew where I could get a ticket of admission...
...Besides, this restraint may be more useful to the President than accolades not yet earned...
...Like Ford, too, he spoke straight from the shoulder in Midwestern idiom (in his early days as President he appeared to entertain the ready solutions to problems that men hear from their barbers...
...For the first time in a long generation the establishment of another Presidential library-A Nixon Library-is in doubt...
...But recognizing his limitations, he brought some of the best intellects of the day into his Administration...
...He told me quickly that he did not, and then, looking me over closely, added: "Go home and listen to him on the radio...
...The monumental events of the last two years remind us anew that serendipity is steadily at work in our affairs, that we are no better at piercing the veil of the future today than mankind ever has been...
...I was present at a private luncheon for Truman in the late 1950s...
...Henry F. Graff, Professor of History at Columbia, is author of The Tuesday Cabinet, a study of foreign policy under President Johnson...
...The political impact might well be that this ostensively ordinary man will seem extraordinary-the true secret for a successful Presidency...
...Nor should he keep count of the "firsts" he accomplishes...
...It can turn even grand public proposals into old hat before they are enacted...
...If he proves to be a man of destiny-which for Americans, when they are in their most republican mood, simply means lauded by history-it will be in large part because he knows instinctively he cannot enter Valhalla by self-appointment...
...He did not envy minds more finely tuned than his own, knowing there was a place both for his kind of work and theirs...
...After all, who is Truman-only Coolidge with glasses...
...Familiarity breeds boredom as well as contempt, and boredom may be no less fatal to republics than it once was said to be to monarchies...
...The Ordinary Man' as President by henry f. graff The popular perception of Gerald R. Ford's advent as President is, of course, inextricably intertwined with Richard M. Nixon's incredible demise...
...Some of the White House staff of Lyndon Johnson's day will never forget the President's apoplectic reply when West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, visiting the Oval Office, let it be known that he would like to make a telecast to his nation on Johnson's equipment...
...He must deal with domestic questions too long neglected...
...Ford has the opportunity to make such candor appear novel to a whole generation that did not live in the Truman period...
...Ford has no comparable handicap...
...He lives in the age of television, and that medium uses up Presidents as it uses up comedians...
...He accepted, and then said modestly: "You know, I'm not accustomed to meeting people like that...
...In his farewell as President, Truman was no less honest and clear: When I became the Chief Executive, he observed, "I felt there must be a million men better qualified than I to take up the Presidential task...
...Brandeis...
...He is not faced with filling an outsize pair of shoes...
...Ford has another burden that Truman did not have to bear...
...He lived long enough to see some of the savants who keep scoresheets on Presidents, including "people like that," rate him "near great...
...Truman's response showed he had already made an important discovery about himself...
...Politicos and pundits are rushing to report that with the new Administration darkness has lifted and light reigns again, that once more the principles of yin have given way to those of yang...
...he had judged early that the sign of imminent death was upon FDR, whom he had met only a few times...
...Ford should not consciously attempt to make history every time he goes before the public...
...Unfortunately, the current temper of the country is very different...
...Yes," said Niebuhr, "I was born in Wright City, Missouri...
...They were ready to apply to civilian affairs what they had learned from the military services: "The impossible takes a little longer...
...it is not work for a President...
...Still, the new President faces stupendous tasks...
...it robs statesmen of the distance between themselves and the people that heads of government have historically required and savored and for which they have not yet found a substitute...
...Truman had to put on eyeglasses early in life because, he said, he had "flat eyeballs...
Vol. 57 • September 1974 • No. 17
