The Nation's Pulse

...If there's one thing the House rewards, it's `gettin' along,' and Jerry's about the best there is at that sort of thing...

...As a nonelected, accidental President, Mr...

...Then, while you're sittin' on 'em, you say, "Now that I've heard your side of the story, here's my plan...

...But his effort to restore openness and candor, unless accompanied by some hard-nosed pushing and shoving, may produce precisely the opposite result of that which he intends...

...That's why Mel Laird was able to sell Jerry to the House Republicans when he decided to knock off Charlie Halleck...

...Thus, what Mr...

...As Irving Kristol recently remarked, "the smell of burning flesh is in the air...

...Indeed, the plight of the post-Watergate Presidency is nowhere better revealed than in the picture of the President of the United States subjecting himself to demagogic-interrogation by a first-term ultraliberal Democrat Congresswoman from New York...

...The President's low-key performance to date has occasioned a series of speculative rumors which have as their common operative premise the belief that he either dislikes his job, or is overwhelmed by it, or both...

...Congress is not about to bury the hatchet anywhere else than in Jerry Ford's head...

...but it is also dangerous, both for the President and for the country...

...One is reminded of the story that that unlikely Pope, John XXIII, liked to tell about himself...

...His conciliatory post-inaugural address to Congress was thought by many to be unnecessarily submissive...

...According to this view, the President believes that the restoration of morality in the Presidency is the sine qua non of all else, the assumption being that it matters less what the President does than how he does it...

...When Lyndon Johnson said "Come, let us reason together," everyone took it as a signal to put steel cups in their jocks...

...Ford is no doubt highly sensitive to his vulnerability...

...As one seasoned cynic puts it, "If God Almighty himself were in the White House, they'd rough him up...

...There're a couple of things you've got to understand about Jerry Ford," a former colleague of his said the other day...

...In short, the President's conciliatory actions, although sincerely, indeed in his case devoutly, offered, are unlikely to be sincerely received...

...His attempt to formulate economic policy by "consensus" wasted precious time, intensified internal executive branch squabbling and invited the Democrats to take the lead...

...But Jerry didn't lead the charge against Charlie, and he didn't 'lead' the Republicans afterwards...

...The danger is that Mr...

...The more fanciful gossipmongers are even putting it out that Mr...

...Whatever the explanation, the President seems to be operating under some sort ofself-denying ordinance with regard to the exercise of presidential power...

...Ford has cut a "deal" with the Vice-President-designate whereby Rockefeller will become the nominee in 1976...

...Hence the open-door policy in the Oval Office, the public airing of policy options hitherto discussed almost entirely in camera, the pursuit of "cooperation, conciliation, and compromise" with Congress, and the earnest appeals to "reason together...

...Adverse political reaction to the pardon might have suggested the fragility of such an approach, but the opinion is rather widespread that the President continues to see himself as a kind of trustworthy caretaker, reluctant to use the great power and leverage of his office until such time as "normalcy" is restored—as if the vigorous and prudent use of presidential power had nothing to do with the restoration of normalcy...

...For the country, because ours is a form of government that positively requires a unified independent, powerful, and energetic executive...

...Get-tin' along' is the only lesson Jerry ever learned in the House because it came naturally to him and because it's the only one he ever needed...

...When Gerald Ford says it, he really means it, and the trouble is that everyone in Congress knows it...

...He just 'got along.' Most of the butt-kicking was done by others, and especially by the White House after Nixon got to town...

...His failure to do so thus far is, given his ascendancy by chance and the forces arrayed against him, perhaps understandable...

...A private part of the male anatomy which delicacy enjoins me not to mention...

...For the President, because the longer he permits chaos to reign within the executive, the more difficult it will be to take command later...

...This fact is not popularly subscribed to in the poisonous post-Watergate atmosphere, but it happens to be a fact nonetheless...

...Ford offers as an earnest gesture of good will is taken by his opponents as a sign of weakness...

...But now it's different, and there's no way that `gettin' along' is going to sell anything coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...

...The second is that he's basically a man of the House...

...It seems that shortly after his elevation to the Papacy he had a troubled dream during which he remarked to himself, "I must take this up with the Pope"—only to discover upon waking, of course, that he was the Pope...

...In the present hour of the nation's discontents, of course, President Ford couldn't get away with that sort of thing even if he tried...

...Only a Congress peopled entirely with Jerry Fords would refrain from taking political advantage...

...Ford, as a "man of the House" who likes to "get along," may not only underestimate the viciousness of his enemies, but may also share the characteristically paranoid Congressional fear of executive prerogative—an opinion which has its constructive uses if you happen to be a member of Congress but is hardly an appropriate state of mind for a President facing overwhelming opposition majorities on the Hill...

...It may even be that we're in for a period of nastily partisan Congressional dominion that no amount of presidential hectoring can diminish...

...I helped him a little bit on it, it passed, and we had a drink on it...

...It took Lyndon about three sentences to describe his philosophy of Congressional relations...

...Whether the President is willing to ascribe base and venal motives to his former pals in Congress remains an open question...

...In a lot of ways, Jerry's still thinking like a member of the House, and not a very hard-nosed one at that...

...Closer to the truth is the view that the President has dedicated himself to a single goal, to the exclusion of virtually ail others: namely, restoring a sense of morality to government in general and to the Presidency in particular...

...But even if Congress is clearly in the saddle, it's not for a President to make their job easier for them...

...He'd send up the Ten Commandments, and they'd throw out six of 'em for openers, rewrite the other four, and add seventy-five of their own...

...His precedent-shattering appearance before a House subcommittee to justify the pardon served primarily to remind his enemies that there is political profit to be had in pushing Presidents around...

...Ford's former colleague underscored his point with a classic bit of Johnsoniana: "I remember one time Lyndon had trouble getting a bill through...

...The first is that there isn't an ounce of guile in his entire body...

...First,' he said, 'you gotta kick 'em in the — — *. Then you bring 'em to their knees, lie 'em down flat, and sit on 'em...