WASHINGTON REPORT: 1976 Campaign Year:
Sisyphus
WASHINGTON REPORT 1976 CAMPAIGN YEAR The "deadline" for filing for the presidential nominations is a long time away, but the political rail-birds are talking as if it were almost post-time....
...If Reagan is truly trying to run Ford out of the nomination competition, it is difficult to understand how he can do so...
...But in the early summer of 1975, the genuine situation appears to be the following: Dees the Senator intend to be President...
...The Democratic script remains one in which Mr...
...However, it may not be quite so formidable in the 1976 presidential election year, because President Ford was neither nominated by his party nor elected at a general election...
...After all, Gerald Ford, the sitting president, is one of them...
...The declared Democratic candidates are speaking wherever a crowd can be gathered...
...It's not as appealing a doctrine as it once was, newer Democratic members of Congress are telling their senior party colleagues...
...Perhaps, more able than Ford...
...Does he plan to run...
...Ford's position is more reminiscent of the early days of the Republic when, before the advent of the national nominating convention, congressional caucuses put forward competing candidates...
...But Republicans, with a characteristic touch of Easthampton-La Jolla nastiness, try to reserve their differences until after the doors of their meeting rooms are closed-and locked...
...But the newer members have yet no substitute to offer...
...But the President should be able to "handle" Reagan...
...Based on this assumption, Reagan, then, is not fighting Ford, but simply is staking out Ford's own political pea patch, so that he will be the natural one to whom a majority of Republican delegates will turn-if Ford doesn't show up at the convention...
...Therefore, one political aspect of the presidency does not exist for Ford-those innumerable and important strands of support that an incumbent president develops in the course of (a) his striving for the nomination by his political party and (b) the general election campaign...
...Democrats are underrating him, despite the conventional wisdom that voters, whatever their good will toward Ford, will enter the voting booths and vote their pocketbooks, which usually favors a Democratic nominee...
...On the surface, Republicans appear to have an easier time of it...
...Speculation is useless...
...He needs to make an occasional gesture toward the suburban Republican moderates, "the left," who are willing to distribute a doughnut here and there to the great unwashed...
...The Republicans, traditionally more reserved in their public demeanor, do also have their contest...
...Predictions should be left to soothsayers, but it can be argued that if this were the election year and these men were the ones to choose from, then, as both Democrats and Republicans say in the back country-it's time to call in the dogs and put out the camp fire, 'cause the birds aren't in the bushes...
...But this constituency, through its political leaders, has seldom controlled the back-room of the Republican national nominating convention...
...New Deal and Ms...
...What is the qualification...
...Senator Percy, in his stagy baritone voice and grey-flanneled corporate manner, typifies this constituency...
...There is a great deal of sympathy for him in the country at-large...
...As for Reagan, it can be argued that he is not convinced that Ford, despite his declaration, will actually seek the nomination- or, if so, economic and other conditions in the country will make his nomination highly difficult...
...Other GOP efforts to de-idealize the Kennedys can be expected...
...President Ford's own commission investigating allegations of felonies and misdemeanors by the CIA-a commission on which Vice President Rockefeller and Reagan both sit-has recently leaked to the press insinuations that the Kennedy administration at high levels (presumably this involves both John and Robert Kennedy) encouraged the CIA to unseat Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba by means fair or foul...
...They like someone they can cheer for from their hearts-not from their heads, although both heart and head may reach the same con-conclusion (it's difficult to cheer for a 535-member Congress or a nine-member Supreme Court...
...And, in foreign policy he was-is-a Cold Warrior without demerit...
...It's difficult in observing a Kennedy operation to distinguish deliberately false signals from the true ones that are emitted-or, for example, the gossipy fantasies of the ambitious courtiers from the hard-boiled views of both the genuine advisors and the successive Kennedy brothers themselves...
...People see him as a man doing the best he can in an important position that is loaded with difficult problems...
...And, as they see it, his critics in Congress aren't doing any better...
...with a qualification), although he is understandably willing to let the speculation continue in order to keep it clear that he is the first-choice of Democrats (but not of a majority of them...
...Jerry and Betty Ford will decide (or have decided) that...
...The barters, the alliances, the friendships of convenience, these and others-all forged during the expedition of a successful candidate for the presidency-are missing in Ford's situation...
...What would also push Kennedy to the nomination is a related matter-a sensing by him that the Democratic party would emerge from next year's convention so weakened that the 1980 nomination, that he covets, wouldn't be worth a damn...
...They've been there in good times and, now in bad, they, like their parents before them, are still the last hired and first fired...
...1980...
...Newsweek magazine recently printed a "cover" story about Senator Kennedy's intentions-another in an interminable series of speculations as to whether "Teddy" will or won't (run...
...Ford also has a problem with a party colleague, Ronald Reagan, who desires to be president...
...Ford, judged by his voting record, makes the late Senator Robert Taft a dewey-eyed liberal by comparison...
...sisyphus...
...Each has assets...
...Whether he actually runs is another story...
...Ford can always pacify the conservatives who become alarmed over what they consider muddle-headed actions' as he seeks to present himself as President of all Americans...
...Actually, Republican presidents have held office for sixteen of the last twenty-four years...
...Reagan can't possibly compete with this...
...Reagan, rightist views and all, is not incompetent...
...Jimmie Carter, etc., etc...
...And it's been twelve years since they've had a president they really felt like cheering for...
...Let those, who would restrain the presidency from its dominant role these last four decades, protest, but it is clear that Americans like Frank Merriwells-whether on the football field or in politics...
...Ford's record as a House member is subsequently free from any acknowledgement of a need by the federal government to help with social problems...
...Disenchanted minorities, among others, won't respond fully to that pitch anymore...
...He's certainly more experienced than Ford, as a result of his being governor of the most populous state, California...
...When...
...Moreover, as president, Ford can-and is-doing what presidents, in domestic difficulties, always do...
...He is waving the flag, sending the marines and bombers to the Gulf of Siam, making other Kiplingesque gestures, and striking Jimmy Cagney-poses during a tour of Western Europe...
...The tyranny of the incumbency, be it Republican or Democratic, is a difficult one to overcome...
...Morris Udall, former North Carolina Gov...
...In fact, this record poses a small problem to his "left," such as it exists in the Republican party...
...Not in 1976...
...But if, by next Spring, the President can make a plausible case that the economy is improving, particularly in housing and auto sectors, then he would have adequate chance of being elected president in his own right in November, 1976...
...Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert Strauss is saying that George Wallace will control 35 percent of the convention delegates next year, if he continues at his present pace...
...The Republicans are not unalert to a Kennedy nomination next year-or any year...
...Second, Democrats, or most, still rely for political salvation upon the federal-subsidy approach-more money for more people for more things...
...His ascendancy to the vice presidency was a result of Agnew's criminalities...
...Uninformed speculation follows uninformed speculation in the public houses and public prints...
...Fair Deal urge Americans to join them to cross the New Frontier and set out for Camelot whereon exists the Great Society...
...And, inevitably, that brings up the matter of Senator Kennedy...
...And, as the country moves right, in part deliberately and in part by indifferentism, a Percy nomination and fifteen cents would buy a cup of coffee and no more...
...At this writing, they don't have a winning candidate- or, more precisely, none of the formally declared (and willing, but yet undeclared) candidates for the nomination gives any indication he can be elected president, or even secure the nomination with the full-support of the party, George Wallace aside, they are all good men, tried . and true-Senators Bayh, Bentsen, Church, Humphrey, Jackson, McGovern, Muskie, former Senator Fred Harris, U.S...
...For Democrats being polled these days, Kennedy fits the role...
...Nevertheless, the Democrats want a winner...
...Terry Sanford, Georgia's ex-Gov...
...Ford was a congressional nuts-and-bolts man for twenty-five years before a profound political catastrophe propelled him into the White House...
...Third, a pragmatic problem confronts the Democrats...
...First, Ford's record as a member of the House of Representatives is suitably conservative for the Republican right...
...Ford, as described, has a domestic record highly acceptable to his party...
...If the Wallace effort to secure the nomination becomes so menacing, the Senator would feel obliged to let it be known he's available...
...Misled by the fact that the Congress has been nominally controlled by Democrats for most of the last forty-five years, they have the misguided view that when a Republican is elected president it happens on a day when God is asleep...
...First, there is their own state of mind...
...Democratic leaders here in Washington are not without problems...
...A couple of them would make really good presidents, although not-sogood campaigners...
...And Ford's subsequent ascendancy to the presidency is a result of Nixon's being driven from office in disgrace...
...Moreover, support for Ford is more favorable than the polls indicate...
...He comes across as more direct and open than his two predecessors...
Vol. 102 • June 1975 • No. 7
