The President's Road Show

...For better or worse, the same can also be said of the direction of American foreign policy, as the Administration was reminded in recent weeks by the trouble in Cambodia...

...On second thought, forget that temptation...

...Are Ford's communications really nothing more than part of a PR campaign designed to get the Chief Executive a little publicity...

...The President is determined to open up the Presidency and bring the White House to the people," the very personable and untiringly optimistic Broody said late one night at the end of the Miami Beach trip...

...He recently told the New York Times, though, that he was still unconvinced the President was going to make the race...

...There are few parallels, though, between the ragtag scheduling operation that McGovern's aides ran out of their collective hip pockets in 1972, and the sophisticated machine William Broody, the White House "chief of public liaison," has designed for selling the President and his program to the country...

...Candidates frequently take on exhausting schedules, of course, and they usually have a set speech...

...his original economic game plan, including the win program and a tax hike...

...The bloom was off the rose, as an aide put it, and the incident raised, for the first time, serious questions about Ford's judgment, and about his intentions in 1976...

...Considerable doubt remains, too, about whether the President will actually run in 1976, despite his almost daily assertions that he will in fact be a candidate...

...Or is it the other way around...

...But he has changed little else-except the fate of Richard Nixon...

...Rudman would be expected to take Ford's side if an intraparty fight developed in his state, during the first of the Republican primaries to be held next year...

...The current gap between the President and Congress may seem surprising...

...That will be hard to do," said the friend, "since nothing is going on behind the scenes...

...The truth," he said, "is that the money is so desperately needed and our chances of getting it are so slim that we will gladly accept whatever funds the Congress is willing to give us...

...The Washington Star-News' veteran White House correspondent, Norman Kempster, recently described a typical Ford press meeting as "devoid of news," and consisting mostly of "a predictable series of restatements of the President's already well-known positions, interspersed occasionally with dismissal of a whole subject as 'inappropriate for comment.' " "The President greets even hostile questions with a smile,' Kempster observed...

...Beyond this, there was a sense of futility about the South Dakotan's crusade, since months before the election it was virtually certain that he was never going to have the opportunity to put his views into action...

...The road shows have therefore invited comparison to the McGovern campaign...

...A White House aide may have accurately summed up the Administration's lack of influence on Capitol Hill last week when he was asked privately what sort of compromise would be acceptable on the Cambodian aid question...

...The President has retained his friendly relations with Congress, but seems unable to turn them into political power...

...But PR is part of communicating with the people...

...Perhaps...

...An argument can be made for both sides...

...If the purpose of communication is to enlighten, and all the President does is to repeat himself, then is the PR just a part of the communications as Broody insists...

...This is not to say the pardon led Americans to view Ford as dishonest-the polls show the contrary -but the action did bring an end to the honeymoon...

...I can hear some bright Administration spokesman announcing a "Presidential availability opportunity...

...His address on foreign policy, although billed as a major statement, was merely a rewrite of his endorsement of the interdependence of nations idea expressed at the Salute to Rockefeller dinner held in New York last month, and his news conference basically produced a reiteration of the domino theory...

...Washington-USA THE PRESIDENT'S ROADSHOW by bob schieffer Washington During the last dreary days of George McGovern's bid for the Presidency, a reporter who had been covering the Democratic candidate for almost two months told a companion he intended to devote the remainder of his time on the campaign trail to developing stories about the goings on behind the scenes...

...his current economic and energy proposals...

...After all, he came to the White House after serving as head of his party in the House for many years...

...The difficulty was so few Ford people existed...

...As a result, it took him months to get his Administration organized...

...Moreover, an excess of Presidential speeches is obviously healthier than a dearth of them, just as too many news conferences producing little news are far better than the isolation of the Nixon years...

...For example: His pardon of Richard Nixon came only days after he told reporters he would not intervene in the affair until the judicial process bad been allowed to proceed further...

...Ever since the pardon, Ford has been unable to generate very much enthusiasm for any of his causes: the candidates he campaigned for last fall...

...That may be the real reason why, despite all the public relations gimmicks and the hectic traveling, hardly any news is coming out of the White House these days: As was the case during the final days of the McGovern campaign, there is little to report because there is little happening-either behind the scenes or in front of them...

...But when the obligatory St...

...On numerous occasions and in various forums, Ford had declared in the strongest language that he was opposed to a gasoline tax of any sort...

...The White House has taken the line that the President and his complicated economic plans forced Congress to get to work on the country's economic programs...

...These sessions produce so little information of substance, however, one is tempted to give them a new name that more precisely defines what they have become...

...Reporters who cover Gerald Ford sometimes experience the same frustration...

...It seems equally valid to suggest that the threat of double-digit unemployment moved Congress to begin corrective action...

...Once in office, he was confronted by enormous problems, not the least of which was overcoming the atmosphere of the Nixon years...

...At a regional news conference (one of the Administration's innovations, in which the President makes himself available to local newsmen in various parts of the country as well as to the national press traveling with him), Ford was asked if the government was in the process of reevaluating its position on Cuba...

...White House aides claim that Ford's popularity is inching up again, that his standing improves every time he goes out into the country to speak, and to listen to the voters and the opinion makers...

...There are no secrets, only a few surprises, and that's why there's damn little news here...

...Although Ford came out against the oil depletion allowance during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden, the next day in the White House press room a spokesman explained that the President was against the depletion allowance merely for revenue from wells drilled on foreign soil...

...By his own admission, Ford never wanted to be Chief Executive and gave the position little thought until he assumed it...

...The President, much to his credit, has opened up his office and brought the White House press conference out of the closet...

...Sure it is part public relations," he went on...

...Bring in Ford people...

...That left the President with only two resources, really, for working his will on a recalcitrant Congress...

...The undercurrent of skepticism is evident among Ford's old Congressional colleagues, and among some key Republican political operatives as well, such as the attorney general of New Hampshire, Warren Rud-man...

...Patrick's day decorations were stripped away from last week's speeches at Notre Dame, one found him saying roughly the same things he had been saying for two months...

...Because Press Secretary Ron Nessen has ruled the local media luncheons off-limits to working journalists, the individuals covering the story have found themselves reporting with a straight face that the "meeting with the newsmen was closed to the press...

...Nonetheless, he endorsed a plan drawn up by his advisers to conserve fuel by putting a series of levies and tariffs on crude oil, despite the fact that gasoline prices would go up when the increased taxes were passed on to the consumer...

...Finally, he took the usual jabs at Congressional inaction, and made the usual pitches for his economic proposals...

...Ford had devoted most of his professional career to boosting all Republicans and concentrating on the needs of his Congressional district...

...The thrust of his answer was No, yet a few days later Secretary of State Henry Kissinger brought up the subject a second time, and the thrust of his remark was Yes...

...Get rid of Nixon people,' almost everyone advised him...

...The "conferences" normally include a public speech by Ford, question-and-answer sessions by various Administration officials, plus a series of separate Presidential meals with the area's politicians and with news editors...

...Since he was not identified with any particular segment of his party, he took office without the kind of natural constituency a Reagan, a Kennedy, or even a Wallace would have if one of them were suddenly thrust into the White House...

...Unfortunately, the problem with Ford's appearances in the field is much the same as with his White House news sessions...

...Everything in this campaign became known ages ago...

...These were his general popularity among his former colleagues and, probably more important, the enormous amount of good feeling that sprang up for him across an America exhausted and disgusted by Watergate...

...With the lopsided Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, it is daily becoming apparent the nation's energy and economic programs will be determined by Congress...

...But he is not always the best guide to what his Administration is actually doing, or is about to do...

...Too often he chooses to fall back on a few pat phrases and on restatements of previously expressed views...

...No one traveling with McGovern doubted the seriousness of the issues he raised or his sincerity, but because he had been speaking out for almost two years-first on the Vietnam war, then on Watergate- by the last weeks of the contest it was apparent that he had probably said all he had to say on both subjects...

...Ford placed his energy program and recession cures on the table in January...

...As for the public's good-will, if the polls are accurate indicators, much of that evaporated on the morning Nixon was granted a full and absolute Executive pardon...

...But he says just what he intended to say and no more...

...The White House flies in special dishes on which the food is served, although at this point native crystal has been considered adequate for the accompanying wines...

...Ford once told reporters he was "the best source for news" in his Administration...

...During these promotional tours around the country, with their nonstop dawn-to-midnight itineraries in Topeka, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, and South Bend, Presidential activity reaches its height, and the lack of substantive news becomes most apparent...

...Often the point of the exercise appears to be to determine in how many places the President can say the same thing in one day...

...Yet they agree it still has a very long way to go...

...With as little as two weeks notice, Broody and his people can drum up a "field conference" attended by hundreds of regional and community leaders (as they did recently in the Miami Beach, Florida, area when the President wanted to play in the Jackie Gleason pro-amateur golf tournament...

...or the Cambodian government of Lon Nol...

...But his title was always "Minority Leader," and he brought with him no special expertise on any subject when he assumed his new role...

...One senses the same feelings toward the President among his fellow-travelers these days...

...But whatever the case, a veteran of the McGovern campaign experiences another familiar feeling these days??a suspicion that what is being said won't really matter in the end...

...To be sure, he quickly changed the tone in Washington, clearing the air and bringing a new style to the Presidency, and for that he deserves high marks...