The Voters' Choice
FENTRESS, CALVIN
AFTER THE GOP CONVENTION The Voters' Choice BY CALVIN FENTRESS The Ford-Dole-Reagan ticket was not finally lined up until closing time in Kansas City, but the GOP's direction was never...
...In 1976, with some of our worst years just behind us, and with a solid plodder in the White House, the electorate's decision is a more complicated one...
...He begins the race well behind an uncommon opponent who appears smarter, more able, more farsighted than he...
...it was another measure of how far he has not come in his two years in office...
...Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan had each sought to head American government so he could reduce it...
...Thus Jimmy Carter's exhortation and his promise boil down to essentially Bobby Kennedy's slogan of eight years ago: "We can do better...
...Peace is always fragile (especially in South Africa and Detroit), and 7.5 million of us are out of work...
...Fortyfour times I made those vetoes stick...
...Oh, there are reasons enough why soon he should be crushed out at the polls...
...being exclusive not inclusive, it is doomed to minority status for the foreseeable future...
...Success comes in a two-party system through broad coalitions...
...We pledge a government that will be committed to a fairer distribution of wealth, income and power," stresses the Democratic platform, which also calls for compulsory national health insurance, a guaranteed jobs program and Federalization of welfare programs...
...By settling instead for Dole, and doing so uncertainly at the last possible moment, Ford only reenforced the impression of stumbling mediocrity that so many voters already have about his Presidency...
...In fact, it was to Reagan's drum that the entire convention marched: The Presidential forces were always kept off beat...
...He doesn't seem much like a leader, often doesn't act like one...
...Only because he is President, Ford garnered the nomination...
...I probably made some mistakes, but on balance, America and Americans have made an incredible comeback since August 1974...
...Or, after the traumas of the last 13 years, is a little national drift not such a bad idea...
...Public servants like me and Jerry Brown and others," Carter recently told an audience of Hollywood stars, "have a special responsibility to bypass the big shots, including you and people like you, and make a concerted effort to understand people who are poor, black, speak a foreign language...
...For starters, he is a member of the same Republican party that, as Senator Mondalc observes, gave us two Presidents and three Vice Presidents in the last election...
...He confronts a man who with some justification could say these things in his skillful acceptance speech in Kansas City: ?"I am proud to stand before this convention as the first incumbent President since Dwight D. Eisenhower who can tell the American people: America is at peace...
...Reagan's political achievement this year has been almost as remarkable as Jimmy Carter's...
...Republicans who disagree with that philosophy are called the moderate "wing," although considering their impact at last month's GOP convention, "feather" would really be more accurate...
...Nonetheless, those themes—peace, prosperity, trust—will become an autumn song, and millions of voters will find it appealing...
...Fifty-five times I vetoed extravagant and unwise legislation...
...The two major parties have quarreled over that question for years, but rarely have the lines been so clearly drawn as now...
...I faced many tough problems...
...After nominating a ticket as narrowly based as Ford and Dole, and writing a platform to match, there is no way the GOP can reverse the trend that has given the Democrats control of Congress for 39 of the past 43 years and has reduced the number of Republican governors to a measly 13...
...The former California governor, said the President the night he was nominated, "is a person whose philosophy is virtually identical with mine...
...In every other way the convention belonged to Reagan...
...That he came so close to grabbing it from an incumbent like-minded President is evidence of his high Hollywood skills as a campaigner...
...The party's 21,000-word platform was more his creation than Ford's, especially its repudiation of the President's Soviet policy...
...Payrolls are up, profits are up, production is up, purchases are up...
...What Dole will not do is broaden Ford's electoral base, not to mention the Republican party's...
...For two years," said Ford in Kansas City, "I have stood for all the people against the vote-hungry, free-spending Congressional majority...
...that is why for many the choice between the two men will not be an obvious one...
...Inflation has been cut in half...
...Nor will the final Kansas City lineup help the party...
...He has already lost at least 100 electoral votes in the South and probably another 55 in New York and Massachusetts, meaning Carter needs only 115 more to win the election...
...These are the basic questions the U.S...
...AFTER THE GOP CONVENTION The Voters' Choice BY CALVIN FENTRESS The Ford-Dole-Reagan ticket was not finally lined up until closing time in Kansas City, but the GOP's direction was never in doubt...
...And there is plenty to choose between this year...
...He barely won his own minority party's nomination...
...Still, the 1976 Presidential race will be hard-fought, fascinating and probably close...
...They have only contributed to needless human suffering...
...He has left his "bold unmistakable" imprint not only on his party but on the Administration in power...
...The President spent much of the sweltering convention week hustling delegates in their lairs and his...
...The nation is sound," says Ford...
...Rather, the President picked his old House colleague because he is a Ford-Reagan conservative, because he is "a team player" (like Ford, Dole defended Coach Nixon to the end), and because he will indeed tear into Carter...
...He is also running against President Ford, and if you don't think that makes a difference, just ask Ronald Reagan...
...No, Virginia, there is not a detente...
...After Reagan had boldly named Senator Schweiker as his own prospective running mate, the door was open for Ford to name a Richardson, a Ruckelshaus—someone of stature who could draw critical non-Republicans to the ticket in November...
...The Republican platform says exactly the opposite—less government, less spending, less inflation...
...Even clawless old Nelson Rockefeller, whose liberal tendencies are far behind him, was dumped from the ticket and replaced with a fiercely partisan conservative...
...Like Roosevelt in '32, Carter is eager to lead but untested, and so is asking voters to take a chance...
...One senses in Jimmy Carter all the complexities of purpose, mind and character that often seem missing in Ford...
...He has been around Washington a century or two...
...The candidates themselves are as different as their outlooks...
...his campaign officially opened in Warm Springs, Georgia, where FDR recharged and where he died...
...His philosophy and mine coincide identically," said Ford, coincidentally...
...Counter the Republicans, "The Democratic platform repeats the same thing on every page...
...Who knows Carter...
...Bob Dole," says the Senator's former wife, "will tear into Jimmy Carter...
...Ford was appointed by Nixon and then pardoned him...
...From the start, my Administration has been open, candid, forthright...
...who are not well educated, who are timid, who have some monumental problem . . . and at the same time to run the government in a competent way—well organized, efficient, manageable—so that these services that are so badly needed can be delivered...
...His major decision of the week, and the way he reached it, did nothing to advance him...
...They haven't balanced the budget—far from it...
...Dole has been called many things during his 15-year career in Congress ("the slasher" prominent among them), but no one has ever suggested that he is equipped for national office...
...The Ford-Reagan duet for the party's Presidential nomination this year demonstrates how homogenous the GOP has become at the top...
...The delegates who rubber-stamped his nomination acknowledged as much with the perfunctory reception they gave him in Kemper Arena...
...Declared Howard Baker in his keynote address to the Republicans, "The issue this year, quite simply, is this: How much government is too much government...
...He will never electrify us, but we know him, limitations and all, and he feels comfortable...
...Yet is reassurance enough, is a "comeback" enough...
...the Ford-Reagan contest confirmed it...
...He clearly has much to recommend him—intelligence, competence, calmness, sensitivity—but he eludes us...
...Carter likes to identify himself with Franklin Roosevelt...
...The nation is adrift," says Carter...
...In a sense, both are right...
...Make no mistake about it: A President Carter, with a sizable Democratic majority in Congress behind him, will rock and roll the status quo...
...Jimmy Carter is running against a nice guy named Jerry Ford whose rise to the top was infinitely more improbable than surmounting any Gallup deficit of 20-30 points...
...Those vetoes haven't helped our economy," says Carter...
...it is also a reminder that Gerald Ford remains an unconvincing leader, even in his own diminished party, and time is running out...
...It would be premature to suggest that Gerald Ford himself is doomed to anything, however...
...The difference is that our Bicentennial year is a much better time than 1932, and Gerald Ford's Presidency is more akin to Ike's than to Hoover's...
...In '32, voters had little to lose by taking a chance on change...
...Yet the Republican umbrella keeps shrinking...
...it reflects "in bold unmistakable colors," said Reagan in his triumphant nearacceptance speech, the principles he had campaigned for...
...more government, more spending, more inflation...
...Barry Goldwater's nomination in 1964 signaled the beginning of the end of the long progressive-conservative struggle for control of the GOP...
...Gerald Ford brings to it a fistful of assets which insure that he will be nobody's pushover, as the television debates will make clear...
...In naming him, Ford himself did not make that claim...
...Let's look at the record since August 1974...
...Compare...
...Eugene McCarthy aside, few will claim that Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, or the parties they represent, are likely to govern the same...
...It is from your ranks that I come," the recent congressman from Grand Rapids told the nation in his acceptance speech, "and on your side I stand...
...The nation having paid a stiff price for the complexities of character of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, there is something undeniably reassuring about having simple Jerry Ford in the White House...
...Of the six men Ford was considering at the end for the Vice Presidential nomination (Dole, Howard Baker, Elliot Richardson, William Ruckelshaus, John Connally, William Simon), Senator Dole was Reagan's stated preference...
...Ford is right—the state of the nation certainly is much improved since he took office...
...Nobody can honestly say otherwise...
...Etcetera...
...electorate must ponder in the next seven weeks...
...He is just as smart and just as tough and just as hard...
...Gerald Ford embodies much that Americans like to perceive in the national character: decency, stability, openness, warmth...
...How it is finally made will tell much about America's disposition and resolve at the dawn of its third century...
...Had he pursued delegates more energetically in such states as Ohio, Wisconsin and New York, he might well have picked up the 60 additional votes he needed to win the nomination...
...In every respect, Carter's selection of a running mate was more Presidential than Ford's, and the contrast will not help the President in the weeks ahead...
...To elect him would be to elect an aggressive President under whom the Federal government for better or for worse is sure to spend more, to "meddle" more (Senator Baker's word) in American life than it does today...
...Calvin Fentress, a past contributor, is on leave as special assistant to Senator Charles Percy...
Vol. 59 • September 1976 • No. 18
