The Campaign's Final Days
FENTRESS, CALVIN
WOOING THE UNDECIDEDS The Campaign's Finall Days BY CALVIN FENTRESS You are a concerned citizen and an independent voter. You have paid some attention to the Presidential campaign, but have been...
...This semantic adjustment has led to the quintessential statement of the Carter campaign: The tax cut, explains Press Secretary Jody Powell, "is not a proposal in the sense of a campaign promise-it's a statement in the way of a possibility of probability...
...The key word is trust," says a Ford campaign aide 48 hours before the election...
...Heaven help us if he proves right...
...It's just-it's just that I feel so much more vulnerable now than when I started...
...He will be gratefully remembered not for where he led us, but for the elemental decency he restored to the Presidency...
...Carter, trying to straddle these imperatives, trying to be at once an "activist" and a "fiscal conservative," has been hurt both ways...
...they are part of a $12 million saturation TV campaign, the largest in political history...
...FDR was a giant...
...No one knows who's going to win this thing, neither Gallup nor Harris nor Cronkite nor Brinkley...
...Industry isn't going to like that...
...This time we will tell them the winner...
...In Jimmy Carter we have elected someone very different, someone, for one thing, whose sensitivity to human suffering and to social justice has been missing from the White House for eight years...
...His narrow victory certainly, represents no great surge of confidence in him...
...Statue of Liberty, prairies, mountain...
...during the last weeks of the campaign, the surge was very much in the other direction...
...Trust is saying plainly and simply what you mean-and meaning what you say...
...Anything resembling a discussion of an issue is pointless...
...Carter-at home in Plains, a lot of books behind him-is answering voters' questions...
...That Ford's concluding paid-political TV interviews should feature a sportscaster is entirely fitting: The election has been covered much like a major sports event, complete with attendance figures, scoreboards, instant analysis, replays of fumbles, and personal tidbits about the players (Johnny Bench got divorced, Miss Lillian was in the Peace Corps, Jack Ford tried grass...
...You have paid some attention to the Presidential campaign, but have been unimpressed by either Jimmy Carter or Gerald Ford...
...Now that we've given it to him, what have we got...
...You pay closer attention now- read the papers, watch TV-looking for last telling impressions to tilt you to one man or the other...
...At first, he ran as an outsider, owing nothing to anyone except "the people," but that was before he cozied up to Richard Daley and Frank Rizzo...
...Some talk about "calm deliberation of issues," but no actual calm deliberation of issues...
...By the time the candidates had completed their pirouettes around the question, Ford had promised "to hold the lid on spending so that we can have a long overdue tax decrease for middle-income people," and Carter had vowed that in his administration "the sacrifices would be much less" than in Ford's...
...Most of us, though, would probably grant it to a candidate who met Ford's modest definition...
...Nonsense...
...A film: Bicentennial bliss...
...Television no longer merely reports a Presidential campaign...
...And there's Jerry himself-confident, smiling, likeable-engulfed by warmly enthusiastic constituents...
...Ford didn't lose because things are so bad, but because the normalcy he promised didn't seem enough to a majority of Americans...
...We liked Ike...
...ordinary small-state governors don't come out of nowhere and move into the White House...
...Just so...
...Harry looks mighty good in the Watergate age...
...Ford proclaims a tax cut as his "first priority...
...What do you see, what do you hear...
...But as an Iowa salesman put it, "I'd rather gamble and see if we couldn't improve a little bit...
...taken alone, his pledges during his Vice Presidential confirmation hearings not to pardon Nixon and not to run for a full term give him away...
...Nixon, all those times, was Nixon...
...What's gone wrong...
...Both candidates, all candidates, fear that if they were to present themselves to us straight up-flawed and without double talk-we would reject them...
...You must make up your mind...
...Carter has been no better...
...Ford asking for our prayers...
...On the CBS Morning News, you catch something about "a series of recent foul-ups in the Carter campaign...
...That bears watching...
...Carter has by a visible act of will tried to forget the past and direct the campaign to a more serious and profitable direction...
...He will bring to the White House the highest environmental consciousness of any modern President...
...Purists might consider the contest's probable outcome if, for instance, Carter had not so extravagantly courted Philadelphia's Rizzo and Mississippi's Senators Stennis and Eastland...
...In his campaign, he sometimes reduced it to mawkish piety, which turned off many Americans...
...So is his energy, his discipline and his resilience...
...The future...
...Some last-minute populism: "There are no loopholes for people who punch a time-clock A dual system of justice The rich and the powerful don't go to jail...
...Throughout the day, radio reports that Ford has caught up with Carter in Illinois, that Ohio is close, Texas is close, Pennsylvania, New York...
...But he is not the stranger he once was...
...you are genuinely undecided...
...A President's internal values rub off on the nation, and Jimmy Carter puts a high premium on love...
...The End...
...Annapolis graduate Carter is unlikely to allow America's military capability to fall below whatever is required to defend the U.S...
...There is a sense of dread among Democrats," declares CBS...
...Even if you don't, any election which frees Vance Hartke and Joseph Montoya from public service can't be all bad...
...Carter and Ford are plainly comfortable with themselves, but neither man is willing to trust us with that whole person...
...CBS says that "people are suddenly turning out in huge numbers to greet the President" as he campaigns through scores of American communities...
...Then we are cynical when they overpromise...
...In the New York Times, you read this Page One headline: "The Glow of Carter's Primary Drive Has Faded...
...Despite 23 months on the road among us and 3,000 speeches worth of supplication, both he and his message remained blurred, and that nearly cost him the election...
...The economy obviously hurt the President, yet many Carter voters enjoy the prosperity (and the peace) that Ford kept talking about...
...What price are you going to ask them to pay to realize your objectives...
...THE PRESIDENT-ELECT assumes national leadership without a known blueprint...
...Take me to your lever...
...From them, we want assurances of more jobs, affordable health care, better schools, safer streets, cleaner air, faster mail, a balanced budget-and lower taxes...
...Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, asked for it and asked for it, and asked for it...
...and its allies, but he seems less preoccupied than recent Presidents with number oneness, more concerned with the armed camp that the world is fast becoming...
...to those whose lives fell short of the Grand Rapids norm, Gerald Ford offered no hope at all, which is why they came out to vote in such great numbers for Carter...
...After listening to these two acclaim their own rectitude all year long, 47 per cent of the respondents in the latest New York Daily News straw poll describe Ford as untrustworthy...
...His overkill of Ford's Eastern European gaffe seemed in the same vein...
...At each low point in his campaign," wrote Charles Mohr of the Times, "Mr...
...We've heard that old song before...
...He is committed to making the nation's tax structure more equitable, and with the help of the Democratic majority that was returned to Congress, he could well succeed...
...we know him today at a middle distance...
...more on the mastectomy than on foreign policy...
...Jerry Ford is a good man and a limited one, and since August 1974 the country has reflected that...
...On all channels you see the Ford ads...
...On TV, candidates' failures of character and style are much more public than they used to be (much more public than our own...
...Probably not...
...Carter emerged from the Democratic pack by promising he would never lie to us...
...Actually, he was no worse than most...
...During his long march, we discovered that his sweet talk and Sunday school smile masked a petty streak, and a nasty one at that...
...As he often said, he never asked for the job, but for a season he was just what we needed...
...fish and most people will...
...Another: "Ford Now Leading Carter in California...
...We've made an incredible comeback," he tells the cheering crowds...
...Gerald Ford unquestionably thinks of himself as straightforward, yet the culmination of his entire campaign is dependent on manufactured imagery...
...Carter has profited handsomely in the free enterprise system...
...But it remains an essential ingredient in his cultural make-up...
...CALVIN FENTRESS, a past contributor, is on leave as special assistant to Senator Charles Percy...
...I'm feelin' good about America," goes the catchy Ford song, "I'm feelin' good about me...
...Or if the economic indicators that came out a few days before the election had been fractionally up instead of fractionally down, who knows how it would have affected Carter's fortunes in Pennsylvania and Ohio...
...But really, things haven't changed that much...
...And your fellow Americans standing on street corners, telling you why they like Jerry Ford so much ("He's made me feel proud to be an American...
...actually, we haven't been happy with our Presidential choices since 1956...
...Betty's mastectomy...
...That's what it's all about...
...In much that he said, there was a welcome empathy for society's have-nots...
...He talked a lot in his campaign- too much maybe-about compassion...
...The pros are hedging their bets on a low voter turnout...
...Gerald Ford,' says the voice-over, "sees the future as something his children will inherit...
...Although Carter's record as governor of Georgia was not as glittering as he sometimes made it sound, it was better than average...
...More testimonials: His children think he's great...
...There also is much that is promising about the man from Plains, however...
...I'm feelin' good about America...
...ho !"'i I o . Carter is shifty and Southern...
...You see Carter ads, too, but nothing new-mostly just Carter talking into the camera...
...he recognizes its strengths as well as its inadequacies...
...Pollster Lou Harris says the closing-night TV appeals by the candidates "will probably make the difference...
...Its coverage, commercials and debates have wholly replaced the buttons, brochures and billboards of yesteryear...
...For what it's worth...
...The two Roosevelts seemed larger than life, but they didn't have to contend with Sam Donaldson airing their contradictions every evening...
...Inside, another story is headed, "Carter Sweep of South Is in Doubt...
...Humphrey babbled too much, stuck with Johnson and the war too long...
...More than anything, perhaps, it is the tube that has diminished Presidential candidates...
...the country wanted more...
...this Bicentennial burst of political self-righteousness is our legacy from him...
...At the same time, whoever the President is, whatever his achievements, he sets the tone...
...Considering how we've reacted to their mistakes, they're probably right...
...Defeat did not sit well with him...
...In a campaign marked by several major misjudgments, is this Carter's last and largest?* THEODORE H. WHITE complained recently that the 'flair and drama" are gone from politics...
...AT THE START of the third debate, Joseph Kraft put it to the candidates: "I assume that all Americans know that these are difficult times and that there's no pie in the sky and that they don't expect something for nothing, so I'd like to ask you as you look ahead in the next four years, what sacrifices are you going to call on the American people to make...
...I'm feelin' good about America," went the Ford song, but apparently people weren't feeling that good about it...
...Whether or not he can devise non-inflationary methods to cut unemployment is uncertain, but certainly he will try...
...poll mil...
...will remain Number One...
...Once the South had solidified, the networks could never agree whether Carter was three votes short or 23 or what...
...In an election as close as this one (out of 80 million votes, a selected switch of 7,400 would have changed the result), any of a hundred things could have made the difference...
...Pearl Bailey does an endorsement...
...A Page One headline in the Washington . Post informs you, "Ford Closing on Self-Assured Note...
...Could it be that the quality of that pool has deteriorated so...
...No flair...
...No drama...
...But his broad goals arc clear enough...
...One senses that Carter never stops learning, never stops growing, and that too is cause for encouragement...
...What finally he can do about nuclear proliferation, government mismanagement, unemployment and the rest remains to be seen...
...Our trust doesn't come as easily as it once did, pre-Vietnam, pre-Watergate...
...most Presidents lose more than they win...
...In the 1970s, a Presidential candidate pushing a specific national agenda with a price tag is going to be shot down by the voters precisely because there is a price tag...
...Ford was talking about restoring trust to the White House the day he took office, and he hasn't stopped since...
...The campaign is rushing to an end...
...We still draw our Presidential nominees from Congress and the statehouses...
...LESS THAN 12 hours before the polls open, NBC calls the election a tie, with 11 per cent of the electorate still undecided...
...The candidate's schedule is now keyed to "media markets" (three a day if possible...
...A week later, as the race tightens and each man scrambles for the last decisive votes, the only sacrifice being talked about is one that the IRS will have to make...
...In thousands of makeshift polling places, democracy's greatest drama is unfolding again...
...Ford seeming to shoot down most of the Japanese Air Force...
...Richard Nixon gave lying a bad name...
...That is not to say the electorate is thrilled with its choice this day...
...Ford is no leader, inept even...
...One final thought," declares Ford in his pre-election media blitz...
...But now "sacrifice" isn't even safe rhetoric any more...
...I hate to use the word ruthless," his mother has said, "but Jimmy's going to win or bust...
...It was a long night's journey finding out...
...Part of the problem is the blur of time and memory...
...Decided yet...
...If you like politics, it was a memorable election night...
...Ford "is my kind of guy," says Garagiola, "and I think your kind of guy, too...
...Stevenson was special...
...No celebrities, no songs, no endorsements, no tax cut...
...Apathy is out to lunch...
...Goldwater and McGovern were too far out...
...Carter has lied plenty, lied in the way most of our politicians lie-lies of hyperbole and omission, lies of pretense and failse alarm...
...but Johnson was a wheeler-dealer, a Texan, and remained suspect...
...If Ford's show is the Monday Night Movie, Carter's is educational TV...
...Add now Ford and Carter to the roll...
...Voters opted not so much for a change as for a challenge...
...The Ford ads outnumber them 3-1...
...He told us he was the candidate of sweetness and light, but that was before his mid-October impersonation of Robert Dole...
...Ford's traveling talk show with Joe Garagi-ola always includes a spirited local rally filmed earlier in the day...
...The apparent underlying assmption of Carter's show is that its viewers are thoughtful citizens seriously interested in government...
...as President, he can be expected to try to make improvements without mangling the whole...
...There are bands and Betty and the Presidential seal...
...Coupled with his understanding that love "must be translated into simple justice...
...Watch me closely during the campaign," he said early on, "because I won't be any better President than I am a candidate...
...By the end of the campaign, he sounded stale and ordinary, but he is not an ordinary man...
...While he did not always demonstrate it, there is no reason to doubt that it is an ideal he greatly values...
...The first thing to remember," he says of the unemployed, "is that they are human beings...
...We make it awfully tough on our would-be Presidents...
...Asked what he had learned about himself during the campaign, Carter said he thought he had "learned to accept criticism much better than I could at first, and I've learned about my own inadequacies, my own lack of knowledge...
...During the campaign, Ford pushed Carter to the Right on foreign policy, just as Reagan had pushed Ford to the Right, but he will be no bully boy on the world scene...
...Jerry Ford is a nice man, nicer than Carter most people thought, and that was almost enough to elect him...
...Even traditional campaign hoopla exists only for television...
...On NBC's Nightly News, you learn that Carter's lead in the Harris poll, once 39 points, is down to a single point...
...I don't like it, but I realize it's true...
...Ah well, if it must be Jerry or Jimmy so be it...
...Johnson won big...
...A very organized man himself, inefficiency offends him...
...After they-and the candidates-had focused for weeks on the major industrial states, how fine that at 3:30 in the morning it should all come down to Hawaii and Mississippi...
...Let's face it, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, we haven't much liked any of them...
...We've heard it from Jerry Ford for 25 years...
...Carter says first, that a "substantial tax reduction" is "almost inevitable," and hours later, "perhaps" there will be tax cut...
...57 per cent so describe Carter...
...The only candidate talking about limits, overconsuoiption and "hard realities" is Eugene McCarthy, and he's headed for about 2 per cent of the vote...
...This is how he wants to be finally remembered as we enter I he voting booth Inside Air Force One...
...that docs not seem at all a bad thing in a President...
...I that of those viitor\ ulio uio then ??, the lin.,1 lloills...
...The movement now is toward Ford...
...I'm less open now, I know," Carter tells the Times in these final days of his bid for our vote...
...2.) He will cut our taxes...
...and clearly he believes in its power...
...Voters aren't fools...
...By that measure, he certainly hasn't earned ours...
...when he lost to Henry Jackson in Massachusetts several light years ago, he lunged for Scoop's jugular in a way that would have done Dracula proud...
...as one Milwaukee voter said, "No matter who's elected, he will only be President...
...a candidate will be lucky to get 60 seconds of the evening news, which in any case will focus on his personality, tactics and blunders...
...Ask what you can do for your country," said John Kennedy, which sounded swell 15 years ago, especially since he didn't ask us to do anything...
...At the end, Ford's campaign was a series of punch lines-keeping America Number One, a steady hand on the tiller-but to many the ship of state seemed becalmed and far removed from the original spirit of '76...
...Others traveling with Carter made the same point...
...Ford on the Michigan gridiron-touchdown...
...if it sometimes seemed that way, it was only because he urged us to hold him to a higher standard, one he conspicuously failed to meet...
...You and your kind, some 10 percent of the electorate, are about to choose the next President of the United States...
...Carter's intelligence is unmistakable...
...Glowing testimonials from his staff...
...Ford wanted a mandate for inaction...
...The Ford campaign, rolling through the Midwest, is likened to "a well-oiled machine...
...Yet a candidate-especially a nonincumbent-without a specific program is going to lose support on the grounds of fuzziness and unpredictability...
...Truman was no favorite in the '40s...
...Now, on election eve, each candidate has purchased a half-hour on all three networks to make his last best pitch...
...First it builds them up and then it knocks them down-from Jimmy Who to Slippery Jim in just 10 months...
...Kennedy was too young and inexperienced...
...Trying to curtail waste in government has frustrated most recent Presidents, but Jimmy Carter will undoubtedly give it his best shot...
...So IT IS to be President Carter...
...television is the campaign...
...repeats the catchy song...
...It is a far different reading from Ford's of the national audience...
...the rally is TV scenery, nothing more...
...The answers highlight problems, are skimpy on solutions...
...Two last pledges from the airborne President: I.)" The U.S...
...He's right...
...Carter's most appealing moment of the fall campaign came in the final debate when he discussed his Playboy interview: "I don't know how to deal with it exactly...
...Ford eyeball to eyeball with Brezhnev...
...A testimonial from the non-imperial President's personal photographer...
Vol. 59 • November 1976 • No. 23
