Gerald Ford: Off to a Fast, Clean Start

"The nation needs action, not words."

—Gerald Ford

Every morning last week, the President of the United States was driven into the capital from his suburban Alexandria, Va., home along with the stream of commuters who daily turn Interstate 95 into what Washingtonians sometimes grumpily refer to as "the world's longest parking lot." Preceded by a police car and trailed by four other vehicles, including a Secret Service station wagon and a press van, his limousine was hard to miss. Many motorists waved a cheerful if somewhat bemused good-morning as the Chief Executive, immersed in his morning newspapers, sailed past them in the lane reserved for buses and car pools. Gone was the public hostility of yesterday as Nixon's presidency foundered; now there was a new President, totally contrasting in manner, mien and style from his predecessor, and he was moving fast.

"We have a lot of work to do," Gerald Ford told the Congress and the nation last week in his first major speech. "Let's get on with it." So saying, he set off on a week of action perhaps unmatched in the White House since the most frenetic days of Lyndon Johnson. Though any new Administration is necessarily active, the casual Ford made it all seem unhurried, genial, low-key.

He declared the economy his No. 1 priority; he prescribed a balanced budget as the basic solution to the nation's economic ills—an old-fashioned remedy that his manner somehow made sound newly promising; he sharply criticized General Motors for its recently announced price increases of almost 10% (see THE ECONOMY). He gave much time to world affairs, including the crisis in Cyprus, met with the Soviet and Egyptian ambassadors, entertained the King of Jordan, accepted an invitation to visit Japan this fall, all the while continuing to reassure the U.S.'s allies that the basic foreign policy of the Nixon Administration remained unchanged (see box page 12). While mulling his choice for Vice President and the reorganization of the Executive Branch, he welcomed a remarkably large and varied array of visitors to the White House—Congressmen and Senators, mayors, Governors, labor leaders—as if to demonstrate at the outset his vow to create an "open" presidency.

Good Feeling. By his smooth acceleration into high gear last week Ford helped create a mood of good feeling and even exhilaration in Washington that the city had not experienced for many years, imparting the promise, at least, of a brilliant spring after a grim, dark winter. In part, the euphoria was a reaction to the dying agonies of the Nixon Administration, and there were whispered postmortems. "I tell you," confided one high official, "those last hours with the [former] President were the most painful that I have ever had to go through." But it was also created by the relief that the peculiarly closed and almost paranoid style of the Nixon White House existed no more.

1. A Family Suicide Risk in US Asians?
2. Dark Clouds in Florida for GOP
3. Where's Obama's Passion?
4. A US Shocker on the Wrestling Mat
5. Obama on His Veep Thinking
6. Apple: Battery Problem Caused iPod Overheating
7. British Spies: Licensed to Be Gay
8. It's Time to Kick Out Some Olympic Sports
9. Spray-On Condoms: Still a Hard Sell
10. Raising the Stakes at the Olympics