THE ADMINISTRATION: Gerald Ford: Off to a Fast, Clean Start

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Face to Face. One of the President's first visitors every morning was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The President was most concerned about the fighting in Cyprus, which directly affected two of the U.S.'s NATO allies, Greece and Turkey, but he was also anxious to follow up on his assurances that he would pursue the Nixon Administration's foreign policy. Toward that end, Ford had lunch with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy, then met with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, who cut short a vacation to return to Washington after Nixon resigned. Among other things, Ford and Dobrynin discussed the trade reform bill, which has been stalled in the Senate. The bill would confer "most-favored-nation" (in effect, normal) trading status on the Russians and was eagerly sought by the Nixon Administration as a means of advancing détente. But it has been vehemently opposed by several Senators who believe that, in return for trade concessions, the U.S. should insist that the Russians liberalize their laws regarding emigration rights and agree to end the harassment of Soviet Jews.

The Dobrynin meeting led in turn to one of Jerry Ford's most remarkable accomplishments of the week. A day later, he sat down to breakfast with three of the trade bill's staunchest critics, Senators Henry Jackson of Washington, Jacob Javits of New York and Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut. Richard Nixon had never met directly with Jackson or the other Senators to discuss the bill, and Ford's face-to-face meeting seemed to have paid off. White House sources said later that some sort of compromise appears to be in the works.

The nation's most vexing problem, obviously, is inflation and the President made it the principal subject of his first address to Congress. Freely admitting that "the state of our economy is not so good," Ford vowed in the speech—and repeated all week—his determination to hold down federal spending and to seek "a sense of self-sacrifice in this country." As earnest of his intention, he vetoed a bill authorizing a health research program. The amount involved was only $47 million, but Ford made his point.

The occasion for the speech was a mellow homecoming for Gerald Ford, a return to the well of the House of Representatives where he served happily for 25 years. He was cheered so long and loudly by his old friends from both houses of Congress that the President turned and said to his old friend Speaker Carl Albert, "You're wasting good TV time." Later he seemed determined to shake every hand in the House. "You know," Albert told him, the microphones picking up his aside over the roar of applause, "I'm afraid I might have called you Jerry instead of Mr. President last night." The President laughed.