The Ridicule Problem

Monday, Jan. 05, 1976

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Betty Ford recalls that when Jerry called at her home for their first date, he knocked over a vase filled with fresh roses. Though Ford is an excellent skier and swimmer, he has a weak knee from an old football injury, and that could cause some of his pratfalls. Moreover, the President could conceivably begin to win sympathy for his inadvertent clumsiness, especially if the jokes grow too cruel, as they are on the verge of doing. Nonetheless, the ridicule factor is fast becoming yet another worry for Ford's strategists. Jim Squires, Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune, makes the point that Ford is in trouble because his physical and verbal blunders coincide with "a series of political and policy blunders that leave no doubt they're all being pulled off by the same guy." Frets an influential Republican politician on the fast-circulating Ford jokes: "I think they are hurting him. No one wants an image as a buffoon, least of all a President."

^{* There are several variations on this joke, including the
accident in Hartford, Conn., when Ford's Lincoln was hit by a Buick.
Alert Secret Service agents seized the Buick and wrestled it to the
ground. When the President got out to see what had happened, he stuck
his thumb in his eye. Alert Secret Service agents seized the thumb and
wrestled it to the ground. When Ford miscalculated and bumped his head
in a Florida swimming pool, the pool was also wrestled to the ground.}