The Zigzagging Missionary

Gerald Ford traveled to Charlotte, N.C., to play golf last week and found himself in a foursome with Representative Thomas P. ("Tip") O'Neill, the majority leader in the House that may impeach Richard Nixon. The next day, when he teed off in the Kemper Open, the Vice President was teamed with the Rev. Billy Graham, who, despite his criticism of the White House transcripts, has vowed that he has "no intention of forsaking" Nixon.

The contrast in golf partners fitted neatly with Ford's present politics. He is attempting to be both dutifully loyal to and mildly independent of the President. If he must succeed Nixon within the next 31 months, he wants to come in as a unifier who can start to repair Watergate's damage. If Nixon survives to the end of his term and Ford decides to seek the G.O.P. nomination in 1976, he must somehow appeal to Nixon die-hards and to a much broader constituency as well. "I have to walk a very fine line," Ford says. "But I enjoy that. It's a challenge."

No Enemies. Ford has met the challenge with creative zigzagging. On occasion, he twits Nixon's critics. Then he veers off by demonstrating his independence from the White House, as when he recently supported Representative Paul McCloskey, a Nixon foe, in his uphill California primary battle.

Sometimes Ford even hints at distinctions between himself and his patron. At the White House Correspondents Association dinner, for instance, he observed that during a 25-year political career, he "had a lot of adversaries in political life, but no enemies that I can remember." Just before last week's golfing interlude, Ford criticized the White House for stonewalling the House Judiciary Committee and urged Nixon to reconsider his refusal to release additional tapes.

But at a news conference the evening after turning in his score card, Ford had second thoughts and called the latest Nixon strategy "proper." He said that until the House Judiciary Committee began public hearings and analyzed all the material it already has on hand, "I can understand the attitude of the White House."

Ford realizes, however, that matters are largely beyond his control; he made his pitch to Nixon for full disclosure and was rebuffed. So Ford is following his own instinct, which is to keep his longstanding friendships in Congress, preserve his good relations with the press, and court the public. As president of the Senate, Ford has a plush office in the Senate wing of the Capitol, but he has set up a second, more modest headquarters on the House side. "I don't want to ask a member of Congress to have to come over to the Senate side to see me," he explained to TIME Correspondent Bonnie Angelo.

He is almost as accessible to reporters who cover him as he is to old friends in the House. The press corps has seen the vice-presidential bodyguards, who were tight-lipped and hostile under Spiro Agnew, transformed into models of amiability. "I had a chat with the Secret Service," says Ford. "I told them I wanted them to be as considerate of other people as they are of me."

Newsmen have welcomed the improvement in atmosphere but not the juggernaut schedule, which has kept them in the air 240 hours this year. In his half-year in office, the Vice President has flown 80,000 miles to make 375 appearances. The Ford entourage was on the road 28 days in May alone, and the June schedule offers no relief. Last week reporters sent him an only half-facetious memo reading, in its entirety, "Subject: Complete Exhaustion."

Ford, 60, seems unfazed by the pace.

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