Look Homeward, Gerald Ford

By Hugh Sidey

Thomas G. ("Tommy the Cork") Corcoran was a 32-year-old near genius who helped Franklin Roosevelt redesign the Federal Government and change the American way of life. He is still around Washington, a peppery 73, keeping an eye on things. He believes that few creative changes have been made in our domestic affairs since 1938, the year Roosevelt began to turn to confront Adolf Hitler. It is Corcoran's further observation, delivered with charming acerbity, that we now need many fundamental readjustments in our national life-style of the magnitude of those F.D.R. instituted, and that if Gerald Ford does not soon get the picture he could end up like Herbert Hoover.

History in part seems to bear him out. Harry Truman made his great decisions in world affairs. Dwight Eisenhower let the country run itself and satisfy those appetites that had been pinched by World War II. John Kennedy made no bones about his love of the international chess game; he spent most of his presidential time playing it. Lyndon Johnson dealt with the race problem and did bring about a basic shift in law and attitude. Finally, he was consumed by the Viet Nam War.

Richard Nixon said before he got in the White House that the country could run it self and that he was going to devote himself to the most important issue of man kind, as he saw it-- the issue of war and peace. He pretty well kept his promise, ignoring domestic matters. That indifference, of course, helped spawn Watergate.

Now there are people like Corcoran who believe we must refocus our concern and energy on domestic affairs. In that context, the remark able Henry Kissinger becomes, oddly enough, a kind of problem. There was just a hint at Vladivostok that he was seducing Gerald Ford to walk the same primrose path of summitry that Nixon trod. qed That land of life is delightful with the urbane Kissinger as tour director. He brings those big fat briefing books that lay the whole plan out. It is all very coherent and tidy, a given schedule with largely predictable results that rest on Kissinger's intellect, imagination and dogged work, none of which Ford has or does. On the Asian tour Kissinger was as much like Sol Hurok as he was a U.S. Secretary of State. It was his production.

He was constantly at Fords elbow, whispering in his ear so much that other White House aides complained.

But not Ford. The Secretary had instructions for the President on how to talk and act. At the ramp in Vladivostok when the new President met the Russians it was like a movie scene. They were all there in their fur hats, shaking hands and slap ping backs and grinning as if it were a class reunion. And it was, in a way. These were Henry Kissinger's boys, drawn together in part by his wit and wisdom.

At the end of his Asian adventure, Ford was tempted to do just what his predecessor had done -- use the summit euphoria to salve the domestic disruptions and the growing White House leadership malaise.

It did not work, and it will not work. The domestic problems that this country faces are for the most part a good deal more complex than the foreign dilemmas, with the exception of the Middle East, which apparently did not get much attention at Vladivostok. Nobody is suggesting that the price of oil and our commitment to Israel are not large problems that need presidential attention. But meantime, back home, little is being done to repair the damage that the cost of energy is inflicting or to prepare the country for any new Middle East shock.

Another thing that the curious case of Dr. Kissinger illustrates is the paucity of domestic talent in this Administration. It may be that Watergate scared away some incipient domestic geniuses and that they will emerge under Ford's hand.

But the record is not very good. Donald Rumsfeld, the new chief of Ford's White House staff, who has been billed as tough and intelligent, was off junketing in China last week with the Secretary and his kids. Maybe he picked up a few pointers on how to handle chopsticks, but it is doubtful that he got any ideas about new directions for American life. That is now what the U.S. needs and what Ford, resisting the siren call of foreign horizons, must concentrate on.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.