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In a sense, he has taken the American public into his confidence. Only once did he veer from this aim when, out of the blue, he granted the unindicted Nixon a full pardon—an act that was much criticized at the time but makes political sense in hindsight. With one stroke, Ford largely removed Nixon and the Watergate obsession from the American scene. In general, he has run the most open White House since Theodore Roosevelt. He is available not only to aides, Cabinet officers and Congressmen, but also to journalists, business and labor leaders, sports stars and beauty queens.
Ford enjoys the political life and never seems to get enough of it. Aides are forever trying to pull him away from fund raising dinners where he not only downs the rubbery chicken with apparent relish but stays on for the last windy speech as well. When he returned to Michigan last week for a music festival, the youthful audience welcomed him with cheers and leaps that made them seem like the "jumpers" of the Kennedy days.
It was not an easy transition for Ford—from the amiable disorganization of Congress to the harsh requirements of the presidency. "He has had to change a lot of his habits," says a White House aide. "He realizes that there are so many demands on his time that he has had to become more organized." Assisting the reorganization is his ambitious chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, who regulates the flow of people and paper in and out of the Oval Office. When Ford first took over, he was often content to have verbal reports on critical matters. Now he wants them on paper so that he can scrutinize them with care.
Ford signals the beginning of a meeting by lighting his pipe and waving it. If a speaker wanders off the subject or takes too long, the President is apt to start fidgeting with his telltale pipe or ask somebody else for his opinion. "He is never rude," says a White House aide, "but he makes things move. He has not lost his human touch, though there is a sharper edge."
James Lynn, director of the Office of Management and Budget, gives the President credit for bringing fresh ideas to almost any subject. "In meeting after meeting," says Lynn, "he comes up with an amended option that improves our position. I say that with some chagrin because I've got an ego of my own, and after my office puts in literally hundreds of hours of work on these things, I feel a certain dismay that he has brought up something we did not think of."
In the interest of a free and open exchange of ideas, Ford has assembled one of the most impressive Cabinets in recent history. All of its members have had distinguished careers in their respective fields, and five of them hold doctorates. Attorney General Edward Levi, formerly president of the University of Chicago, is rebuilding the Justice Department that was so badly compromised during the Nixon years. Secretary of Labor John Dunlop, a former economics professor and dean at Harvard, has made a specialty of union negotiations. F. David Mathews, Ford's nominee for Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, was president of the University of Alabama for six years. And Henry Kissinger and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, both inherited from Nixon, remain the Cabinet's heavyweights.