Joseph Sobran’s
Washington Watch

The Ford Brain Trust

(Reprinted from the issue of June 24, 2004)

In a tribute to Ronald Reagan in Newsweek, former President Gerald Ford recalls Reagan’s powerful 1976 effort to wrest the Republican nomination from him. Ford was so impressed by Reagan as a campaigner that he wanted him for his running mate. But his two chief advisors said that “under no circumstances” should Reagan be on the ticket. Ford, of course, lost the election to Jimmy Carter; Reagan might have made the difference.

The two advisors were Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. I’ll let you draw your own moral.
 
Remembering Nixon

While Ford was president, I twice had the pleasure — and it was indeed a pleasure — of meeting his immediate predecessor, Richard Nixon. Along with several other journalists, I was invited to dine with him, the first time at his Manhattan apartment, and later at his home in New Jersey.

I don’t remember many specifics of the conversations (though he certainly had a wonderful chef). Nixon was in fine spirits both times, and he never complained about the past. He spoke intelligently, and he was often funny. It was fascinating to hear his appraisals of foreign rulers he had known. Nixon in a light mood was not at all the man we had seen on TV and read about for all those years.

Considering that he had resigned his office in disgrace, he was remarkably optimistic and forward-looking, confident that life still held promise for him. I was glad for him.

Impressive as he was, I had one nagging impression, which I’ve often felt in the presence of powerful men: that it was strange that he should ever have had so much power over others. This is more a reflection on politics than on Nixon himself. The presidency itself has become a tyrannical office, which no human being could possibly measure up to or be trusted with. I didn’t feel that Nixon was particularly power-hungry; as Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president for eight years, he had become confident that he could handle the job; a tragic mistake, as it turned out.

He did admit some errors: chiefly, his excessive funding of the Great Society programs he had inherited from Lyndon Johnson. It’s now forgotten that these were modest programs when Johnson established them, and Nixon blamed himself for letting them get out of control. He particularly mentioned public broadcasting, which had become a thorn in his side even while he was nominally in command of it.

Every president learns that bureaucracies have a life of their own. The executive branch is simply too vast for one man to control or even keep track of. For Nixon, the absorbing part of the presidency was foreign policy; I don’t think he really cared what the departments of commerce, labor, and agriculture were doing. He seemed to love the ceremonies of visiting other heads of state and the business of negotiating with them. He was an old-fashioned diplomat at heart, and the presidency had not yet adopted the show-business glamour it has since acquired.

Though he was a diligent student of history, in the end Nixon’s presidency was undone, as so many are, by remarkably short-sighted decisions that probably didn’t seem fateful when he made them. Covering up a minor burglary, which he may not even have authorized in the first place, finally resulted in a huge scandal that obscured whatever he thought he had achieved on the world stage.

Ronald Reagan survived a much more serious scandal in the Iran-Contra affair, because he had a personal popularity that Nixon never enjoyed, but also because Reagan was felt to represent the kind of conservative principles Nixon had compromised. Reagan had friends when he needed them; Nixon didn’t. The difference could be seen in the public responses to their funerals.
 
Can Bush Win a Majority?

The astounding popular turnout for the Reagan funeral must have been humbling for the five presidents, current and former, who attended it: the two Bushes, Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. Only two of these, Bush the elder and Carter, ever won a majority in the popular vote, and even they lost when seeking a second term.

The current President Bush has tried to imitate Reagan rather than his own father, who, after winning a war with approval ratings over 90%, ignominiously reneged on his “no new taxes” pledge and lost much of the conservative base Reagan had bequeathed him. George W. Bush has cut taxes in the short run, but his deficits guarantee higher taxes in the future; in fact they amount to higher taxes, if only in the form of inflation and interest on the national debt.

Beyond that, Bush has given only lip service, often ambiguous at that, to the conservative causes Reagan symbolized. And of course he lacks Reagan’s eloquence, charm, and humor. He has waged the all-out “war on terror” that Reagan avoided after the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon; Reagan knew a tar baby when he saw one.

So now Bush is running neck-and-neck in the polls with the kind of opponent Reagan would eat for breakfast: a boring Massachusetts liberal. I suspect, without satisfaction, that we will witness the inauguration of President John Kerry next January. Events may confound predictions, as they generally do, but for now, I’d put my money on Kerry.

First, Bush has grown wearisome. The warlike spirit he showed after the 9/11 attacks may have seemed inspiring then, but the actual war and occupation have brought stress, shame, and fatigue on the country. It hardly seems worth it — an easy victory over a country that turned out to pose no threat at all, followed by damaging revelations about everything from the conception of the war to the torture of prisoners. Bush now appears incompetent. Will a majority of voters want four more years of this? Will disillusioned conservatives turn out for a free-spending Republican? I doubt it.

Second, there will be a televised debate, and Kerry will probably make Bush look very bad. He has a basic command of the English language, and he speaks plausibly and knowledgeably off the cuff. Bush can hardly handle a respectful interviewer, let alone an aggressive opponent. Kerry will only have to avoid seeming pompous and arrogant. Neither man’s personality is an asset, but if Kerry can present himself as a reasonable alternative, the growing undecided vote should turn his way.

Kerry’s liberalism is no asset either. But after eight years of Clinton, that may no longer be the drawback it once was. Besides, Bush has outspent every liberal in history.

Bush’s approval ratings are already below 50% — bad news for an incumbent at this stage, especially one who didn’t win a majority last time. But it’s hard to imagine what he can do to raise them before November.


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Joseph Sobran