Ford's Oath

Many posts have discussed oaths of office.

Fifty years ago today, Gerald Ford became president after the resignation of Richard Nixon.  His remarks after taking the oath:

Mr. Chief Justice, my dear friends, my fellow Americans:

The oath that I have taken is the same oath that was taken by George Washington and by every President under the Constitution. But I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances never before experienced by Americans. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.

Therefore, I feel it is my first duty to make an unprecedented compact with my countrymen. Not an inaugural address, not a fireside chat, not a campaign speech--just a little straight talk among friends. And I intend it to be the first of many.

I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers. And I hope that such prayers will also be the first of many.

If you have not chosen me by secret ballot, neither have I gained office by any secret promises. I have not campaigned either for the Presidency or the Vice Presidency. I have not subscribed to any partisan platform. I am indebted to no man, and only to one woman--my dear wife--as I begin this very difficult job.

I have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it. Those who nominated and confirmed me as Vice President were my friends and are my friends. They were of both parties, elected by all the people and acting under the Constitution in their name. It is only fitting then that I should pledge to them and to you that I will be the President of all the people.

Thomas Jefferson said the people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. And down the years, Abraham Lincoln renewed this American article of faith asking, "Is there any better way or equal hope in the world?"

I intend, on Monday next, to request of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate the privilege of appearing before the Congress to share with my former colleagues and with you, the American people, my views on the priority business of the Nation and to solicit your views and their views. And may I say to the Speaker and the others, if I could meet with you right after these remarks, I would appreciate it.

Even though this is late in an election year, there is no way we can go forward except together and no way anybody can win except by serving the people's urgent needs. We cannot stand still or slip backwards. We must go forward now together.

To the peoples and the governments of all friendly nations, and I hope that could encompass the whole world, I pledge an uninterrupted and sincere search for peace. America will remain strong and united, but its strength will remain dedicated to the safety and sanity of the entire family of man, as well as to our own precious freedom.

I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad.

In all my public and private acts as your President, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy in the end.

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy.

As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate.

In the beginning, I asked you to pray for me. Before closing, I ask again your prayers, for Richard Nixon and for his family. May our former President, who brought peace to millions, find it for himself. May God bless and comfort his wonderful wife and daughters, whose love and loyalty will forever be a shining legacy to all who bear the lonely burdens of the White House.

I can only guess at those burdens, although I have witnessed at close hand the tragedies that befell three Presidents and the lesser trials of others.

With all the strength and all the good sense I have gained from life, with all the confidence my family, my friends, and my dedicated staff impart to me, and with the good will of countless Americans I have encountered in recent visits to 40 States, I now solemnly reaffirm my promise I made to you last December 6: to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and to do the very best I can for America.

God helping me, I will not let you down.

Nixon Checked Out on 12/6/73

As impeachment talks edges into the mainstream, it is worth remembering how Nixon handled it.

At Research and Politics, Matthew N. Beckmann has a terrific article titled: "Did Nixon Quit Before He Resigned?"  The abstract:

On August 9, 1974, Richard M. Nixon formally resigned the presidency; however, folklore hints Nixon informally quit fulfilling his duties well before then. As Watergate became less “a third rate burglary” than “high crimes and misdemeanors,” rumors of President Nixon’s wallowing, wandering, drinking, and mumbling swirled. Yet evidence for such assertions has been thin, and prevailing scholarship offers compelling reasons to believe Nixon’s institutional protocols overrode his individual proclivities. This study offers a new, systematic look at Nixon’s presidency by coding his public events and private interactions with top government officials during every day of his presidency. Contrary to our expectations, the results corroborate the rumors: Richard Nixon effectively quit being president well before he resigned the presidency. In fact, it turns out there was a defining moment when Nixon disengaged from his administration: on December 6, 1973, the day Gerald Ford was confirmed as Vice President.

The article makes ingenious use of the Presidential Daily Diary.  Here is the quoted description from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum:

The Daily Diary of files represents a consolidated record of the President’s activities. The Daily Diary chronicles the activities of the President, from the time he left the private residence until he retired for the day, including personal and private meetings, events, social and speaking engagements, trips, telephone calls, meals, routine tasks, and recreational pursuits. For any given meeting, telephone call, or event, the Daily Diary usually lists the time, location, persons involved (or a reference to an appendix listing individuals present), and type of event.1

 Here is how Professor Beckmann used it:

To extract the relevant details from these extraordinary records, we first distributed the Nixon Library’s Daily Diaries collection among a large team of undergraduate students, with each getting a random selection.2 The RA assigned a particular day would then scour the corresponding Diary to tally the President’s 5-plus-minute contacts—face-to-face or by phone—with the following top government officials: Chief of Staff; National Security Advisor; White House Counsel; White House Press Secretary; Treasury Secretary; Defense Secretary; Secretary of State; Speaker of the House; House Minority Leader; Senate Majority Leader; Senate Minority Leader. The result, then, was original data indicating Richard Nixon’s five-plus-minute contacts with 11 key government officials during each day of his presidency.

And a notable finding:

Drilling deeper, and to our surprise, we detected a specific day on which Richard Nixon effectively disengaged from his administration: December 6, 1973, the day Gerald Ford was sworn in as Vice President.5 Figure 3 displays President Nixon’s total weekly contacts with the aforementioned 11 key officials before and after Jerry Ford’s confirmation. In the 12 weeks before that date, Nixon averaged 8 (standard deviation = 5) contacts per day with top officials; in the 12 weeks after that date, he averaged 1 (standard deviation = 1).6 This does not mean it was Ford’s ascension per se that devastated Nixon; rather, we suspect Ford’s confirmation was merely the last straw—the point when Nixon realized his hopes for surviving Watergate were dashed.

Forgetting Presidents

A release from Washington University in St. Louis:

American presidents spend their time in office trying to carve out a prominent place in the nation's collective memory, but most are destined to be forgotten within 50-to-100 years of their serving as president, suggests a study on presidential name recall released today by the journal Science.

 

...

Findings showed several consistent patterns in how we have forgotten past presidents and offer a formula to predict the rate at which current presidents are likely to be forgotten by future generations.

Among the six presidents who were serving or had served most recently when the test was first given in 1973, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson and Gerald R. Ford are now fading fast from historical memory, whereas John F. Kennedy has been better retained. The study estimates that Truman will be forgotten by three-fourths of college students by 2040, 87 years after his leaving office, bringing him down to the level of presidents such as Zachary Taylor and William McKinley.

...

America's memory for Johnson and Reagan, like that for most presidents, is destined to fade along a quick and predictable trajectory as new elections inexorably push them and their memories further down the list of the most recent and currently best-remembered presidents, the study suggests.

While most collective memory research conducted thus far has explored how we as a nation remember historic events, such as the Holocaust or the 9/11 terror attacks, this study is among the first to focus on how we forget salient events of the past over generations and to obtain estimates of rate of forgetting over time.

"Our results show that memories of famous historical people and events can be studied objectively," Roediger said. "The great stability in how these presidents are remembered across generations suggests that we as a nation share a seemingly permanent form of collective memory."


Journal Reference:
H. L. Roediger III And K. A. Desoto. Forgetting the presidents. Science, 28 November 2014: 1106-1109 DOI: 10.1126/science.1259627

Romney and Republican History

The GOP is a conservative party, but yesterday it nominated a former "Massachusetts moderate" whose conservative clothes still have the tags on them. Mitt Romney is no anomaly, however. He is following a well-worn path.

Of the Republican presidential nominees of the past half-century, only two (Goldwater and Reagan) have had deep roots in the conservative movement. The rest have won the nomination by accommodating conservatives. They might not have been the movement's first choice, but they moved just enough to the right to overcome or co-opt conservative challenges.

Richard Nixon set the pattern in 1968. Although he had once voiced misgivings about "Buckleyites," he courted them in the campaign, winning William Buckley's endorsement. (Goldwater also preferred Nixon to Reagan.) In his fight for the nomination, he sought the support of conservative Southerners, most notably Strom Thurmond. At least some of his rhetoric took a rightward turn: in addition to liberal Ray Price, he hired conservative speechwriters Pat Buchanan and Bill Gavin.

After Nixon's fall, Gerald Ford seemed to shift left by naming former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president. But that choice was so unpopular within the party that he effectively dumped Rockefeller. Bowing to conservative critiques of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Ford also acceded to platform language critical of detente.

George H.W. Bush worked hard to shore up his right flank. He went to great lengths to woo religious conservatives, winning over such figures as Jerry Falwell. That support was crucial in containing a strong challenge from Pat Robertson. He also took up economic conservatism ("Read my lips:  no new taxes.") and used the tax issue to attack Robert Dole from the right. Dole learned his lesson, and in the 1996 race, he famously said: "I'm willing to be another Ronald Reagan, if that's what you want." The younger Bush also grasped the Reagan mantle, talking more about the Gipper than his own father. And four years ago, John McCain shifted ground on issues such as immigration.

For conservatives, of course, this history is sobering. Nixon and both Presidents Bush disappointed them in major ways. Would Romney be different?  And will the next nominee be an establishment Republican who gets some conservative support -- or a conservative who wins some establishment support?

President Obama in Adversity

In our chapter on the presidency, we discuss chief executives who have faced hard times. President Obama is currently doing so. Though the overall unemployment rate is down a bit, it remains very high by the standards of recent decades. His health care legislation has stalled, at least for the time being. In some polls, his job-approval rating is below 50 percent. And there is an outside chance that Republicans would win the House or (less likely) the Senate in the 2010 midterm election.

Yet even if his poll numbers stay low and the other party triumphs in the midterm, the president need not lapse into political paralysis.

In their paper "What Can We Learn from Presidential Adversity?" Ryan J. Barilleaux, Marc Bacharach, and Jewerl Maxwell pointed out that presidents retain a great deal of power in difficult moments. Three examples help make the case.

Adversity makes it more difficult for the president to succeed with legislation and thus encourages the chief executive to take recourse in unilateral action. But adversity does not strip the president of the ability to shape policy. Some of Truman’s greatest policy achievements came during his tough times. Ford was able to conduct foreign policy and his veto strategy on spending was more successful than not Reagan concluded a key arms-control treaty withthe Soviet Union and conducted a military operation against Iran. Granted, presidential power is reduced by adverse circumstances, but it is not erased.