The Common-Sense Presidency

Gerald Ford was a far better president than Americans realized when they rejected him in favor of Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election. He was, in large measure, a victim of the sins of his forefather, Richard Nixon.In specific terms, pardoning Nixon cost him dearly. He had a good reason for sparing his predecessor from further harassment beyond the impeachment Nixon was facing, for lying about the Watergate cover-up, when he resigned in 1974. Ford felt, quite logically, that continuing the Watergate circus would interfere with far more pressing government business. But logical or not, his 1975 decision sent his high 71% popularity rating plummeting.Had this not happened, he might have received more credit than he did for dealing with another Nixon legacy, an economy that was bent all out of shape by the Nixon decision in August 1971 to impose price controls. Controls were a witless response to inflation, heavily attributable the efforts Lyndon Johnson and congressional Democrats to finance a war in Vietnam and a “war on poverty” simultaneously.Price controls, combined with easy money delivered by the Federal Reserve chairman, Arthur Burns, juiced up the economy temporarily and allowed Nixon to easily beat Democrat George McGovern in the 1972 election. But the bitter fruits of this idiocy plagued the country all through the 1970s, making it one of the most dismal decades in the history of American economic policy. The Nixon price controls on oil and gas discouraged new production and even resulted in the capping of some wells that were unprofitable at the mandatory price ceilings. The “oil shocks” of 1973 had far less to do with an Arab embargo — although this was widely blamed by politicians and the press — than with the curtailment of American production by price controls.Ford inherited a political climate in which it was difficult to deal either with the price controls or with the inflation that had exploded because of the interference with normal market mechanisms. But he tried manfully and was actually making headway before his narrow defeat in 1976. His success with a Congress controlled by Democrats derived in part from the fact that he had earned respect from both sides of the aisle when he had been minority leader in the House before Nixon handed him the assignment of replacing a disgraced vice president Spiro Agnew in 1973.But some success derived also from his liberal use of the presidential veto, a useful tool that seems to have escaped the notice of the present White House incumbent. To trim the inflated fiscal 1975 budget willed to him by the departed Nixon, and control the normal spending propensities of both parties in the Congress, Ford wielded the veto, mostly on spending bills, more than 50 times. That sort of thing does not win political friends, but like the Nixon pardon, it was a mark of Ford’s courage and honesty.Getting the economy going again after its 1973-1975 slump needed more than the few spending cuts Ford could wangle. He had an answer to that as well, even though it was not as effective as it could have been if his adversaries, and some members of his own party, had allowed him to follow his own instincts. He introduced tax cuts in 1975, which was good —but they were only temporary, which was bad. When they were due to expire at year-end, taxpayers faced an increase. To counter arguments that tax cuts were inflationary, Ford then tried to force Congress to combine tax and spending cuts, but he ended up with a not-very-useful bargain, a $17 billion cut and empty promises. Washington at the time was heavily influenced by the theories handed down from that rock-star economist of the 1920s and 1930s, John Keynes, who told politicians everything they wanted to hear, that inflation can be good, that governments can cure recessions with heavier spending, and that tax cuts are, on the whole, bad because they limit such spending.Ford’s attempts to phase out price controls also were met with the argument that inflation would worsen, a remarkable theory since price controls had been heavily responsible for prolonging inflation. Acting on the bad advice of someone or another, Ford tried to jawbone the American people with his famous “Whip Inflation Now” buttons, which reflected badly on the character of a president who was normally averse to political phoniness, unlike both his predecessor and successor.What these battles showed, however, was that Ford had the right ideas: get rid of controls, cut taxes, firm up the dollar, and control federal spending. He, in effect, anticipated the supply-side revolution, which actually did transform the economy when it was brought into being under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He was aided by his most trusted economic adviser, Alan Greenspan, who would go on to a distinguished career as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Ford had a solid grasp of commonsense economics, and Mr. Greenspan, a brilliant economist, was there to show him why he was right.When Jimmy Carter gave his inaugural State of the Union address in 1977, he said he had taken office “during the worst economic slowdown of the last 40 years,” implying that he was Franklin Roosevelt reincarnated, come to save the republic. But in fact, the economy had been recovering for 22 months at that time, with production, employment, retail sales, and other economic indicators rising smartly. Ford deserved a lot of credit for that, but he didn’t get it from the voters. For their mistake they had to suffer through four more years of economic policy fumbling, much like they had in the Johnson-Nixon era.Gerald Ford, rest in peace. Though he didn’t get the respect he deserved, we can do something to rectify that now.Mr. Melloan is a former Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor and op-ed columnist.

The Common-Sense Presidency

The Common-Sense Presidency

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