THE PRESIDENCY by HUGH SIDEY: On the Inside, Feeling the Pulse

They pass out Jerry Ford’s political buttons and biographies over at the L Street campaign headquarters. But the real campaign committee meets every morning in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, and it is officially called the Economic Policy Board executive committee.

One of Ford’s strongest election assets is an economy that is gathering strength.

Without it, he would be politically moribund. The question now is whether the recovery is enough to blot out Watergate and make the Russians and Henry Kissinger seem less of an irritant to the nation’s peace of mind.

The 15 or 20 men who gather beneath the portrait of Teddy Roosevelt on a rampant steed do not come in red, white and blue plastic boaters or snapping galluses that say, THERE IS A FORD IN YOUR FUTURE. They deny direct relationship with the crass election business. But they are everything to Ford’s future.

Bearing charts, they pad quietly down the halls in dark suits, queue up at the big coffee urn near the door and settle in around the long table by 8:30 a.m. “All right, gentlemen, let’s start,” shouts Treasury Secretary William Simon, the chairman, who still has a whiff of the Wall Street buccaneer about him. For the next 15 or 30 minutes they take the economic pulse all the way from the condition of the winter-wheat crop (better than expected) to the state of mind of Teamster Top Dog Frank Fitzsimmons (angry over NBC’s scathing profile of him). Then, at least once a week, their findings, their moods, their urgings, are conveyed to the President.

Labor, State, Commerce are there. Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, is on hand, fingertips together, eyes on the ceiling. So is Jim Lynn, head of the Office of Management and Budget. Ford’s special agent at these sessions is his economic assistant, L. William Seidman, fresh from his morning 1 %mile jog in Dumbarton Oaks Park. Other Cabinet officers and bureaucrats move in and out according to subject.

The mark of this group is found in Ford’s approach to New York City, the recent Soviet grain deals, proposed deregulation for trucking and aviation, the presidential vetoes of spending bills, and almost every economic move he has made.

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Last week the participants peered down the long, tough road in labor-contract negotiations. Willie Usery, Secretary of Labor, who had just mediated the Teamster settlement, puffed on his big white meerschaum pipe and ticked some of them off: rubber workers, electrical-appliance workers, meat packers, construction workers. It would be a delicate and difficult time in some ways, he warned, but not impossible to weather safely if free bargaining were given every encouragement.

The committee pondered the problem of reading the unemployment statistics and dismantling the “myth,” as Jim Lynn called it, that the same people are unemployed month after month. Most unemployment is short-range—people moving in and out of jobs. This “churning,” said Greenspan, is unbelievably high, and one of the serious consequences of not knowing the fluid nature of unemployment is that Government programs are sometimes aimed at people who find jobs before the Government can act. Seidman asked for better guidance “so we can take the money we are spending on unemployment and spend it better.”

As 9 a.m. approached, Simon hurried off to the Hill to testify before Congress; Seidman summed up the requests for action and then ordered adjournment. Aides grabbed their briefcases and fled. It had been only a fragment of time, but maybe the most important piece of the presidential mosaic of that day.

Perhaps the best testimony that this new committee system works occurred one day last month. Simon and the economy had been the focus of the most virulent attacks on Ford’s leadership. When Simon returned from a trip to the Middle East, he discovered a change. Henry Kissinger and foreign policy had become the main targets. It was not long until Kissinger called Treasury and joked: “Simon, you s.o.b., you’re behind these attacks on me.”