NEW YORK - The
first voice I hear on arriving in the Big Apple is that of my friendly cab driver,
who is bringing me in from the airport for a fee of 27 bucks and telling me
that there is no way he is going to vote for Gerry Ford for president, even
though he likes Ford better than he likes Jimmy Carter.
There is one deep
and abiding reason why this gentleman would not vote for Ford, and nothing that
happens in the election campaign, or forevermore, can change it.
The reason is the
pardon that Ford granted to Richard Nixon, freeing the former president from further
legal proceedings out of the Watergate affair.
It's not Ford's
guilt by association with Nixon, or a feeling that the Republican party, having
cast up Nixon, must be cast out with him. It’s that pesky pardon, which was
Ford's own decision, a thing in which he exercised his own options.
Equal before the law
The cabbie didn't
want to talk about anything else in the election except that one thing, and be
had nothing good to say about Carter, for whom he intends to vote. His summation:
"There are no pardons around for the likes of you and me—Nixon's no different.”
In the big and
important state of New York, not everybody agrees with my cabbie, and while Carter
is leading in virtually all statewide polls, there are signs that his lead is
slipping.
Carter himself is coming
here to Manhattan on Wednesday to goose up his supporters, even though he has a
stranglehold on the New York City vote while Ford has the edge in the suburbs and upstate.
My cab driver notwithstanding, there are signs that a number of voters
may be having second thoughts about voting for Carter solely because Ford
pardoned Nixon. The idea that Carter would make a good president merely because
he didn't pardon Nixon isn't the kind of thing that generates confidence over the long haul, amid the stresses
and challenges that a future president is going to have to face.
This may account for an interesting swing
that has taken place among voters with some college education who, in the
United States, constitute a much larger segment of the electorate than they do in Canada, or
in any other country in the world.
The Lou
Harris poll Indicates that this segment, comprising some 43 per cent of those eligible to
vote, has swung from a 62-33 preference for Carter in July to a 51-38
preference for Ford with only a week to go
until voting day.
Harris attributes this to Carter's reluctance to take firm stands on the issues
of the day, and the fact that Ford, partly by virtue of being president and having
to act, appears the more decisive of the two.
This, it seems, may enable the best informed and
most articulate
voters—though who could be more articulate than a New York cab driver?—to get over the hurdle
of the Nixon pardon and even to view it as a
courageous decision made under
stress to spare the nation further agony.
Ford's position in this matter is further
strengthened by the fact that at no time, at the moment of granting the
pardon or since, has he attempted to whitewash Nixon. What he bas done is assemble a record
of his own on which the whole of his candidacy rests—the image being that of a
well-intentioned and moderately effective president.
Carter, by making the state of the economy his central issue, has
been hammering at the Ford record rather than pulling forward firm alternatives.
Yet, by any
standard that a Canadian observer can bring to bear, the Ford record is not all
that bad, with inflation down from 12 per cent to six per cent.
This is the comfortable kind of inflation
that Canadians can understand. It's the stuff visitors to this country notice first,
in terms of what things cost relative to the costs at home. It must be equally apparent to
Americans, and Ford is bending every effort
in the final campaign week to make sure
they get the
message.
"I don't believe the American people
should be taxed
any more,” he Is saying in his nationwide radio and television blitz, "and
Inflation is just another high tax."
No dream candidates
The election
may be
won or lost in these closing days, especially in the key state
which, besides New York, include New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Illinois, Texas and California, all of
which are rated as toss-ups.
These are states where urban voters predominate. While Gerry Ford may not be exactly the big city person's dream of
what a president should be, neither is Jimmy Cater. At least Ford comes across as a
man you'd buy a used car from.
