Gerald Ford, the president of the United States, was going to be staying in the very same hotel I was living in. I was working for the very guy who was trying to deny him a full four-year term of his own. So I did something that seemed perfectly natural at the time: I wrote Jerry Ford a note welcoming him to town, and I invited myself up for a visit.
The town in question was Joliet, Ill., and the time was mid-October of 1976, at the height of a hotly contested presidential campaign. I’d been detailed to Joliet to try to drum up votes for Jimmy Carter, the former governor of Georgia. President Ford was coming to Joliet to kick off a whistle-stop train tour of Illinois, trying to keep the Land of Lincoln in the Republican column.
He and his wife would be spending the night before the tour at a hotel in downtown Joliet – the Sheraton Motor Inn, if memory serves – celebrating their 28th wedding anniversary and watching the televised vice-presidential debate between the president’s running mate, Bob Dole, and Walter Mondale.
I was a 20-something low-level staffer on my first political assignment, and a Democrat. He was the 38th president of the United States, and a Republican. Why wouldn’t he want to hear from me?
I gave the note to the desk clerk at the hotel.
“Dear Mr. President,” I began, and then I told him that we were neighbors – back in Washington, where I lived just a few miles from where he lived (his place was nicer), and now here in Joliet, where we’d soon be just a quick elevator ride apart. I made sure he understood that I was working for the opposition – our Carter supporters would even be carrying signs at the train station the next morning – but that nonetheless I had great respect both for him and for “the remarkable Betty Ford.” That was the adjective I used, I’m nearly certain even after all these years: the “remarkable” Betty Ford.
And, I went on, I’d be honored to have a chance to drop by their hotel room that evening to extend a welcome across the political divide. Perhaps, I suggested, we could even watch the debate together.
Hoping to hear from him at his earliest convenience, I was sincerely and very truly and whatever else one says to end a note from a total stranger to the leader of the free world. I put it into an envelope, gave it to the desk clerk and went back to my room – a tiny Carter island in the midst of Fordiana – to await a reply, which could be arriving, I figured, within hours.
No such thing.
The people around the president had evidently decided that their guy could celebrate his wedding anniversary and watch his running mate perfectly well without me in the room. I didn’t take it personally – although in retrospect, I’d have loved to have been sitting there on the couch during the debate’s biggest foot-in-mouth moment, when Sen. Dole started toting up the dead and wounded Americans from all the 20th century’s “Democrat wars” – his phrase, not mine, and a major gaffe. (My own reaction: a brand-new sign for our next day’s demonstration: “Dole Is a Pineapple.”)
But then, some weeks after the president’s train left Joliet, a reply did arrive, typed on a single sheet of White House paper. The president regretted that his schedule hadn’t permitted us to meet, and he appreciated my kind words, including the ones about the First Lady, which had of course been passed along to her. And there was a signature at the bottom – in the president’s own hand, or perhaps an aide’s, or even a mechanical stand-in’s. It didn’t matter; it was good of him to write back – whoever actually wrote it, whoever actually signed it.
Gerald Ford ultimately carried Illinois, despite our best efforts to prevent it, but he didn’t quite carry enough other states to hold on to the White House. Within months of our paths almost crossing in Joliet, he’d be a former president, a title he’d wear with uncommon grace for decades.
And it says something about those times – and even more about that president – that a 20-something nobody working for the other side could contemplate writing him a note, would think it not the slightest bit daffy to suggest paying him a visit, would understand that Jerry Ford was exactly the kind of fella who might invite a fella from the other side up to say hello and watch a little TV.
Rick Horowitz is a nationally syndicated columnist. Contact him by writing to rickhoro@execpc.com.
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