The Passing of a 'Giant' Among Journalists

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"Before politics was fed into computers and moveable maps came out, Jack Germond had it all in his head."

Walter Mears
Former Associated Press reporter

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Journalist Jack Germond, who died last week, was, in the words of colleague Jules Witcover, "a giant" of American journalism.

Many years ago, I read — for the first time — "Marathon," the book Witcover and Germond co–authored on the 1976 presidential campaign. I have read it several times since, each time with greater admiration.

The task was something of a marathon itself. The campaign was legendary at the time because the eventual winner, Jimmy Carter, had been running for a couple of years and, in that time, had risen from virtual obscurity to the presidency.

But you couldn't really tell the story of that campaign without going into a certain amount of detail on the Watergate scandal and the resignation of the man who won the previous presidential election, Richard Nixon.

So, whereas historian Theodore White had the luxury of writing about a single year — and, perhaps, a portion of another — in his groundbreaking accounts of presidential elections from 1960 to 1972, Witcover and Germond had to write about virtually the entire four–year period between the 1972 and 1976 elections.

They also had to write about something that was new in presidential politics at that time. Carter rose to prominence in large part because, unlike previous presidential hopefuls who chose to enter some primaries but not others, Carter ran everywhere. Germond and Witcover chronicled that development meticulously.

Nixon probably was the last president to take the traditional route to the White House. His campaigns in 1968 and 1972 were the transition from old–style presidential politics, in which nominations were decided by delegates who were handpicked by party elites, to modern presidential politics, in which the popular vote in primary elections tends to determine how a state's delegation will vote at the national convention.

And Witcover and Germond were there to report on it — for their contemporaries and the generations to follow.

"Jack was a truly dedicated reporter and had an old–fashioned relationship with politicians," Witcover told the Baltimore Sun. "He liked them, but that did not prevent him from being critical when they did bad things and behaved badly."

Journalists like Germond achieved a new influence on American politics during the transition of which Germond wrote. He was, in the words of NPR's David Folkenflik, "one of the reporters who helped to determine presidential winners and losers."

Howard Kurtz echoed Witcover's sentiment.

"Germond ... was a throwback in more ways than one," Kurtz wrote for Fox News, "a poker–playing, racetrack–dwelling, Falstaffian figure who would close down the bar at New Hampshire's Wayfarer Inn, then be up at 7 the next morning interviewing county chairmen."

Ah, yes, the horse racing thing. That is another passion I shared with Germond. I don't know how Germond came by it.

I've always enjoyed horse racing, but I discovered a true passion for it when I worked as a copy editor for the Arkansas Gazette's sports department.

I don't know if Germond ever did any better than I did at the track. I hope he did.

I do know that he achieved things in journalism I probably will never achieve. And I'm all right with that.

Because there aren't many Jack Germonds — maybe one or two — in a lifetime.

Ford's Self-Inflicted Wound

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On this night in 1976, President Ford and Jimmy Carter met in the second of their three televised debates.

Ford had been making gains on Carter since their first debate. He still trailed Carter in the polls by a considerable margin, but that margin clearly was narrowing. And Carter, who was known to be a "born again" Christian, received negative publicity for an interview he gave to Playboy.

In early October 1976, things seemed to be moving in Ford's direction.

However, Ford himself froze his momentum in its tracks with what can only be called a self–inflicted wound.

When the candidates met in San Francisco 35 years ago tonight, the subject was foreign policy, which was generally regarded as a strength of Republican nominees during the Cold War.

Carter, perhaps feeling particularly vulnerable after surveys had indicated that more people thought Ford won the first debate than thought Carter did and his interview with Playboy drew a sharp response from feminist leaders and Christian evangelicals, went on the offensive from the start.

Ford retaliated gamely, and the tone of the second debate was established. This would be a bare–knuckles brawl.

In their first debate, Carter seemed intimidated by Ford's office. "[T]his time, the aura of the presidency was no shield for Ford," wrote Jules Witcover in "Marathon," his account of the '76 campaign.

Carter was not as timid as he had often appeared in the first debate. He was aggressive, hammering away at every opening, and I recall thinking, about 10 or 15 minutes into the debate, that Ford seemed almost shocked. This wasn't the Jimmy Carter he had expected.

But that hardly explained what happened next. Max Frankel of the New York Times, in a question about U.S.–Soviet relations, observed that "[w]e've virtually signed ... an agreement that the Russians have dominance in Eastern Europe" and proceeded to ask Ford, "Is that what you call a two–way street of traffic in Europe?"

Astonishingly, Ford replied — as he concluded a rather routine recitation of "several examples" in which his administration had negotiated with the Soviets "from a position of strength" — that "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration."

The remark was patently ridiculous.

Some of Ford's defenders — and the president himself — later tried to put a positive spin on the remark. They would claim that Ford was really saying that his administration had never acknowledged Soviet domination of eastern Europe.

And that had a defiant, almost revolutionary, sound to it — except that wasn't precisely what he said.

When NPR's Pauline Frederick, the moderator, tried to go to Carter for his rebuttal, Frankel interjected with a followup for Ford.

"[D]id I understand you to say, sir," he asked in disbelief, "that the Russians are not using eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there and making sure with their troops that it's a Communist zone?"

Given an opportunity to explain himself then, on the spot, Ford further muddied the waters, saying this instead:

"I don't believe ... that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Rumanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of those countries is independent, autonomous: it has its own territorial integrity and the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union."

The damage had been done.

James Naughton of the New York Times observed an "audible intake of air" in the theater that night, Witcover wrote. Even more tellingly, Ford committee director Stuart Spencer, who was watching the debate with security adviser Brent Scowcroft, remembered that "Scowcroft went white. Right then I knew we had problems."

In hindsight, I suppose, Ford's remarks could almost be regarded as prophetic, considering the events that unfolded in the decade to come. But, on this night in 1976, it was nothing less than ludicrous to suggest that Poland and the other countries in eastern Europe were not dominated by the Soviet Union.

But Carter, sensing a vulnerability that he could exploit, said that Ford must have known about the presence of Soviet troops in eastern Europe. If he did not, he was incompetent. If he did and ignored them, pretended they did not exist, he had been dishonest. That was about as blunt as the choice could be. The president of the United States was stupid or a liar. There was no third alternative.

Asked later by Witcover about his reply, Ford admitted he had been "a little careless" but doggedly continued to stand by what he had said.

But it was no temporary storm that had to be ridden out. For Gerald Ford, it was much worse than that. Even before he became president, Ford had been ridiculed by Lyndon Johnson, who suggested that Ford, a star football player at Michigan, had played football too often without a helmet in the years before he was elected to the House.

(LBJ also once said that "Jerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time" — which reporters cleaned up to read "Ford can't walk and chew gum at the same time." I've never been sure which comparison was more damaging.)

In short, it was the resurrection of the ghost that Ford's staff feared the most — the impression that he was dumb. It had plagued him since his career in the House. It had been a national joke when he stumbled a couple of times in front of TV cameras, launching some of Chevy Chase's most memorable skits on Saturday Night Live.

Ford never recovered.

Some people thought at the time — and some people still believe — that Ford's gaffe in the second debate kept him from winning the election, but I disagree.

I believed then — and I still believe today — that Ford was going to lose, anyway, because of the pardon of Richard Nixon. He needed everything to go his way from the time of the Republican convention to Election Day if he was to have even the slightest chance of winning. What happened 35 years ago tonight didn't help his cause.

My personal view of that decision has evolved over the years, and I have reached the point where I am partially inclined to agree with Ford, who argued that issuing a pardon was the only way to put Watergate behind us and refocus on the issues the nation faced in the mid–1970s.

But, in 1974, the majority of Americans were so angry at Nixon that, when Ford pardoned the former president, he sealed his fate with them.

Technical Difficulties

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It had been nearly 16 years since the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees had squared off in a televised debate.

But on this night in 1976, when President Ford and former Gov. Jimmy Carter came to Philadelphia, they weren't there to see the Liberty Bell. They were there to debate, and there was much anticipation in the air on that Thursday night.

In a couple of departures from how things had been done in 1960, the debates of 1976 were held in public places and in front of live audiences. The audience that assembled on this night in 1976 for the first of three debates between Ford and Carter expected to see a 90–minute encounter — but they saw more than that.

That first Ford–Carter debate was a lot more than most folks probably expected.

For one thing, it was longer than planned — by 27 minutes. That was how long the sound was out, and that is how long both candidates stood on that stage, virtually motionless, until the problem was resolved.

Because of Carter's huge lead in the polls, Ford had been willing, even eager, to do something that previous incumbents had been unwilling to do — debate his opponent. He believed — as Jules Witcover wrote in "Marathon" — that the American people didn't want someone who had been unknown to them a year and a half earlier to be in charge of foreign policy, and Ford's campaign emphasized questions and doubts about Carter's experience weeks before the two met for their first debate.

Carter later said he wouldn't have won the election if not for the debates. I didn't get that sense at the time, but I wasn't old enough to vote, and perhaps there were nuances that I missed.

But I did get the feeling that the technical difficulties that disrupted that first debate (which really wasn't too memorable, otherwise) gave Carter an opportunity to mentally assess his performance to that point and, like a coach at halftime, make adjustments.

When the debate began, Ford, who trailed by a significant margin in the national polls, came out swinging. Carter, on the other hand, often seemed timid — as if he was intimidated by the aura of the presidency. Perhaps he was.

But, after the unscheduled interruption, Carter appeared more forceful in his criticism of Ford — and he maintained his offensive for the rest of the campaign.

At the time, most surveys indicated the debate had been a draw, although some concluded that Ford had been the winner. But the momentum was with Carter after those technical difficulties 35 years ago.

Irreversibly.