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Presidential Interviews - Face the Nation, 6/5/76
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Presidential Interviews - Face the Nation, 6/5/76
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The original documents are located in Box 17, folder "Presidential Interviews - Face the
Nation, 6/5/76" of the Michael Raoul-Duval Papers at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential
Library.
Copyright Notice
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Michael Raoul-Duval donated to the
United States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives
collections. Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in
the public domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are
presumed to remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject
to a valid copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE
JUNE 5, 1976
UNTIL 11:30 A.M., SUNDAY
JUNE 6, 1976
OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
THE WHITE HOUSE
INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT
BY
HELEN THOMAS, UPI
BOB SCHIEFFER, CBS
AND
GEORGE HERMAN, CBS
LIBRARY GERALD ? FORD
ON
FACE THE NATION
11:50 A.M. EDT
QUESTION: President Ford, you say you are not
making the assumption that Ronald Reagan will get the
nomination or be elected, but the problem lies ahead of you
now for Tuesday in California. Some political experts think
you are going to have a really tough time at the convention
if you don't win a good hunk of California's votes -- say
45 percent. Can you do it?
THE PRESIDENT: We are very encouraged by the last
three days. I talked to some people in California and I have
gotten reports from our people in California and we think we
are coming from an underdog position with new momentum and we
believe we are closing the gap, and we think that there is an
opportunity to win California. That, of course, would be the
ultimate, but we think we will do quite well in California.
OUESTION: Mr. President, how many delegates do you
think you will have when you go to Kansas City and do you
still think you will win on the first ballot?
THE PRESIDENT: Miss Thomas, I think we will win on
the first ballot. At the present time we have 805 delegates.
We expect to win a good share of the delegates on Tuesday.
That will put us quite close to the necessary 1130 and if
we do well on Tuesday, then I think we only need about 40
percent of the uncommitted delegates, so the opportunities
look I think very good for us in Kansas City on the first
ballot.
QUESTION: Mr. President, do you feel that you will
have the delegates before the convention actually opens or
do you feel as Vice President Rockefeller does that you
probably will be 20 or 30 votes short, but you will have them
by the time the first ballot comes around?
MORE
Page 2
THE PRESIDENT: We believe we will have them by the
time the first ballot comes around. There are always those,
you know, Mr. Schieffer, who play a little cozy and have not
quite made up their mind, but if we add up the committed
and those that we think are honestly leaning our way, I tbink
by the first ballot we will have the 1130.
QUESTION: But you won't necessarily have them by the
time the convention opens.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I am not going to argue about
whether we have them by the time the convention opens or not,
the most important time is when they actually cast their
vote in that first ballot.
QUESTION: Mr. President, let me get back just for a
moment to Ronald Reagan. One of the most interest things,
I think, that has been found by the CBS-New York Times polls
is a statistic that came up the other day that said if the
race were Ford versus Carter, 41 percent of those who call
themselves Ronald Reagan people would defect and vote for
Jimmy Carter. It also says 23 percent of those who call
themselves Ford voters would defect to Carter if Reagan
the nominee. In light of that aren't you going to have to
is FORD LIBRARY
put Ronald Reagan on the ticket if you are going to have the
backing of your party and you have got to have the solid
backing of the Republican Party?
THE PRESIDENT: I have said that I would not
exclude any Republican that I have looked at or we have heard
about that might qualify as being a Vice Presidential candidate
and that would include Ronald Reagan. Now he has himself
indicated he would not be interested in being Vice President
but as far as I am concerned I would not exclude him.
Now we will have to take a look at the two people
that the Democratic Party nominates in their July convention
in New York City. We will have to see how the convention turns
out in Kansas City, how we can best heal any wounds that the
party might have as a result of the many primaries. Of course,
the main thing is, is the person who is going to be nominated
for Vice President fully qualified to be President in case
something should happen to the President? Now all of those
things have to be put into this formula and we will look at the
kind of data you have indicated, but I think it is premature
to make any commitment at this time.
QUESTION: But are you seriously saying that the choice
of the Democratic Convention would really influence the man
that you want for your Vice President?
THE PRESIDENT: It certainly is a factor in the formula.
That has been the tradition in conventions over the years in
our Presidential races. You can't ignore it. Democrats have
done it, Republicans have done it and I suspect it will be
a factor, not the controlling factor, but it will be a factor.
MORE
Page 3
QUESTION: I know this is probably something you
can't tell us in some detail. You usually give a list of the
people that you are interested in that has been well published.
Do you have one favorite yourself, in your bosom -- as they
say in the church -- who you would like as your Vice
President?
THE PRESIDENT: I haven't decided on one person,
Mr. Herman. I have several that I think fit a very good
category of the kind of people, but it is very premature to
make any final decision at this point.
QUESTION: Mr. President, you have said several
times on several occasions that Reagan's statements on
Panama were irresponsible. Yet you say all that would be
forgotten, when he gets into the White House he would be
responsible. Are you saying that Reagan is only making
campaign rhetoric now and does not truly believe in the
things he says? You also implied there would be guerrilla
warfare if Reagan became President and stopped the Panama
Canal negotiations.
THE PRESIDENT: Sometimes in the height of a political
campaign statements are made that on cool reflection candidates
wish they hadn't said.
OUESTION: Are you referring to yours or his?
THE PRESIDENT: I am referring to several that have
been made by my opponent in recent weeks. Certainly if a
person becomes President he has to be more judicious, more
careful, in what he says and how he says it and when he says it,
and I think when you get in that Oval Office, Miss Thomas,
it does make you far more responsible than you are when you
are out on the political hustings.
FORD is LIBRARY GERALD
MORE
Page 4
QUESTION: You know in a recent interview you
volunteered -- or in answer to a question, I guess --
some information about your plans for alternatives to
court ordered school busing. Could you explain them in
somewhat more detail than they were explained, as I
read them. They seemed a little indefinite to me, or
are they still in that stage?
THE PRESIDENT: I think there are three points
we have to make before we discuss busing.
Number one, this Administration will uphold all
constitutional rights of any individual in this country,
including the rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Number two, this Administration is totally
dedicated to quality education.
Number three, this Administration will carry out
the decisions of the Supreme Court.
I took an oath of office to do so, and I will
continue to do SO.
Now, we have found, or I believe, that court
ordered forced busing to achieve racial balance is not
the best way to necessarily protect individual rights
on the one hand or to achieve quality education on the
other. Therefore, starting back in November of 1975, I
asked the Attorney General and other members of my
Cabinet to see if we couldn't put together something that
would be better than the remedy that has been used by some
district courts in trying to solve the very difficult
problem of protecting constitutional rights and, at the
same time, achieving quality education.
Within the last two weeks the Attorney General
has decided not to intervene in the Boston case for good
reasons that he, as Attorney General, decided, and I
support him. On the other hand, the Attorney General
is seeking a particular case where we can get a clarifi-
cation or a modification of some of the previous Supreme
Court decisions in this very complex area.
Now, in the interim, the Department of Justice
has prepared -- or is in the process of preparing --
legislation which I will submit to the Congress in the
very near future which would seek to limit the courts of
this country to the direction of the areas where the
local school board, by its act, has violated the
constitutional rights of individuals -- in this case
students -- and not to permit the court to go beyond
the instances where rights have been violated.
MORE
Page 5
Now, in some cases the court has taken an
illegal act of a school board -- relatively small part of
a total school system --- and taken over the whole school
system, and the court, in effect, has become the school
board. I think that is wrong. The Attorney General
agrees with me.
The legislation that we will propose will seek
to limit, to minimize the corrective action or the
remedy by the court to the actual instances where there
is a violation of a person's constitutional right. That
will minimize in many cases to a substantial degree the
amount of court ordered forced busing.
QUESTION: Mr. President, the courts have already
ruled on that point, if I understand it, in 1973 in the
Denver case.
THE PRESIDENT: Are you talking about the Keyes
case?
QUESTION: Yes, sir. Have they not, when they
said that was not a remedy? You could not just remedy
it in a specific area rather than the whole system.
THE PRESIDENT: The Attorney General and his
associates informed me that that has not been totally
clarified, and that is the purpose of actually seeking a
case where the Department of Justice can go into a
subsequent case and get a clarification.
That is why we are going to propose legislation,
so that there is a legislative direction given to the
court to make sure that we protect constitutional rights
where there has been a violation and, at the same time,
preclude the courts from becoming in effect the school
board in a local community.
QUESTION: Let me ask you just a somewhat
broader question, and you are the attorney and I am not
so maybe you can explain it to me. If the courts have
FORD LIBRARY
already ruled that busing is a permissible way to achieve
integrated schools and they have already ruled that
integrated schools are a constitutional right --
THE PRESIDENT: A permissible remedy to correct
an injustice.
OUESTION: -- how can you pass a law to limit
that remedy if the courts have already ruled it is
constitutional? Don't you need a constitutional amendment?
MORE
Page 6
THE PRESIDENT: The Constitution permits the
legislative body to give guidelines in certain court
cases--and according to the Attorney General he believes
that this proposed legislation is constitutional--it will
simply limit the remedy to the instance where there has
been a violation of a constitutional right. According
to him, that is constitutional.
QUESTION: Then it is your interpretation that
the Keyes case did not invalidate --
THE PRESIDENT: As I understand it, it was a
dictum, not a final judgment.
QUESTION: To cut through some of the legal
niceties which are a little hard on us, it seems to me --
perhaps I misunderstand it -- the final impact of this
is to leave in place all de facto school segregation
which has happened without the breaking of a law?
THE PRESIDENT: The courts already decided that.
QUESTION: So, that this is the direction which
you wish to encourage law and legislation to continue?
THE PRESIDENT: We would recommend, as the
court has said, we correct the violations but we only
correct the violations, not make a Federal district court
a local school board.
QUESTION: Mr. President, what chance do you
think such legislation would have of passing, and
what constitutional right is violated by being bused?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the Congress, I think,
would be responsive to some legislation of this kind
because I think the public --
QUESTION: This year?
THE PRESIDENT: I would hope SO. I can't
promise it because I don't control the Congress, but I
do believe there is a great public sentiment for a
limitation or a minimization of the court in the remedies
that they have pursued.
What was the second?
MORE
Page 7
QUESTION: The second is, what constitutional
right is being violated by being bused?
THE PRESIDENT: Busing is simply a remedy to
achieve a correction of an alleged act by a school
board to violate somebody else's constitutional rights.
Busing itself is not a constitutional right, nor is it
a lack of a constitutional right. It is only a remedy.
QUESTION: But isn't it the law of the land
to desegregate the schools in this land?
THE PRESIDENT: Where there has been a specific
violation of a person's constitutional right. It is not
beyond that, and that is the real point at issue.
QUESTION: On another subject, Mr. President --
QUESTION: Before you change the subject, before
you abandon schools altogether, just to explore one further
item, private schools, the private white academies that
have been founded in parts of the South, would you leave
those as being perfectly legal?
THE PRESIDENT: That case is now before the
Supreme Court. I think that the individual ought to have
a right to send his daughter or his son to a private
school if he is willing to pay whatever the cost might
be.
QUESTION: But a segregated private school, if
that should be his choice?
THE PRESIDENT: I think in a private school a
person ought to have an individual right.
QUESTION: What if those schools get some kind
of Federal aid?
THE PRESIDENT: If they get Federal aid, Mr.
Schieffer, that is a totally different question and I
certainly would not, under those circumstances, go along
with segregated schools, under no circumstances.
QUESTION: That would include any kind of tax
break, Federal tax break?
THE PRESIDENT: That is right.
QUESTION: Would you approve of a private
school turning someone away on the basis of color?
MORE
Page 8
THE PRESIDENT: Individuals have rights. I
would hope they would not, but individuals have a right,
where they are willing to make the choice themselves,
and there are no taxpayer funds involved. Now, this is a
matter before the courts at the present time, and I think
there will be a Supreme Court decision probably in this
term or the next term, certainly, but individuals have a
right where there are no Federal funds available.
I would hope they would not, and our own
children have always gone to public schools, which were
integrated, and they have gone to private schools where
thev were integrated. So, my own record is oneoof our
children and my own belief in integration.
But, I think individuals do have some rights,
where they are willing to make the choice and pay the
price.
QUESTION: Are you working for a Middle East
conference this year? You said you were talking
actively to the Israelis and other Governments to move
off dead center the status quo. Is there a possibility
that there could be a Geneva conference this year?
THE PRESIDENT: It is not likely that there
would be a Geneva conference this year. I don't rule it
out entirely, but it is not likely. We are, however --
I am talking to the heads of Government when I see them,
as I did with Prime Minister Rabin of Israel when he was
here. We are talking with foreign secretaries. We
think momentum has to keep going beyond the Sinai II
agreement.
If we stop the momentum, the pot begins to boil
again, so we are trying to deal bilaterally, urging other
nations to get together to move forward. But the prospect
of a Geneva conference in 1976 I think is somewhat remote.
QUESTION: Does the Syrian intervention in Lebanon
have your blessing?
THE PRESIDENT: We have objected to any foreign
intervention in Lebanon. We don't believe that military
intervention is the right way to solve Lebanon's political
problems. About eight weeks ago I sent Ambassador Dean
Brown as my special emmissary to Lebanon, andhe was very
helpful in trying to bring some of the parties together,
and I think we made a significant contribution in seeking
a political settlement without any military intervention.
I repeat, the United States Government is opposed
to any military intervention in Lebanon. I think it
could be destabilizing, even though thus far it has been
done with restraint.
MORE
Page 9
QUESTION: Are you doing anything about it?
THE PRESIDENT: We have let all parties know
that we oppose any military intervention.
QUESTION: Mr. President, in almost every
campaign speech it seems to me you say something about
the economy which goes along the lines that everything
that should be going up is going up and everything that
should be coming down is coming down.
THE PRESIDENT: That is true, and it is getting
better every week.
OUESTION: Then that gives point to my question,
which is that the CBS-New York Times polls of voters have
repeatedly shown a very strange phenomenon. Only about
a third of the people we have queried in various States
around the country expect their economic state to be
better a year from now. The rest think it is going to be
the same and a very large proportion -- in some places,
more than half the people -- think they are going to be
worse off in a year.
What is going on?
MORE
Page 10
THE PRESIDENT: If you look at other surveys you
find that consumer confidence has been going up and up
every month or whenever --
OUESTION: Until recently.
THE PRESIDENT: There was a slight drop in recent ---
I think the last week or so but for the last nine months it
has been going up very steadily and over the last year it has
gone up 100 percent.
Now, I think there was a little apprehension that
developed because we had a wholesale price index figure that
went up .8 percent for the month of April. But now that we
had the good news of Friday where the wholesale price index
went up .3 -- then I also saw, as you did, that we had good
unemployment news and we added some 300,000 more to our
employment figures, so I believe public confidence after that
just 30-day setback will again start climbing and if it
continues, as all of us think it will, we will have a
continuous process of economic growth and stability.
QUESTION: Mr. President, could I just for a tiny
minute get back to politics. I must say I am struck by how
nice you are being to Ronald Reagan today. At the beginning of
the broadcast you talked about how you thought he would grow
in office if somehow he wound up there at the White House.
You talked about how you have obviously taken note of some of
the statistics I cited about how many Reagan voters were
going over to Carter. Would it be fair to say that you are
not just including him, and you are not excluding him as a
Vice Presidential possibility, but you are giving serious
consideration to Ronald Reagan as your running mate?
THE PRESIDENT: I am giving serious consideration to
him like I am to all of the other Republican potentials.
I think we have to have an open mind about all of, say, 10
to 15 individuals, including him.
QUESTION: Mr. President, one of the last times we had
you on this broadcast when you were Congressman Jerry Ford we
asked you about the Warren reports on the assassination of
President Kennedy. A great deal more information has come out
about motives in the case of the assassination of President
Kennedy, information which was not obviously available to you
as a member of the Warren Commission at the time. Do you
agree with those who say that, therefore, the Warren Commission
report should be reopened, the thing should be restudied?
THE PRESIDENT: I think in the very limited area a
reopening might be desirable. The Warren Commission did make
a massive effort to try to find a motive, and we had
academicians, we had lawyers, we had all kinds of people
trying to find out.
QUESTION: Everything but the information --
MORE
Page 11
THE PRESIDENT: And we never were able to find a
motive. And if there is some additional, I think,
constructive information available, I think it cught to be
reopened in that very limited area.
QUESTION: You say "if," do you not think that there
is?
THE PRESIDENT: I have not had an opportunity to
examine the detailed information and until I have personally
examined it I don't think I ought to pass judgment on it.
QUESTION: Mr. President, you said repeatedly that
yours is an open Administration, anybody can come in and talk
to you. Has anybody come in and talked to you about getting
rid of Secretary Kissinger as a means of improving your
chances.
THE PRESIDENT: Absolutely not.
QUESTION: Nobody in the Administration?
THE PRESIDENT: Nobody in this Administration has come
to me asking that I fire Secretary Kissinger. I happen to think
he has done a first class job towards peace and that is the
responsibility of the Secretary, to carry out my foreign policy.
It has been successful, so I want him to stay.
QUESTION: Thank you very much, President Ford,
for being our guest on Face the Nation today.
END
(AT 12:15 P.M. EDT)
GERALE FORD LIBRARY