Even for one who regards Jerry Ford as an equivocal figure, it is hard not to feel sorry for him as he moves through his first hundred days with a new Congress.
He is right in confronting Congress as laggards. If there is going to be a tax cut (and we should have one within limits imposed by budgetary sanity), it should come sooner rather than later. A tariff on oil imports may not be the best way of lessening our dependence on Arab sources, or of saving our balance of payments, but if Congress has better ideas it should be working with some show of speed at the job of establishing its own consensus. Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson, the congressional wizards of a departed era, would have had this business in hand long ago, but apparently none of their skills rubbed off on Speaker Carl Albert or Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, whose ideas of discipline would appall even a tenth-rate progressive educator.
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