Through no special fault of his own, really, President Ford seems somewhat fictional. He is President, yet somehow not a real President. No one ever voted for him in a national election. He himself seems uncertain of who he is, even when he does the correct thing in terms of policy. The recent assassination attempts somehow fit the pattern of fictionality—obviously not real assassination attempts, but ones involving a toy gun (as with Reagan in Florida), and a girl in a red Halloween costume in Sacramento, and a mental freak-out in San Francisco.
The atmosphere of fictitiousness extends of course to the Democrats. None of the assorted candidates seems to take hold. They look, as Governor Richard Lamm of Colorado said in Washington recently, “like ten guys tied for last.”
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