Louis Harris finds that President Ford is making a modest comeback. In a poll completed before the Vietnam debacle was completed, Americans, by 57 to 40 per cent, gave him a “negative” rating on “the job he is doing.” That is slightly better than the 60 to 37 negative rating last month. Last September, before the pardon of Mr. Nixon, Mr. Ford enjoyed a 67 to 20 positive rating. In October, after the pardon, his rating was 45 per cent positive, 49 per cent negative. In November the rating crept back up to 48 per cent positive, 47 per cent negative. But it has been more negative than positive since then.
■ Who will head President Ford’s re-election committee? Former Congressman and former Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird says he has been asked, but he is too busy serving out a ten-year contract as a counselor for national and international affairs for Reader’s Digest. It is rumored that former Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton will be named. But Mr. Ford has—to put it mildly—problems with the conservatives who dominate the party machinery. The conservatives would not be thrilled by the prospect of working with the man who headed the last ditch drive to block Goldwater’s nomination in 1964, and who subsequently surfaced to head the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest. Another name being mentioned is Clark MacGregor, who replaced John Mitchell as head of CREEP—the Committee to Re-elect the President.
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