Presidential Leadership in a Time of Transition – After the anguish of the 1960s and the collapse of a presidency, America needed above all to restore its cohesion. It was fortunate that the man called to this unprecedented task was Gerald Ford. Propelled into an office he had not sought, Ford had never been involved in the complex gyrations of presidential politics. For that reason, freed from obsession with focus groups and public relations, he could practice in the presidency the values of goodwill and faith in his country on which he had been brought up. His long service in the House, where he sat on key defense and intelligence subcommittees, gave him an overview of foreign policy challenges.
Ford’s historic service was to overcome America’s divisions. He strove— and largely succeeded—to relate power to principle in his foreign policy. His administration witnessed the completion of the first agreement between Israel and an Arab state—in this case, Egypt—whose provisions were largely political. The second Sinai disengagement agreement marked Egypt’s irrevocable turning toward a peace agreement. Ford initiated an active diplomacy to bring about majority rule in southern Africa—the first American President to do so explicitly. In the face of strong domestic opposition, he supervised the conclusion of the European Security Conference.
Among its many provisions were clauses that enshrined human rights as one of the European security principles. These terms were used by heroic individuals such as Lech Walesa in Poland and Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia to bring democracy to their countries and start the downfall of Communism. I introduced my eulogy at President Ford’s funeral with the following sentences: According to an ancient tradition, God preserves humanity despite its many transgressions because, at any one period, there exist ten just individuals who, without being aware of their role, redeem mankind.
Gerald Ford was such a man. Jimmy Carter became President when the impact of America’s defeat in Indochina began to be translated into challenges inconceivable while America still had the aura of invincibility. Iran, heretofore a pillar of the regional Middle East order, was taken over by a group of ayatollahs, who in effect declared political and ideological war on the United States, overturning the prevailing balance of power in the Middle East. A symbol of it was the incarceration of the American diplomatic mission in Tehran for more than four hundred days. Nearly concurrently, the Soviet Union felt itself in a position to invade and occupy Afghanistan.
Amidst all this turmoil, Carter had the fortitude to move the Middle East peace process toward a signing ceremony at the White House. The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt was a historic event. Though its origin lay in the elimination of Soviet influence and the start of a peace process by previous administrations, its conclusion under Carter was the culmination of persistent and determined diplomacy. Carter solidified the opening to China by establishing full diplomatic relations with it, cementing a bipartisan consensus behind the new direction. And he reacted strongly to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by supporting those who resisted the Soviet takeover. In an anguished period, Carter reaffirmed values of human dignity essential to America’s image of itself even while he hesitated before the new strategic challenges—to find the appropriate balance between power and legitimacy—toward the end of his term.