Gerald Ford: A Foreigner Who Visited the Juku

2017/07/07

Everyone likely has a moment in their life when they wish they hadn't said something. My worst remark was the following sentence addressed to U.S. President Gerald Ford: "By the way, is Betty doing better?" This happened on October 15, 1987, after President Ford had left office. He visited the Juku to receive an honorary doctorate and give a lecture commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Department of Political Science. I spoke to him so casually when we moved to the reception venue in the Old Library at Mita. President Ford didn't look displeased and replied, "Oh, she's doing better." Looking back, I probably need to explain a bit more why I made a comment that makes me want to crawl into a hole. I called the President's wife by her first name, Betty, even though I had never met President Ford before. Furthermore, my question about whether she had "recovered" referred to her alcoholism. Apparently, a public service announcement about addiction treatment in America had been completely burned into my mind. However, I am not clear on exactly when I saw that television ad.

President Ford assumed the presidency from the vice presidency following Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974. Since he lost to Carter in the 1976 presidential election, his term lasted until January 20, 1977. That period overlaps exactly with the years 1974–76 when I was studying abroad at Yale University. However, Betty was not yet suffering from addiction at that time, so there shouldn't have been any public service announcements on TV.

Although President Ford was a graduate of Yale Law School, he was originally a star football player during his time at the University of Michigan, even being selected as an All-American. When he took office, people sarcastically asked if his brain was alright because he had hit his head too many times playing football. His career mainly consisted of 24 years as a member of the House of Representatives from 1949 to 1973, and his service as House Minority Leader was significant. While some cite President Lyndon Johnson, who rose from the vice presidency after the Kennedy assassination, as a president skilled in managing Congress, Ford was also fundamentally a man of the legislature.

He often cracked the joke, "I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln." Of course, this wasn't a comparison between politicians, but a play on the Ford mass-market car and the Lincoln luxury car.

Here, I would like to organize the background of the Ford presidency and the Japan-U.S. relationship in 1987, when Ford gave his public speaking at Mita.

Currently, the media is reporting on the Trump administration's "Russiagate" as a play on the Watergate scandal, but Watergate was originally the name of a building in Washington, D.C. The Democratic National Committee headquarters was located there, and in June 1972, it was discovered that someone had planted wiretaps. It turned out the group responsible was linked to President Nixon's Committee for the Re-election of the President. This eventually led to the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon; although he avoided impeachment, he ended up resigning mid-term.

Ford, who was Vice President, assumed the presidency at this time. One month after taking office, President Ford announced that he would grant a full pardon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office. This caused President Ford's popularity to drop and became one of the reasons for his defeat in the 1976 presidential election. In the 1974 midterm elections, the Republican Party struggled due to the impact of the Watergate scandal, while the Democratic Party won a landslide victory, resulting in a so-called "divided" government. President Ford was forced to counter with his veto power. Furthermore, a powerful rival named Reagan was waiting within the Republican Party. In that sense, it can be said that President Ford played a transitional role in American political history.

Because the Watergate scandal and the current Trump administration's obstruction of justice regarding Russia are extremely similar, it is called Russiagate. For an impeachment to succeed, the House of Representatives must impeach based on a simple majority vote, the Senate must hold a trial, and a two-thirds majority of the senators present must vote to convict. In Nixon's case, he resigned before the House could impeach. Currently, since the Republicans hold a majority in both the House and Senate, the hurdle for impeachment is high. However, since the U.S. Congress has no party discipline and voting is fundamentally individual, the movements of anti-Trump factions within the Republican Party are important.

The commemorative lecture President Ford gave at Mita, titled "The United States and Japan: Responsibilities for the Future," offers two interesting points of comparison between the Japan-U.S. relationship in 1987 and the relationship today.

The main themes of the public speaking were (1) current trade imbalance issues, (2) monetary and fiscal policy issues, and (3) military and diplomatic cooperation. Even now, the trade imbalance of the early 80s was such a major issue that it was referred to as the Japan-U.S. trade friction or trade war.

The method taken during this era was exchange rate policy. On September 22, 1985, the G5 (a meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors from five advanced nations: the U.S., Japan, the U.K., West Germany, and France) was held at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Finance Minister Noboru Takeshita and others participated from Japan, and it was called the "Plaza Accord." The Plaza Accord aimed for exchange rate stability, but in reality, it meant correcting the strong dollar. To show how much the exchange rate fluctuated, it was around 250 yen to the dollar before the Plaza Accord, but by the time of President Ford's public speaking, it had appreciated to around 150 yen to the dollar. This became one of the causes of the bubble economy in Japan.

The Japanese economy at this time was the envy of the world. President Ford stated the following: "Regarding monetary and fiscal policy issues, as you all know, Japan is the most successful country among the Western advanced nations in terms of economic management. Japan's success over the past 20 or 30 years has been truly epoch-making. I am one who pays great respect to those who have made that success possible; Japan's economic policy has been the object of admiration for the free world." Current students have not experienced the upward trajectory of the Japanese economy or the bubble economy, so it may be difficult for them to grasp the reality of inflation or the American economy shifting its focus from Keynesian economics to monetarism.

In other words, 1987 was already the era of Reaganomics, and neoliberalism had made a spectacular start. It was the era of Thatcher in the UK, Reagan in the US, followed by the administrative reforms and deregulation of the Nakasone Cabinet.

However, while the initial primary policy goal was escaping stagflation, Reaganomics during this period had shifted its focus to supply-side economics, but it was accompanied by the "twin deficits" of trade and fiscal deficits. President Ford also noted, "The U.S. economic growth rate, the GNP growth rate, will likely be 2.5 to 3% in 1988, which can be called a remarkable achievement. And it was President Reagan who made that achievement possible. ...However, there is a danger that could be called a time bomb, or a Frankenstein-like monster. ...The American government has failed in managing the federal deficit. Taking the average of these five years, the deficit has been about 200 billion dollars per year."

In this public speaking, he pointed out that Iran was a problem, but during the time of the Shah, Iran was a vanguard of modernization and had good relations with the United States. However, when the regime of the Islamic fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini was established (the so-called Iranian Revolution), relations with the United States deteriorated. In 1987, the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) had not yet ended. It is an irony of history, but this was a period when the United States was supporting Iraq. President Ford stated, "If the United States had not responded in the Persian Gulf, the Soviet Union would undoubtedly have entered this vacuum." During this period, the Cold War had not yet ended. Regarding Japan, he gave a positive evaluation, saying, "I am aware that there are various military constraints. Historically, Japan has constraints regarding military action; however, Japan's self-defense capabilities have been strengthened, and through the five-year defense buildup plan, that power has increased, and Japan has been taking responsible actions."

After this, the Cold War ended, but in 1990, the Bush administration, which succeeded the Reagan administration, launched the Gulf War against the Hussein regime in Iraq, which had invaded Kuwait. This was the period when Japan's bubble burst. When this public speaking was given, there was still some time before the collapse of the Japanese bubble economy, and Japan still had considerable leeway.

Following this, Japan would experience the lost decade and the lost two decades. On the other hand, the United States was still the world leader in 1987 and bore the costs of maintaining the international order. However, in the present year of 2017, under the Trump administration advocating "America First," it has frequently turned its back on maintaining the international order. Seeing that difference gives one a sense of how much the world has changed.

For me personally, as a lesson from making that unexpected remark to President Ford, I have come to make an effort to speak with the utmost care when dealing with leaders, not to mention presidents and prime ministers.