Word: gergens
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...President has no intention of trying to rush through any final decisions that might limit Carter's early moves. "The President has gained in stature through this defeat and through the graceful, considerate way he's handled the whole matter of passing on the mantle," Aide David Gergen explained...
...squabbles among his staff and an image as a weak leader, Ford shook up his publicity operation. Swedish-born Margita White, 39, taciturn director of the White House Office of Communications, was nominated to a seven-year term on the Federal Communications Commission. The President replaced her with David Gergen, 34, a former Nixon speechwriter and highly regarded special counsel to Ford, and made it clear that the Office of Communications would wield considerably more power; it is expected to grow from half a dozen professional staffers to as many...
...Gergen, who joined the Nixon White House in 1971, was brought in to improve coordination among Administration spokesmen. He will also continue to perform a delicate but important role-helping to sharpen the President's public statements. Ford, an uninspiring orator, has generally depended for his texts on his old friend and former congressional assistant, Robert Hartmann, Counsellor to the President and his chief speechwriter. Some critics have found Hartmann's drafts to be thin and full of platitudes. Gergen is expected to upgrade presidential pronouncements, though he will still not have direct authority over Hartmann...
Narrow Margin. If Hartmann was a bit nervous about Gergen's expanded role, Press Secretary Ron Nessen was a bit defensive about the newly fortified communications office. Some newsmen have harshly, often unfairly, criticized Nessen-an ex-TV news correspondent for NBC-for his lack of knowledge about White House thinking; some Republicans have accused him of undermining Rogers Morton, Ford's campaign director, whose tendency to put his foot in his mouth has sometimes made it difficult for the White House to support him. But Gergen insisted that his appointment was not designed to undercut anybody...
...Gergen put it to TIME'S Strobe Talbott: "We've all been concerned that the President's record, what he stands for and his vision for what he wants to do have not been getting through to the American public. This reorganization is an attempt to make the entire White House more professional in getting those messages across." Gergen's big problem, of course, is that the G.O.P. Convention is only three weeks off, and his boss still leads Challenger Ronald Reagan for the presidential nomination by an extremely narrow margin. At week...