President Ford, in his State of the Union address, stated, in part: “In recent years under the stress of the Vietnam war legislative restrictions on the President’s capability to execute foreign and military decisions have proliferated. If our foreign policy is to be successful, we cannot rigidly restrict in legislation the ability of the President to act. The conduct of negotiations is ill-suited to such limitations. For my part, I pledge this Administration will act in the closest consultations with the Congress as we face delicate situations and troubled times throughout the world.”
Departing from his prepared text at this point, Ford interpolated: “Legislative restriction intended for the best motives and purposes can have the opposite result as we have seen most recently with the Soviet Union.” Returning to the text, he said:
“International cooperation is a vital fact of our lives today. This is not a moment for the American people to turn inward. More than ever before our own well-being depends on American determination and leadership in the world. America’s commitment to international security has sustained the safety of allies and friends in many areas–in the Middle East, in Europe, in Asia. Our turning away would unleash new instabilities and dangers around the globe which would, in turn, threaten our own security.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
