I remember the headline very well. During the fiscal crisis in the mid-1970’s, it was one of the great Daily News headlines. Ford to City: Drop Dead.
Back then we knew Ford didn’t actually say, "Drop Dead." But the art of the headline is such that liberties can be taken. The headline did, however, express the essence of what Ford was saying.
And it really resonated with New Yorkers at that time.
The Times’ reports today that many think that Ford actually said those infamous lines and it cost him the election in New York (Jimmy Carter carried New York State by a slim margin).
Here are the facts: On Oct. 29, 1975, Ford gave a speech denying federal assistance to spare New York from bankruptcy. The front page of The Daily News the next day read: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.”
Those were tough financial times for New York City. The city was broke and Ford’s reaction seem to epitomize a general feeling that nobody cared about New York City anymore.
Ford apparently resented the way that the headline became a stand-in for what he’d actually said. “It more than annoyed me because it wasn’t accurate,” he recalled years later. “It was very unfair.”
According to the Times’ "Ford’s treasury secretary, William Simon, warned that bailing out NYC would amount to nationalizing municipal debt and rewarding local officials who lacked the will to stanch the inevitable hemorrhaging inflicted by bankrupt liberalism. (The investment banker Felix G. Rohatyn, recruited by Mr. Carey to rescue the city, would liken default to “someone stepping into a tepid bath and slashing his wrists — you might not feel yourself dying, but that’s what would happen”)."
The following demands were made to city officials: raise transit fares, abolish rent control, scrap free tuition at the City University. "This prompted Victor Gotbaum, the municipal labor leader, to complain that Mr. Simon barely believed in government at all, except for police and fire protection, “and he’s not sure about fire.” writes the Times.
Yes, the famous headline. Is this going to be another Reaganized wailing and gnashing of teeth? The president who pardoned Nixon and paved the way for the likes of Georgie and his cronies. “Ford to City:Drop Dead” was just another nail in the coffin of another underhanded lunkhead of a president. All I care to think about with Ford is Chevy Chase doing his famous falling down the stairs routine on SNL. We always laughed, no matter how often he did it. As my dad used to say, “If a president was clumsy and a good president, the public would think it was cute. With Ford…” well, you get the picture!