Gerald Ford, 38th President of the USA, passed away Tuesday night at his home in Rancho Mirage, CA.
There are many things for which Ford is known (ushering the country out of Nixon’s Watergate era and Vietnam, being the only President never elected, and “spokes of the wheel” leadership), but perhaps the most powerful statement is taken from one of my favorite books, David Gergen’s “Eyewitness to Power”:
…the most lasting impressions from Ford rest not in his accomplishments. Rather they are in the quality of the man himself and the people he gathered around him. As critic Richard Reeves has argued, we have seen so much deterioration in our politics since the mid-1970s that, in retrospect, Jerry Ford’s approach to governance deserves fresh attention. Along with Truman and Eisenhower, Ford stands among the presidents of highest character to have served in modern times. He may not have moved mountains in his twenty-nine months, but he upheld the standards that people are thirsting to see again.
Rest in peace, President Ford.
–ASM
UPDATE: Sens. Biden and Carper on the passing of President Ford…
Biden: “Gerald Ford became President at a time when the American public had all but lost confidence in government and its elected officials. Through his quiet strength and steady leadership, he slowly but surely brought the nation back together and began to restore our collective faith in government and its people.
President Ford was a gentle man who will be remembered as a healer.”
Carper: “In life, President Ford was a statesman when we truly needed one. He never aspired to be President while rising to leadership roles in the U.S. House of Representatives, and he told Martha over dinner that night that the leadership role he really aspired to for many years was Speaker of the House. However, once he became President, he frequently sought to put country before party, sometimes at his own political peril.
As President, and as House Minority Leader, he governed from the middle. He was fair, just, and considerate of others, qualities that we would all do well to embrace on our own. We could use more leaders like Gerald Ford in both of our political parties today. Hopefully, on January 4 when a new Congress convenes, they will begin to emerge.”
Gerald Ford’s Historic Mistake
The pardon of Richard Nixon by President Gerald Ford started this nation on the path that eventually gave us the Constitutional abuses of George W Bush. The current media frenzy supporting the pardon is both simplistic and illogical.
Ford pardoned Nixon before Nixon was brought to trial or convicted. The rule of law was ignored in favor of a double-standard where Presidents were not held accountable for law-breaking. The illegal activities of Nixon in the political sphere were an assault on American Democracy and should have been severely punished. Because of Ford’s outrageous pardon, Right-wing Republicans never understood how un-American the tactics of Nixon were. The current national Republican leadership is still Nixonian to their core!
The current Bush Republicans attack the patriotism of their political opponents. Republicans are still inclined to criminalize dissent. Bush has let domestic political considerations and Republican partisan advantage influence decisions about war and peace. Bush Republicans still support wiretapping without court approval. Republican policies still include attempts to control or intimidate the media. Republican dirty campaign tricks are still much more widespread and of a more severe nature than Democratic ones. Republicans still want to politicize our court system. Republican leaders are still living in a culture of corruption. All of these negative attitudes evolved from the legacy of Richard Nixon.
Gerald Ford could have moved our nation toward a reform agenda. He could have publicized and moved to fundamentally correct the corrupt, abusive course of Nixonian Republicanism. He did not. Ford put Republican political advantage before cleansing American politics. The Nixon crimes went unpunished. The rule of law was undermined. Our nation was damaged and never fully recovered.
We should never forgive Gerald Ford for his betrayal of America. We still have before us the challenge of reforming our government, combating corruption and abuse of office by Republicans in power. These challenges should have been fully explored in the 1970’s but Ford cost America a full generation. Ford was a very bad President. He was not quite as bad as Richard Nixon or George W Bush but should be held partially responsible for their abuses.
Written by Stephen Crockett (host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com ). Mail: P.O. Box 283, Earleville, Maryland 21919. Email: midsouthcm@aol.com . Phone: 443-907-2367.
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