Gerald Ford died yesterday. He was our 38th President even though he was never elected as President or Vice-President. He was appointed as Vice-President when Spiro Agnew was forced to resign over income tax evasion. He became President when Richard Nixon was forced to resign by the Watergate revelations.
We were fortunate to have a man like Gerald Ford in the position of Vice-President at such a traumatic period in our history. Ford was well respected within Congress, was easily confirmed as Vice-President, and the country was generally relieved when he took over for Nixon telling the nation:
“I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. I have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts. Therefore, I feel it my first duty to make an unprecedented compact with my countrymen. Not an inaugural address. Not a fireside chat. Not a campaign speech. Just a little straight talk among friends…”
“..My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.”
A month later Ford destroyed most of the goodwill he enjoyed when he issued a blanket pardon of Nixon. It was an immensely unpopular decision. Ford later explained himself:
Those who were critical of the pardon, he said, “haven’t thought through what would have happened over the next 18 months, 24 months, 36 months; that whole episode would have been on the front page.”
While the pardon outraged the nation, it has become more controversial in recent years.
In May 2001, Mr. Ford was honored with a “Profile in Courage” Award at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston. Senator Edward M. Kennedy spoke and said he had originally opposed the pardon. “But time has a way of clarifying past events,” he said, “and now we see that President Ford was right.”
Ford is reported to have taken great comfort in the acceptance of his decision by the Kennedy clan. Acceptance did not come quickly or uniformly enough for Ford to win re-election in 1976. He was defeated by a relatively unknown Governor from Georgia, Jimmy Carter.
Ford’s brief stint as President came at a pivotal time in our nation’s history and in many ways he failed to heal the nation and, in particular, the Republican Party. The reactionary tendencies of the Nixon administration were not so much uprooted as put on ice. Some of his most important advisors, like his Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his Director of Central Intelligence George Herbert Walker Bush, and his chiefs of staff Alexander Haig and Dick Cheney, would come back to haunt the nation.
During Ford’s Presidency Congress undertook a soul-searching reevaluation of our foreign policy, our intelligence agencies, and the role and powers of the Executive Branch. You can revisit these debates by looking at the transcripts of the Church Committee, the Pike Committee, and the Rockefeller Commission. I’ll have a lot more to say tomorrow about the Ford era and how it pertains to today.
I do not want to be overly critical of Jerry Ford today. The dead deserve a day of respect when we honor their better traits. Ford was a decent man that took over the Presidency at a very difficult time. He represented the reasonable and steady part of the Grand Old Party. He was neither a Goldwaterite nor a Reaganite. Aside from his decision to pardon Nixon, he made few enemies. He surrounded himself with some pretty awful characters, but he led the nation according to his own character, which was traditionally conservative, but not overly ideological.
Gerald Ford was a flawed but good man. And, for today, I think I will leave it at that.
