Wednesday, December 27, 2006
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Remembering President Ford
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Posted by:
Hugh Hewitt at
8:48 AM
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President Ford was a wonderful man and an excellent president. I spent most of the fall of 1976 running around Massachusetts with a bus full of college students attempting to persuade voters that they were better off with Gerry Ford than an unknown an untried southern governor. I had no idea how right I was.
The election of 1976 was a red/blue divide nearly as striking as the last two. President Carter won with the solid south and the midwest against the west and the Yankee east (except Massachusetts.)
Ford's handling of the Mayaguez affair was the first assertion of American power after the retreat from Vietnam, and remains an important precedent for the exercise of presidential power when American lives are endangered around the world. 15 American servicemen were killed and 50 wounded in the assault on the Khmer Rouge.
It was a relatively short but very significant presidency, and Gerry Ford will be remembered fondly by any American with a generous spirit who can recall those post-Watergate, post-Vietnam days.
UPDATE: From one e-mail to The Corner:
His death reminds us that accident and chance play a greater role in politics than we would like to believe, that decency does not always prevail in elections but is long remembered, and that we confuse verbal accuity with political intelligence at our peril.
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all of this has to come up again. I respect Pres Ford and believe he brought healing to a country (myself included at the time) that was experiencing great turmoil. If you were here then and don't agree, then I can't imagine where your head was at.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to separate this memory from the darkness that was the Nixon presidency. We need to be vigilant lest we repeat that era again (unless you relish being the official "enemy list"). |
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"(Anyone who thinks Stevens is a liberal doesn't know the history of the court; he's a moderate by historical standards, but a smart and pragmatic moderate.)"
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Any number of commentators, Hugh included, have torn that ignorant statement to shreds. It's silly on its face and doesn't hold up to any objective historical scrutiny. Please don't come to a site where many of us have multiple degrees in relevant disciplines and toss out nutter nonsense like Stevens is a moderate by historical standards. What a complete and utter joke, Snap.
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I said Ford was a good man and a good President. That hardly qualifies as disrespecting the dead. The question is merely whether he made a mistake in pardoning Nixon, which is a question many bloggers -- conservative and liberal -- are discussing today. |
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Can't even leave this thread alone. |
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Clinton to go to jail once he became Prez. I mean, just because most of his associates get jail time or huge fines doesn't mean Clinton ought to go to jail with them. He lost his law license, was accused of sexual assault of all kinds and was impeached but it would not be good for any American President to go to jail.
It's sad, but definitely part of the game, that good men like Ford and Bush won't be respected and their terms appreciated until way after they are out of the limelight. Most people, myself included, only thought of Ford as the bumbling dullard that Chevy Chase characterized. What a shame. |
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Ford was a good man and a pretty good president. He appointed a great Supreme Court justice -- the ultimate Rockefeller Republican, John P. Stevens. (Anyone who thinks Stevens is a liberal doesn't know the history of the court; he's a moderate by historical standards, but a smart and pragmatic moderate.)
On the pardon issue, I tend to side with Digby -- http://tinyurl.com/yeo86f -- he says he thought it was the right thing at the time, but he now knows that it set a bad precedent: "I did not understand the zombie nature of Republicanism and had no way of knowing that unless you drive a metaphorical stake through the heart of GOP crooks and liars, they will be back, refreshed and and ready to screw up the country in almost exactly the same way, within just a few years."
That's about right. It was a perfectly reasonable decision at the time, but under this precedent, it has allowed Republicans to give "second chances" to all sorts of criminals. So now Bush II has the felon Elliott Abrams in a position of power, and is taking advice from Iran-Contra traitor Michael Ledeen, and this kind of thing is considered normal (though the MSM would freak out if a Democrat hired as many criminals as Bush has). That's part of the sad legacy of the Nixon pardon -- the mainstreaming of Republican criminality -- but I can't blame Ford for that, because he had no way of knowing that future Republicans would use the precedent that way. |
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I prefer to remember President Ford today as a kind and decent man, as well as a leader who did important and good things for our country in a relatively short period of time.
And yet Briggsy, your comments remind me of something George Washington once said: "You could as soon scrub the blacakmore white, as to change the principles of a professed Democrat...he will leave nothing unattempted to overturn the Government of this country." He wrote this after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts. This is in "The Writings Of George Washington," Vol. 37, p. 474.
I have very close and dear friends who are Democrats -- they are wise, intelligent and deeping caring people. So I can only gather President Washington was referring to people like you. |
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