Gerald Ford, R.I.P.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. -- Gerald R. Ford

Oh sure, they all love him now, but those of us 40 and over (some of us who only remember him by Chevy Chase's parodies) remember a day when Jerry Ford couldn't catch a break . He was constantly lampooned and derided as 1) a stumbling dimwit, 2) a Nixon apologist, 3) the latest in a long line of evil republican masterminds, 4) the bringer of stagflation, 5) party hack, and etc. Now, we hear that he was a statesman, a solid, respectable guy, who did the right thing in pardoning Nixon, and "healed the fissures of the political landscape". So what is the truth about his legacy? Let's explore...

One of the things he was ridiculed for was his campaign to have everybody wear a "whip inflation now" (WIN) button. I always thought those were somewhere between benign and cruel; because citizens had no more control over inflation than they had over the phases of the moon. But there was something wonderfully insidious about the act. By giving people some hope that they as individuals had power to change things, he planted an important seed. It took until Reagan's election to actually unleash the power of the people, but it might not have happened if we were still conditioned to leave everything up to the government.

So, was this positive kernel arrived at by accident? Well, let's go to the record. Jerry was right about tax cuts, spending vetoes, and hiring Alan Greenspan (as economic policy director). That's all good.

Jerry Ford gave us John Paul Stevens. Uh-oh. Supreme Court Justice Stevens is the worst enemy of the US Constitution in our nation's history. That didn't work out so well.

And then there's the matter of Nixon's pardon. On the one hand, criminal hearings would have been a good chance to focus on the hypocrisy of the elected, and I for one was hoping for the fight. The famous white house tapes were surely inadmissable as evidence, and they would have had a hard time proving a lot of what Nixon was accused of doing. It would have accelerated our understanding of the political biases in the newspaper business. On the other hand, a show trial is not a very good use of our country's resources.

Jerry Ford was also a member of the Warren Commission; that group of politicians who conspired to protect the "magic bullet theory" and forever obscure the identity of John Kennedy's assassin. Maybe he just wanted that national nightmare to end prematurely, as well.

I heard some pundits this morning say that he was not on anybody's "best presidents" list, but he wasn't on their worst list either. That's no doubt true, because we require our leaders to be politicians first. And Jerry was put there because he was a politician. Consider this quote:

The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election. -- Gerald R. Ford

So, Jerry was blaming Watergate on those who operated outside the network. The fact that he was an insider was what ultimately cost him a redo in 1976. Political insiders are forever bound to disappoint at the end of the day.

Jerry, you had a good run. You probably made fewer mistakes than others who had your job. Some of those mistakes (read Stevens, Warren) we still pay dearly for, but at least we know you did it out of a sense of political propriety, and not because you were dumb or evil. Those distinctions are preserved for other presidents.