Gerald Ford

I feel that I should depart at this point from my discussion of the pitfalls and opportunities of the Democratic victory, to address the eulogies being delivered and printed on the death of Gerald Ford.

I know that is a custom to never speak ill of the departed and to laud them in the most exemplary terms, so as to almost turn them into instant saints. I have always deplored this custom for when it comes to prominent men it is important that we not indulge in revisionist history, and assess a life as it was. Ford did some good things, and one can find those in any of the eulogies written, so the reader must forgive me if I do not repeat them here.

But I do find myself at odds with much that has been said and written about our “accidental” President though he was not so much accidental as the creature of his disgraced predecessor.

First we need to put the ascendancy of Ford into context. It was caused not only by the crimes of Richard Nixon but also by the crimes of Nixon’s Vice-President. The corruption of the Republican Party of today may well be nothing more than a continuation of the corruption of that period and even before.

Nixon’s Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, was “allegedly” guilty of both bribery and tax evasion, crimes, which he had committed before Nixon chose him to be his running mate. Yet Agnew, like Nixon was above the law. Instead of being impeached and prosecuted, he was allowed to escape prosecution in return for his resignation. It was this outrage which elevated Ford to the Vice-Presidency, and he was chosen for that post by a man who had committed even more serious crimes, Richard Nixon, and here I am talking not only of the Watergate crimes but of the manner by which Nixon was elected.

First Nixon was aided in his first election by the treachery of Henry Kissinger, who, at the time, was considered a trusted ally of Johnson emissary Averell Harriman, leader of the Paris talks. Kissinger used his contacts with the Johnson administration to tip-off the Nixon camp about an anticipated breakthrough in the Paris talks. Nixon set out to sabotage those talks by secretly offering the South Vietnamese “more” than they would get from the incumbent Democrats. The result was the negotiations floundered, Nixon was elected, the war went on for more than another four years with untold American, Vietnamese and Cambodian casualties, and was then concluded on the same terms, and conditions as had been on the table in the fall of 1968.

The decision to pardon Nixon won Ford a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2001, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, acknowledging he had criticized Ford at the time, called the pardon “an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest.”

I respectfully disagree. Nixon’s pardon did not end the nightmare for the nation and certainly not for Nixon’s subordinates. For years thereafter, Nixon’s subordinates were tried, convicted and many went to jail. They paid the price while the head of the conspiracy escaped and even managed to be rehabilitated.

Was the pardon an act of courage or was Ford taking care of someone who had been a close friend before, who had brought him to the Presidency and who remained a friend thereafter? Nixon’s crimes never even disturbed Ford enough to interfere with their continued friendship.

But what of the claim that Ford was a healer, a non-partisan statesman? He vetoed 66 bills in his barely two years as President. Congress overturned 12 Ford vetoes, more than for any president since Andrew Johnson. Does that sound like a man working with the opposition party?

One of the bills he vetoed was the Freedom Of Information Act one of the cornerstones of our Democracy today. That was passed over Ford’s veto.

Even though Ford in an interview released posthumously, criticized the Iraq war, he has to bear some responsibility for that fiasco, for he launched the careers of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and even Scalia.

Some give him credit for an Amnesty program for Vietnam War resisters but it should be noted that the program was widely regarded as a failure, even by the people who administered it. Only 21,800 of the 350,000 eligible persons were granted clemency. It was left to Carter to grant anything meaningful.

Ford may have been virtuous and moderate compared to the present Republican Party, or to the Nixon or McCarthy Republicans, but he was hardly the paragon of virtue, which is the image now being evoked.

May he rest in peace!