Posted on 12/29/2006 5:37:22 AM PST by Reagan Man
Gerald R. Ford was a good man who served his country well in an evil time.
When he took office on Aug. 9, 1974, and declared, "Our long national nightmare is over," Ford did not fully appreciate that those who had done the most to create the nightmare were still here. The establishment that Nixon had humiliated in his 49-state landslide, having just effected a coup d'etat, had crawled back into power.
That establishment, which had hated Nixon since the Alger Hiss case and loathed Spiro Agnew for his wildly popular attacks on the liberal press, embraced "Jerry" Ford, and never more eagerly than when he elevated one of their own, Nelson Rockefeller, to the vice presidency.
August 1974 was the happy hour of American liberalism, when the press discovered that, amazingly, Jerry Ford actually toasted his own English muffins in his kitchen and buttered them himself, before heading off to the White House. How wonderful it all was.
The toasted-muffin phase of the Ford presidency ended abruptly on the Sunday morning that Ford issued a full pardon to Richard Nixon for any and all offenses committed during his presidency.
This city went berserk. Ford was savaged day after day in the press, night after night on the network news. His approval rating sank 40 points. The air was poisonous, with accusations of a "deal" by which Ford got the presidency in return for Nixon getting the pardon.
In an address to Congress on Aug. 12, Ford had said, "I don't want a honeymoon with you, I want a good, long marriage."
But a Congress that had been denied, by Nixon's resignation, the pleasure of impeaching, convicting and expelling him from the White House was in no mood for romance. Nor was this city, which had just been robbed of a delicious year-long public trial of the disgraced former president.
A House Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice directed Ford to appear on Capitol Hill to explain the circumstances of the pardon. Had anything fishy turned up, Congress would have tried to impeach Ford, so rancid was the atmosphere in this city.
Partly because of the pardon, the GOP suffered a loss of 48 House seats that November. In January 1975, a radical Congress was sworn in, determined to end all aid to our allies in Southeast Asia, bring about their defeat, then tear apart the CIA and FBI.
In April, Hanoi, with massive Soviet aid, launched an invasion of South Vietnam. Ford went to Congress to beg for assistance to our embattled Saigon allies. His request was rebuffed. Two Democrats walked out of the chamber.
Within weeks, South Vietnam and Cambodia had fallen, and Pol Pot's holocaust had begun. By summer, tens of thousands of Vietnamese had been executed, scores of thousands put into "re-education camps," and the first of hundreds of thousands had pushed off into the South China Sea, where many drowned and others met their fate at the hands of Thai pirates.
Next, Congress went to work on the CIA, with the Pike committee and the Church committee exposing all the evil deeds the agency had done in the cause of trying to win the Cold War.
When Ford suggested that New York, the citadel of liberalism, might itself be responsible for its own bankruptcy -- by its cowardice in the face of outrageous union demands -- and it was not his duty to bail out the Big Apple, he was attacked as cruel and uncaring.
"Ford to City: Drop Dead!" ran the headline in the New York Daily News.
Whereupon Jerry Ford trooped to the rescue of New York.
By now, however, after Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos had fallen, and the Soviets were on the move in Africa, conservatives had had a bellyful of detente and its personification, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The presence of Rockefeller a heartbeat away and the nomination of the John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court did not help.
Ronald Reagan entered the primaries and almost took the nomination. While he endorsed Ford, he declined to run with him. Yet President Ford closed a 30-point gap to 3 points against Jimmy Carter, and had he not declared Eastern Europe not under Soviet domination in one of the Ford-Carter debates, he might have won an upset to rival the 1948 comeback of Harry Truman. But it was not to be.
Gerald Ford was a non-ideological man in an ideological age, a nice man in nasty times. When he took the helm, America was as divided as she had been since the Truman-McCarthy era. When he left in 1977, America had had a unifying Bicentennial of her Declaration of Independence.
Though it was no fault of his own, Gerald Ford presided over the greatest strategic defeat in U.S. history since the loss of China under Harry Truman. And he had failed to win election in his own right.
Yet, he saw the country through an evil time, and his decency showed through throughout. He was not a great president, but the right man at the right time, who paid an unjust price for having done the right thing.
Agnew was a crook.
A nice column by Pat.
True enough, but so are a great many of our other "public servants", especially the Clintons. Agnew's take was small potatoes compared to the massive plunder raked in by those two. Systemic corruption is the rule rather than the exception in our political classes, and Agnew didn't start it, and he at least wasn't a traitor.
Agnew, however, deserves at least a smile and a fond remembrance for his devastating description of the MSM as "an effete corps of impudent snobs". No one has ever said it better since.
Yes, Agnew was a crook but he was a bit less of a phony than many in Congress today. He didn't drive off a bridge, kill a young woman in the process, wear a neck brace for the one day and only one day when he had to go to court, lie through his teeth then turn around and complain of Nixon's crimes and denounce the "immorality" of Judge Bork. I silenced a table of liberals a few years ago who were complaining about the perfidy of Richard Nixon by reminding them that he hadn't killed anyone and if he had, he certainly wouldn't be serving on the Senate Judicairy Copmmittee.
A good commentary by Pat. Jerry Ford was a decent man but not an inspiring leader. I am glad he pardoned Nixon but perhaps he should have waited until Christmas of 1974 and GOP losses that year would not have been as severe. We have been suffering the consequences of that disastrous election for decades.
It is unfortunate Spiro Agnew didn't keep a clean record. If he had become president it would have been a good thing for America, and conservatism, IMO. He was a staunch partisan and what conservative didn't love his attacks on the press? "Nattering nabobs of negativism!" If only today's GOP leaders would be so outspoken.
"We have been suffering the consequences of that disastrous election for decades."
That is the bottom line. If Carter was not elected we might not have had the 444 day siege in Iran which ushered in the age of terrorism we know today.
Much of what happened to Nixon in this story sounds like what the Dimocrats want to happen to George Bush.
Good column.
but hey pat-- how about supporting our current commander in chief?
Its the same ridiculous crowd doing precisely the same thing. The only difference is that you have joined the anti-american mob to attack our president and troops at war.
Agnew had been Merryland's governor when I was a sweet young lass. Nixon was President and I hated Nixon because, well, the media told me I should.
Since then, of course, I've become better educated about things and, of course again, the Internet allowed the truth out from behind the OZ curtain of the Lamestream Media.
Watergate was a damn joke although as a young woman I lambasted Nixon and even had a bumper sticker on my car stating "Don't Blame Me, I Didn't Vote For Him". Indeed I voted for George McGovern and really thought the man would win the race.
Adding further to my shameful memories, heck I voted for Jimmy Carter but give me credit, I LIVED and SUFFERED with Carter as much as any other citizen in this country. Those gas lines had me biting my fingernails with worry on how I would get to work; unemployment was high and I was the low guy in seniority; does anyone remember how it was politically incorrect to even have a Christmas light display on one's home?
Like Ronald Reagan before him, I never appreciated Gerald Ford and now I hear Lamestream Liberal after Liberal all waxing on about how Ford ended a national nightmare (of THEIR making) and how it didn't seem a good idea at the time but in retrospect history has judged that Ford did the right thing.
Which makes me question them from my humble kitchen and ask "WELL PERHAPS YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT BUSH AND HIS PLAN TO DEMOCRATIZE IRAQ, INDEED TO EVEN INVADE IRAQ".
My shouts to the non-responding TV go unanswered. Seems to me a handsome news anchor or two would dream up such a question, don't you think?
That "national nightmare" was the most overhyped nonsense this country has endured. Nixon had his demons but he was not a bad man. He didn't deserve to die in such disgrace and I feel guilty for having been part of it.
Ford, at least, will get the appreciation he deserves.
Someday Dubya will too. Sad that we don't learn from history...doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again...yada, yada.
Carter wasn't worthy of being a pimple on Ford's behind.
Sad.
So was LBJ.
You are mistaking loyalty to the country with loyalty to a President. They are not the same thing.
Ridiculous. The war against Bush is far more vile.
Pat and other Bush reactionaries want Saddam and Iranian radicals to rule the world. They know from their own experiences that the only real threat to US troops is the treasonous media at home. Pat is firmly entrenched in that media now-- which is why he thoroughly lacks principals that guided him in the past.
Couldn't be farther from the truth. We want to actually WIN the war, not fight a politically correct police action.
Pat is firmly entrenched in that media now-- which is why he thoroughly lacks principals that guided him in the past.
I disagree. Pat still has the same principles, it is the Republicans whose blind allegiance to a President and a Party who are the real problem here. Bush does not walk on water. This war could be over in two weeks but Bush lacks the guts to finish it.
ROTFLMBO!
In a personal conversation with Pat, I was told that he would pull out of Iraq and give billions of dollars to the Iranian government to bribe them not to develop nuclear weapons.
I think this is an absurd plan and in no way resembles victory.
I think Pat did good work in previous decades but now values his media connections more than political principal.
It will someday be obvious to all that the United States most stand against Islamofascism.
For now conservatives and liberals are content to take pot shots at the President. Bush will someday be remembered as taking a historical stand in this inevitable war.
Of course if Ford had won in '76 we might not have had the Reagan presidency. Or Reagan might have succeeded Ford anyway. Lord only knows.
In any case, the Dems went in to the '74 election with a big majority. Not that much bigger than the House majority they will have in 2007. (Sigh.) Anyway, of course after the election they had a 2-1 majority and a number of far lefties went to Congress. Some of them are still there. Others, like Chris Dodd, moved on to the Senate. The overreaction to Watergate, with the restrictions placed on the CIA and FBI, no doubt weakened this country. Perhaps that is where we can place the early origins of the vulnerability that led us to 9/11/01.
Yup. The Dems see 2007 through the lens of 1974. They can't wait to destroy Bush and drive him from office in disgrace. If it takes purposely losing a war to do it, they are more than happy to do it once again. They never were "for" it in the first place, anyway.
They have fond memories of those Glory Days and are sharpening their claws for an encore.
Can you really call electing Jimmy Carter ,Glory days??
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