It says something about the man that nobody is wagging a finger and saying unkind things about Gerald Ford, the recently deceased 38th President of the United States. Certainly, there was no shortage of critics while he was active in public life.
Famously, Lyndon Johnson once said of Ford that he was so dumb he couldn't walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. And even though Ford was one of the most athletic men to ever occupy the Oval Office, he once plinked somebody with a ball on the golf course, and stumbled on the steps of Air Force One, and so his alleged clumsiness became the stuff of stand-up comedy routines for the rest of his life.
And there were other things, too. He pardoned Richard Nixon for any and all crimes he may have committed during the course of the Watergate scandal, a decision that led to the resignation of his own press secretary and spurred dogged speculation that Ford "bought" the Oval Office with a promise to Nixon of protection against prosecution.
The collapse of Saigon, the shocking scenes of helicopters lifting the last American personnel off the roof of the embassy as soldiers clubbed Vietnamese civilians frantic to get on board — that, too, happened on Ford's watch.
When Cambodia's Khmer Rouge seized the SS Mayaguez, a U.S.-flagged container ship, Ford ordered the marines to take it back. Following a daring assault from helicopters, the marines boarded the ship to find, embarrassingly, nobody aboard. The Cambodians released the crew, unharmed, a few days later, apparently following intervention by the Chinese.
Debating Jimmy Carter in the months preceding the 1976 election, Ford famously denied that Poland was under the influence of the Soviet Union, a declaration that left diplomats and plain folk worldwide shaking their heads.
By almost any objective standard, Ford's administration was a failure and an embarrassment. He wasn't a conspicuously intelligent man, and he lacked both the guile and the ambition to reshape the world in his own image that marks the colossi of politics.
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