I am grieving as if one of my own family members had died. Gerald R. Ford was my personal political hero, and I believe that history will judge him better than he was ever given credit for. If a Hollywood movie were to be made of his life in the 1970s, no one would have believed it.
How could this man, Gerald R. Ford Jr., ever become President of the United States on purpose? Gerald Ford wasn’t even his real name! He was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1913 as Leslie Lynch King Jr. He was the son of divorced parents. Businessman Gerald R. Ford in Grand Rapids Michigan adopted him after marrying his mother. Everyone knew him as a straight shooter and honest young man who spoke what he thought, blemishes and all, looked you in the eye when he talked, and always told the unvarnished truth. He married a divorced woman named Betty Warren in 1948.
Many of his friends considered him too honest of a man to run a local school board, much less become President of the United States!
So how did he do it? He was simply one of us and went out and earned it.
The “accidental president”, up until fate had called him, was never more than a Congressman from Michigan. Ford wasn’t a man who came from money; he fought and clawed his way through his life. He parlayed a stellar high school football performance into a full athletic scholarship at the University of Michigan. Not only was he a great player who was the center on a Big Ten varsity team, he had a brain to match his brawn, majoring in economics. A twist of fate must’ve kept him from turning down pro offers from the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions.
Instead he moved toward academics at Yale where he studied law while coaching boxing and football. He graduated Yale Law School near the top of his class, but another twist of fate diverted him — the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He gave up a promising fledgling law practice to sign up with the Navy and he served four years in World War II.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Jet in Columbus
Only my admiration for this man could've brought me out of my self-enforced retirement from political writing.
2 - Victor Plenty
Thank you, Jet, for eloquently championing a public figure seldom considered on his own merits. Too many people were never able to set aside the strong biases created by the Nixon pardon.
I could go into other seldom considered aspects of the fallout from Nixon, at great length, but I don't want to distract yet again from the legacy of President Ford.
Oddly enough, I'm in the unusual position of admiring both Ford and Carter, when most people who like one tend to hate the other. Today Americans have been seduced into preferring politicians who are merely good at projecting a certain image (in this, Reagan and Clinton are far more alike than either's fans would care to admit). In the long run, we would do better to put people of true substance and genuine character like Carter and Ford into public office.
3 - T. Michael Testi
Jet,
Brilliant Job!!!
4 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
What Victor said - except that I had no use for Carter even though I respected what he attempted to do for alternative energy.
I was once an American, and Gerald Ford was the kind of fellow I would have easily had over for a beer or a coffee, had he been willing to show up...
5 - Belizaire
How is it that Ford can go and die and Carter just goes on and on like some sort of retarded energizer bunny?
6 - Victor Plenty
I'm tempted to ask why you dislike Carter, Ruvy, but instead will stick to the topic at hand. (Maybe later I should write an article about Carter...)
I'm realizing how little I've known about Ford. Mostly I'm aware of how he was treated in parody and comedy. Chevy Chase's pratfalls on Saturday Night Live never struck me as very funny, but now I can see how they illustrated Americans' sense that their whole country had somehow lost its footing after Watergate and the war in Vietnam. It was a case of laughing to escape the pain.
And then there was the depiction of President Ford in one of the Pink Panther movies (although I don't think he was ever actually named). That one had a punchline I laughed at when I first saw it, but later on I realized how deeply disrespectful of him it actually was.
It doesn't seem so funny to me now.
7 - Jet in Columbus
Thanks Victor. I agree with you. I went from being a republican to an independent and then became a democrat during that period.
He was a great man.
8 - Jet in Columbus
Thank you Mr. Testi, it came from the heart
9 - Jet in Columbus
Ruvy, just as Ford was unjusifiably linked to the Dark Side of Watergate, I think you'll find that Carter suffered the same fate for the Arab Oil embargo and the hostage crisis, both of which were out of his control, but he got blamed for them any way.
When Carter ran for reelection I voted for independent Anderson, even I was disgusted, but now that I look back at history with a clearer head I find Carter got the bad end of the stick too.
10 - Jet in Columbus
Belizaire you are disgusting wishing anyone dead, no matter what you think of him.
11 - Jet in Columbus
I still laugh Victor every time I hear someone replay Bob Hopes joke about Ford's golfing.
12 - Matthew T. Sussman
Gerald Ford is dead and Jet's gay.
13 - Jet in Columbus
So Matthew what the hell took you so long. Did you get your mother to help you write that?
14 - IgnatiusReilly
It wasn't a "twist of fate" that kept him out of the NFL. It was his decision to go to Yale Law School. Players in the '30 and '40s didn't make a lot of money.
"If he hadn’t acted the country would’ve been mired down for decades."
Who ordered for the extra helping of hyperbole? What do you base the assertion above on? The trial and appeal, assuming there was one, which I don't, would have been finished before we got out of the '70s. And it wasn't a long, political nightmare. It was the system working and righting itself.
I have no doubt that Ford did what he thought was best for the country, but he incorrectly acted like a parent with children instead of as an employee of the people. Some argue that the pardon was more egregious than Nixon's crimes because Ford illustarted that the powerful could get away with anything, which is not how our system is supposed to work. Ford defied the majority and got what he deserved at the next election. Appearing to not know what was going on in Eastern Europe didn't help, either.
"the political right convinced him that Ford had too much baggage."
Incorrect again. Ford would only accept the VP slot if he was given more power than the position held. Reagan rejected the idea of a "co-presidency".
If you aren't going to do research on your subjects, you should stay in retirement.
15 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Victor,
The brief answer to your question about Carter is that he was an insincere bastard about most things.
The one thing he did right was to sit down with that fireside chat about energy, and to point out that there was a malaise in American society. This was right on the money then, and it is even more on the money now.
Americans' self indulgence will do them in in time.
16 - Bliffle
Ford was often described as a "commom man", but I think he was quite uncommon. Yes, he was rather simple and direct, but I think that makes him an exception in the modern world where you can rely on every person hiding some great sin and ready to slide away from responsibility and accountability. As example I give you that other person often described as common, GWB.
If Ford was "the great healer" then Nixon must be "the great wounder".
17 - Sweetpea
President Ford was a common man and became president. Jimmy the peanut farmer hired black workers and paid cheap wages while drinking Billy Beer and shoving peanuts up is southern ass. NUKE THE UNBORN GAY PEANUT FARMERS. Got that nuke thing from BC.
18 - Rodney Welch
Gerald Ford was a kind, decent, brave man -- but it wasn't just the Nixon pardon that destroyed his re-election. He was also kinda dumb, and that became glaringly apparent in his second debate with Jimmy Carter, in which Ford made what had to be one the most absolutely stupid comments in all of political history, when he told New York Times reporter Max Frankel:
"There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration."
Frankel: I'm sorry ... did I understand you to say, sir, that the Soviets are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there?
Ford: I don't believe ... that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Romanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of these countries is independent, autonomous, it has its own territorial integrity, and the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.
Ford was a laughingstock for weeks afterward, and the remark was a turning-point in his downfall.
Read the original TIME Magazine story.
19 - STM
As a non-American, I was relieved when Ford took office, as he seemed as honest as the day is long (and as ordinary as the rest of us, yet clearly he was in fact an exceptional man and far from ordinary).
However, his grasp of international politics was a worry: "There is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe" (in an internationally televised debate with Jimmy Carter).
At the time, I didn't understand the reasoning behind the Nixon pardon. 20-20 hindsight is a great thing, though, and it's obvious today that it was good for America in the long run.
Even his clumsiness was endearing. Had I been an American, I probably would have voted for him.
20 - Victor Plenty
Jet, I love to read both Sussman and you, and I hate to see you fight, so I gotta ask you to read the link he posted in his comment before you spend any more time being offended by what he said.
21 - sr
Victor. Why would Sussman want to fight the Incredible Hulk?
22 - Jet in Columbus
Ruvy, Out of respect for the man, the subject is Gerald Ford, not Jimmy Carter.
Thanks
23 - Jet in Columbus
Bliffle 17-you're right and I concur
24 - Jet in Columbus
Rodney, if you've ever seen David Letterman's "great moments in Presidential Speeches" you'd know that GWB made Ford look like a genious.
President Ford's gaff was no different than any that you or I make every day, and at least he had the balls to come out and admit it.
25 - Jet in Columbus
STM to be fair the man was just getting used to being Vice President and suddenly he was president. Of course he was going to screw up, and he did.
Not a single one of us could've done any better.
Having said that, thanks for your kind words
Jet