A belated tribute to President Ford

I've mentioned before how much I regret at having voted for Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan in 1980. But I regret voting for him over Jerry Ford four years earlier, too. If Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of my lifetime, Jerry Ford was the most admirable.

Jerry Ford was more than an honest, decent man who happened to be at the right place at the right time to put the pieces back together after Richard Nixon's tawdry political demise. He was a politician of the old school- in the best sense.

I remember a rally at Valley High School in West Des Moines a few days before the 2000 election at which a Democratic member of the Texas legislature praised George W. Bush's ability as governor to get Republicans and Democrats to work together. Alas, having counted thousands of blank ballots for Al Gore (and disenfranchised thousands of American servicemen who had cast perfectly legal absentee ballots for Bush) in the cause of "counting every vote," the Democratic sore losers were in no mood to cooperate. Ironically, having failed to steal Florida and the election, they accused Bush of having done so-and began six years of non-stop slander and namecalling that precluded any possibility of cooperation. Ironically, they blame Bush for being divisive.

Ford led the Republican minority in the House back in the days when opponents were not necessarily enemies, and were often good friends. Politicians were grown ups back then; they would rather compromise, and have everybody get something out of the deal, than squabble and accomplish nothing.

1976, like today, was a time of national division. The combination of Watergate and the Vietnam War split the nation, if anything, even more deeply than it is divided now. Gerald Ford led us out of both a war far more traumatic than that in Iraq and a national scandal the like of which we have never seen before or since (though an entire generation of journalists and politicians came of age at the time, and are constantly convinced that every war is Vietnam and every scandal Watergate). He did what needed to be done to accomplish those goals with dignity and honor, and came within a hair of winning the 1976 election afterward.

That campaign was amazingly civil (for the most part) by today's standards, and Ford left office held in high esteem by Democrats and Republicans alike. One newspaper which endorsed Carter carried a cartoon on the day Ford left office, and Carter replaced him. It portrayed a plaque on the outside of the White House, which read

HERE GERALD R. FORD RESTORED HONOR TO THE PRESIDENCY, 1974-1977

Yesterday's Des Moines Register, one of the most Leftist daily newspapers in the United States, carried the headline

THE NATION'S HEALER DIES AT 93

Yes, as is traditional, Democrats did engage in innuendo about Ford's intelligence- as they do with every Republican President (Nixon, interestingly, is the only exception I can think of in my lifetime. Apparently Leftists in his day were a bit more thoughtful than the modern variety, and saw the contradiction between portraying the same man as both stupid and diabolically clever). Ford had a habit of falling down a lot, and there was talk about his "not being able to walk and chew gum at the same time" (0f course, he was once an All-American football player, and probably more physically coordinated than any other president in modern times). Comedian Chevy Chase of Saturday Night Live made sight-gags about Ford falling down his signature. Ford laughed right along- even recording the show's opening line- "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night!" one week.

This article by the Chicago Tribune's William Neikirk has its silly side. Bob Woodward's comment that Ford would not have gone to war in Iraq without "first pushing alternatives such as sanctions" borders on the bizarre; twelve years of sanctions weren't enough? And although Ford was not one of them, I see no reason to doubt that Ford could have worked with religious conservatives- at least all but the most zany of them. But it's exactly right in speaking of the hunger out there for a uniter- for a healer.

Even malicious insult, in the long run, simply wouldn't stick to Jerry Ford. And it says volumes about him that when his victorious opponent in the 1976 election was turned out of office four years later, the two men became fast friends.

Though I have a tough time seeing either John McCain or Barak Obama as another Jerry Ford, we could certainly use one in 2008. The issues which divide us are serious. But it would be nice to think that we could be opponents again, without being enemies.