Gerald Ford Obituary

August 19, 1976, deservedly, was a landmark date in recent Republican Party history. On this day, in Kansas City, Kansas, Ronald W. Reagan came excruciatingly close to accomplishing the unthinkable—he almost took the party nomination from a one-term incumbent president, Gerald Ford. Snatching up 47.4 % of the delegates’ votes (1070 out of 2257), Reagan still came away empty-handed. But the nation would not forget this former movie star and governor of California. Four years later, Reagan not only received the GOP’s nomination for president; he also unseated the incumbent Jimmy Carter, who had defeated Ford in 1976.

Now, President Reagan died over two years ago, so you may be wondering why I began an obituary for the recently deceased President Ford—who passed away on December 26, 2006, at the ripe age of 93—by describing the circumstances that almost resulted in his abandonment by the Republican Party. My reason is simple—though Gerald Ford was a good man, full of honor and decency, I am disappointed by the fact that he won that nomination. Ford was a pragmatist, a dealmaker, a consensus-builder, but not in a wholly good way. He was a realist when the world cried out for an idealist.

Perhaps I am merely biased because one of my ancestral homelands, Lithuania, was left out to dry longer than needed because Ford lacked the vision to end the craven détente. The Iron Curtain survived far longer than it should have due to Ford’s lack of foreign policy vision and courage. And though President Carter was far worse in the realm of spreading democracy, Ford was no warrior himself. The people of Eastern Europe continued to live in bondage when America could have intervened on his orders. If military action were deemed imprudent, Ford could have, at the very least, initiated a military buildup that demonstrated our commitment to throw communism into the wastebasket of historically malevolent ideologies.

Supposing that Reagan had defeated Ford in the primary, it is likely that the Watergate scandal still would have secured a Democratic presidency, but the maelstrom of anti-communist, anti-totalitarian fervor that marked the Reagan years might have been sparked sooner. Who knows?—maybe that fervor would have pressured President Carter to actually respond to Soviet aggression in Afghanistan and Islamist turmoil in Iran. Regardless, it was not until President Reagan took office that the anti-communist spirit of Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy once again thrived in the White House.

Foreign policy flaws aside, Ford certainly did some good for the world, though I might add that this good was horribly shortsighted. The Helsinki Accords, signed in August 1975 by the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as 33 other countries, were accurately described by Reagan as a “human-rights farce” and a “propaganda plus” for the Reds. Supposedly, the Helsinki Accords elicited from the Soviet Union a commitment to certain inviolable human rights. But to me, it was reminiscent of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich and claiming that Hitler was dedicated to peace. For, in both instances, legitimacy was granted to territorial aggressiveness on the part of history’s two most horrible totalitarian states. Concerning Chamberlain and his “peace for our time” drivel, legitimacy was granted to Hitler’s claim that Austria and the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland were rightfully Germany’s. Concerning Ford, Kissinger, et al, and their Helsinki Accords, legitimacy was granted to the territorial claims that the USSR made for its Eastern European satellites states.

But let me halt the criticism for a moment. I should once again reiterate that President Gerald Ford was a good man and a good American. Born on July 14, 1913, Ford attended the University of Michigan and graduated with the Class of 1935. While an undergraduate, he was an accomplished football player, earning a place on the 1935 Collegiate All-Star football team. In 1994, he even had his number, #48, retired by the University of Michigan. Following his graduation, he served as a boxing coach and as an assistant football coach for Yale University. Beginning in 1938, he attended the Yale University Law School, eventually achieving a law degree in 1941. After the outbreak of WWII following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941), Ford enlisted in the Navy. After slightly less than five years of military service, Ford resigned from the Navy as a lieutenant commander on June 28, 1946, and a highly decorated veteran.

From 1949 to 1973, Ford was the House Representative for Michigan’s 5th district. Beginning in 1963 and continuing until 1973, Ford was the House Minority Leader for the Republican Party. A fiscal conservative, Ford was a noted critic of President Johnson’s “Great Society” program—a criticism that I share with Ford. However, he also received much attention (both positive and pejorative) for his supposedly moderate politics and demeanor. That is, he was not a Newt Gingrich who would plan and carry out a Republican Revolution.

Confirmed by the Senate on November 27, 1973, and by the House on December 6, 1973, to replace the resigned Spiro Agnew, Ford assumed the Vice Presidency at a time when the Watergate scandal was intensifying rapidly. As we all know, President Nixon resigned from office on August 9, 1974, amid a torrent of accusations that he had aided in the obstruction of justice regarding the men charged with breaking into the Watergate Hotel on June 17, 1972.

A month later, on September 8, 1974, President Ford signed a full and unconditional pardon for any and all crimes that President Nixon may have committed during his presidency. Labeled a “corrupt bargain” by many in the media (claiming that Ford traded a pardon for the presidency), the pardon was a pivotal moment in Ford’s short presidency. Its unpopularity with the public was among the numerous reasons why Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election.

I am highly critical of Ford’s politics, but I can offer no criticism of Ford in this regard. This was his shining moment, the epitome of his decency. He knew that the country needed to heal from the corruption of the Nixon presidency and took the politically unpopular route in effecting this healing process. For that, I salute you, President Ford.

I have always only heard good things about President Ford the man. He was an honest, honorable, temperate, and decent man. Those are good characteristics for a policeman, for an IRS auditor, and for any career choice that requires one to thrive off of the status quo. However, by themselves, these attributes hardly add up to an ideal political leader of any party, who should be blazing new trails. This was especially true during the Cold War, when either freedom or tyranny would prevail.

At its core, Ford’s primary problem was that he lacked vision, aside from his wise pardon of President Nixon. He certainly would abhor my comparison, but Ford, in my opinion, was like Johnson when he was Senate Majority Leader, as both men accrued much credibility concerning their ability to “get things done.” Unfortunately, Ford seemed unwilling to look at things the way they were, and to see how they could be. On the contrary, President Reagan had vision. He, like President Kennedy, ushered in an era of change.

In foreign policy, Ford, as I discussed earlier, fell far short of the vision espoused by Kennedy and Reagan. Recall that one of the major issues of the 1960 presidential election between Kennedy and Nixon was the so-called “missile gap” between the United States and the Soviet Union. Kennedy ran partly on the platform that he would be an anti-communist warrior, and that he would turn the gap in favor of America. In fact, there already was a missile gap, one that favored the Unites States. Regardless of his factual “error,” Kennedy was clearly committed to strengthening American firepower, especially in regards to conventional warfare. (President Eisenhower had been a proponent of MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction, a deterrent policy for the Soviet Union that concentrated on a nuclear stockpile, at the expense of the conventional weapons/military-industrial complex that Kennedy sought to restore.)

President Reagan displayed a similarly brilliant vision. He launched an aggressive, ambitious defense campaign that manifested itself in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or “Star Wars,” as Reagan colloquially referenced it. He called the Soviet Union exactly what it was, an “Evil Empire.” He told Premier Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” a reference, of course, to the Berlin Wall. In essence, Reagan ensured the quick destruction of a totalitarian state that had persisted for far too long as a result of the cowardly détente.

Now, as history revisits the Ford presidency, some of my fellow Republicans look to his short term with nostalgic feelings. They claim to see a moderate voice that has allegedly been lost to the far right of the modern GOP. Sheila Suess Kennedy, of Indystar.com, had the following to say on the matter in a January 8 editorial:

Reading the articles about the life and death of former President Gerald Ford reminded me why I was once a staunch, active Republican — and why, after 33 years, I left the GOP. Ford, for those of you too young to remember, was the last of the ‘old’ Republicans. He was a fiscal conservative — a term which did not then mean tax cuts for the rich financed by borrowing from our grandchildren — and a social liberal who was consistent and forthright about his support for reproductive choice and equal rights for gays and lesbians.

Interesting. Now, by “borrowing from our grandchildren,” is Ms. Kennedy referring to the current social security system? Also, I am curious as to whether empowering workers through an ownership society is consistent with her view of President Bush as a man only concerned with the rich? And about reproductive choice, isn’t the choice to murder great? Relating to equal rights for lesbians and gays, I agree with her wholeheartedly—like all of us, they should (and do) have the right to marry someone of the opposite sex.

You see, I am not much of a fan of people with politics like Gerald Ford precisely because he represents the Old Right. In the history of the current Americans parties, had I been alive, I would have been a Republican beginning in 1860 (when Abraham Lincoln was elected), a Democrat beginning in 1912 (when the GOP abandoned Theodore Roosevelt), and a Republican again at 1 PM (CST) on November 22, 1963 (the time that John F. Kennedy died).

I don’t celebrate Republicans like Gerald Ford. He is a great man, a great American, and a great pragmatist. However, he represents a breed of Republicans that, I am glad to see, have lost influence in the GOP. I mourn his loss, but it is time for the Republican Party to recommit itself to its roots. It must once again be the Party of Main Street and Wall Street. The current GOP, with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush as its ideological fathers, can accomplish this.

With that said, I must once again offer many thanks to President Gerald Ford. I may not agree with all of his politics, but he is a hero. May God bless and protect him for all of eternity. RIP.