The late Gerald Ford of Grand Rapids, Michigan, a town previously best known for the promotion of high-fiber cereal and cleansing enemas (see entry for John Harvey Kellogg in Wikipedia), who passed away in his nineties earlier this week, has been called the "accidental President." This statement is accurate in a couple of senses. First, there was the public attention that he got while in office for stumbling, tripping over his own feet, and just being personally accident-prone. But secondly, and of historical import, is the manner in which he assumed the highest office in the country.
I've heard it reported over the last couple of days on CNN and elsewhere that Gerald Ford was the only U.S. President to hold office without being elected. Of course, this fails to take into account the theft of the election of 2000. It would be more accurate, or at least incontrovertible, to describe Ford as the only U.S. President who never ran either that office or for Vice-President.
I recall the feelings of contempt and disdain that I felt for Ford's predecessor, Richard Nixon, during the Watergate era. There was a sense that justice was a little closer to being done as each new detail of his crimes against democracy emerged. In my lifetime, and to the best of my knowledge ever in U.S. history, in 1972 Nixon became the first President to successfully manipulate the selection of the opposing party's candidate nomination process, by felonious means (e.g., conspiracy to commit burglary, obstruction of justice, etc.), in order to ensure his re-election.
Nixon's resignation in disgrace followed the resignation of Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew for, if I recall correctly, crimes that he committed while previously serving as Governor of the State of Maryland. (I could be wrong on this detail. I'll do some fact-checking later. In the meantime anyone is welcome to correct me.) Nixon reportedly appointed his close personal friend Gerald Ford with the implicit understanding that Ford would pardon him for all crimes that he committed while in office, though Ford himself would later defensively assert that "No deals were made." Another part of the deal was an understanding between Nixon and Ford that in 1976 Nixon would not support a Ford re-election bid, but would instead support former Governor John Connolly of Texas. Again if I remember correctly, Ford appointed former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller as his own veep. How byzantine it all was.
As a young American, I remember feeling that justice had been cheated when Ford pardoned Nixon. The country had been betrayed, I felt, by a paranoid sociopath who had essentially stolen the highest office in the country by sabotaging individual Democratic presidential candidates who were viewed as stronger potential opponents.(1) George McGovern's 1972 campaign was the first political campaign that I actively supported, carrying literature and campaign buttons door-to-door in Princeton, NJ and stuffing envelopes for mailings. The campaign self-destructed after information was leaked to the press that McGovern's chosen vice-presidential candidate, Thomas Eagleton, had been psychiatrically hospitalized three times for physical and nervous exhaustion, receiving electric shock treatments twice. (See Tom Eagleton St. Louis Post Dispatch, 125th Anniversary Issue, January 13, 2004.)
It was against this background that Ford took office. Before long, as I recall, Ford managed to charm the country by his common-folk attitude and his seeming candor and honesty. I was tremendously impressed by the unprecedented public manner(3) in which he and his wife Betty handled her battles with breast cancer and with alcoholism. Ford, like many of the Presidents who preceded him and a couple who have followed, seemed like a decent man. Perhaps the chief reason that he lost was that Jimmy Carter of Georgia presented himself as being at least as good and trustworthy a person, as well as having the benefit of not being connected to Nixon.
Subsequent national leaders in the U.S., including Carter, Ronald Reagan of California, George H.W. Bush ("big George" that is) of Texas, and Bill Clinton of Arkansas, all conveyed elements of personal character and appeared to have at least some degree of the moral authority needed to serve as a credible 'leader of the free world'.
It is unfortunate that the U.S. has lost that standing during the last six years or so, largely due to its unprovoked invasion of Iraq. Perhaps it was due to feelings about the public blame that he himself endured for being the only American president to lose a war that Ford restrained himself from publicly criticizing Iraq policy despite strong personal opposition.(2) It is a shame that he never moved beyond whatever it was that caused him to maintain public silence on the issue. A voice like Gerald Ford's could have been an influence for peace when Washington was gearing up for the attack that led to Iraq's present civil war.(3) Maybe some of the worldwide respect that the U.S. once held for humanitarianism and justice can be regained by the election of a President in 2008 who has the personal integrity of a man like Ford. Given the damage done by the current occupant of the Oval Office this will be a larger task than Ford faced upon replacing Nixon, but it seems the only hope for the American republic and for peace.
All these thoughts bring to mind an op-ed piece that I wrote back in mid-December of 1998, loosely inspired by my readings of some of some of the work of psychohistorian Lloyd deMaus, entitled National Leaders As Poison Containers. That article seems worth reviewing following the recent death of a leader who genuinely hoped to serve his country as an antidote to the bitterly poisonous disappointment and anger at political and economic corruption which in Washington. . That article seems worth reviewing following the recent death of a leader who genuinely hoped to serve his country as an antidote to the bitterly poisonous disappointment and anger at political and economic corruption which in Washington. That article seems worth reviewing following the recent death of a leader who genuinely hoped to serve his country as an antidote to the bitterly poisonous disappointment and anger at political and economic corruption which in Washington.
FOOTNOTES
(1) FBI Finds Nixon Aides Sabotaged Democrats, The Washington Post, 10 October 1972, by Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward; which reported in part: "During their Watergate investigation, federal agents established that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nixon campaign contributions had been set aside to pay for an extensive undercover campaign aimed at discrediting individual Democratic presidential candidates and disrupting their campaigns... Law enforcement sources said that probably the best example of the sabotage was the fabrication -- by a White House aide -- of a letter to the editor alleging that Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-Maine) condoned a racial slur on Americans of French-Canadian descent as 'Canucks'..."
(2) Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq, The Washington Post, December 28, 2006, by Bob Woodward.
(3) New Attitudes Ushered In By Betty Ford, The New York Times, October 17, 1987.
(4) The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward - A New Approach U.S. Institute of Peace, Washington, December 6, 2006.
RELATED LINKS
Gerald Ford and doing well by doing good (The Old Dope Peddler) by revere on effect measure