I’ve always had a great fondness for Jerry Ford and feel, with hindsight, he should’ve gotten a second term of his own. What do you guys feel about ol’ Jerry?
The man had a real run of bad luck during his three years in office.
Okay, taking office in the aftermath of Watergate was unavoidable. But he also had to be President during the fall of South Vietnam, the 1975 recession, the Khmer Rouge taking over Cambodia and seizing the Mayaguez, the Turkish invasion of Cypress, the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, the Moroccan invasion of Western Sahara, the Angolan Civil War, the Lebanese Civil War, the North Korean killing of American troops, investigations of illegal CIA activity, a near war between Iceland and Great Britain, hostility with Israel over our arms embargo, a military coup in Argentina, the uncertainty in China following the death of Mao, New York City going bankrupt, major ongoing terrorist campaigns around the world, Swine Flu, two assassination attempts, and all those Chevy Chase impressions. You have to figure Ford deserves some credit for the fact that none of these crises blew up into major disasters (unless you count Chevy Chase’s film career).
I wonder if Ford was secretly glad he didn’t have to face four more years of this.
Well, on the one hand, the worst thing he’s remembered for is pardoning Nixon. That’s not too bad.
On the other hand, the only thing he’s remembered for is pardoning Nixon.
He should also be remembered for starting Special Education, and for his staunch support of the ERA as President.
The world trembled…
Well, yes, it wasn’t likely to have caused a nuclear holocaust. But it could have led to a break-up of NATO if countries had been forced to take sides. Same thing with the Cyprus crisis.
I don’t know much about it, but over here it’s referred to as ‘The Cod War’.
The British cartoonist Giles ( a few months ago I met a lady who nursed him in his final year ) who is still an institution here, same as Al Capp over there had a famous cartoon of a rowboat in the Atlantic with one remarking,
"“As this fish row grows we shall no doubt discover that the barbaric Icelanders have a Fishnet Curtain, forced-labour camps, live three families to one room, harpoon defenceless women and children, and all the rest of it.”
recalling our sterling efforts in WWI & II and after…
As for Mr. Ford, he seems a decent chap.
No, he wasn’t a good president. A good president would have allowed Nixon to be subjected to the judicial process, and if convicted, to spend one night in prison. After that putative one night, a presidential pardon would have been, if not unobjectionable, supportable.
The pardon was supportable, and is now a more accepted stance with the benefit of hindsight.
Others may have a different opinion but they can’t go so far as successfully assail Ford’s decent unpretentious character.
I’m glad that he pardoned Nixon. Not because he deserved it, but because the reaction to that pardon may well have kept Ford from beating Carter. Now that will hopefully weigh on President Pence’s mind as he considers Don The Con’s fate (if he hasn’t already pardoned himself).
As a human, Ford was decent enough. I remember a phony ad showing Gerry and Betty with the caption “we bought our washer at Sears”. That’s what they were, just ordinary Midwestern folks. He didn’t have the unmitigated evil or contempt for the poor that modern Republicans have. I think he sincerely wanted to do right for the country, which would make him a pariah in the modern GOP. His years were largely forgettable, except perhaps his naïve WIN button campaign.
Besides pardoning Nixon, which was a dubious act but had some support behind it, he also “pardoned” the Draft Dodgers. (actually a conditional amnesty program). This upset the right and oh so many veterans at the time and was almost as controversial. I’m surprised it is not better remembered. He was also shot at by the Manson follower with the ridiculous name of Squeaky Fromme. So there are at least 3 things he should be remembered for as President.
I can add in that while he had an uphill fight getting re-elected as he was following the Nixon legacy of disgrace and had pissed off the Left & the Right with his pardons to try and heal America, it was Reagan that probably killed his chances of reelection completely. Which nicely set up Reagan’s 1980 victory over Carter who was similarly hurt by Ted Kennedy’s run.
I know there was a second attempt on Ford but that one I had to look up. Sara Jane Moore seemed to just be angry and radicalized.
I don’t Ford can be truly graded as good or bad as a President. It seems like he should get an “incomplete”. His attempt at healing the nation was well intentioned and he knew it was at great sacrifice to his political career, so I give him point for the attempt. But his economic policies were ill conceived and did nothing I believe to fight the growing inflation rate. It was over 10% at the time. Things just got worse in his time. I’m not a big fan of his declaration to veto a NYC Federal bailout.
His foreign policy seemed to be his strong suite. I feel he made progress with better relations for the Soviet union & China. His Middle East policies were weak however; effectively supporting Turkey over Greece in the Cypress invasion and nothing positive in the Egypt-Israeli issues of the day.
Ford wasn’t terrible but like Carter wasn’t quite up to the job. If Ford had beaten Carter he would have probably done a lot of the same things, IMO.
It might not be remembered well because of Carter’s unconditional amnesty.
The 70s outmatched all three men who became president during that decade. Gerald Ford was perhaps less outmatched than the other two. But he never had the dynamism of Reagan, which was what was needed to lead us out of the morass that we had wandered into in our political universe at the time. Carter had the same problem. I don’t think it would have mattered whether Reagan was a Republican or a Democrat; either way, the nation needed someone who was a bit of an ideologue to shake it up. Indeed, Teddy Kennedy tried on the Democratic side, and his success against an incumbent of his own party shows just how much the nation wanted someone to lead.
Gerald Ford’s legacy is sadly such things as being almost assassinated, the jokes about being clumsy (“The other day, President Ford stabbed himself with his fork. Five Secret Service agents wrestled the fork to the ground.”), the impotency of the US in the face of the various violent occurrences around the world, and, of course, the Nixon Pardon. Even Carter had the Camp David Accords to tout.
That kind of sums it all up. A brief, dull presidency, and even his renowned trivial bumbling pales in significance compared to the behavior of the presidents who followed both in their personal and official capacities.
Between the Carter Camp David accord and the Panama Canal treaty, no president did 1% as much good until Obama came along.
But you do you at least know that hold a minority opinion?
I really feel Carter deserves minimal credit for the Camp David Accords. He just got lucky and happened to be President when Sadat and Begin decided the time was right to negotiate a treaty.
He didn’t fuck anything up. The economy was horrible (an still got worse). It was time to move on. Look at the 1976 electoral map and you’ll die laughing.