I almost wrote something up on this last night when I first heard the news, and was going to say a few words this a.m. but there were some JU hiccups that prevented me from getting an article up.
You have a few years on me Dr. Guy, not many, but just enough. I wasn't voting age for the Ford vs. Carter election, nor for Jimmy Carter vs. Ronald Reagan in 1980 (I was awfully close for that one, awfully, awfully close. As in "missed it by that --> "." <--" much -- Don Adams in Maxwell Smart mode).
I was aware, painfully aware, of the Watergate scandal in the mid-1970's. Not that I was paying much attention to the newspapers, but it was on the news every day. It was on the TV every day pre-empting my grandmother and mother's favorite soap operas. It was pre-empting the cartoons and afternoon childrens/teen oriented programming that I wanted to see. It was every where.
I also recall when Gerald Ford was selected (he was the original, and in my world, the one and only selected - not elected) for the role of Vice President. He replaced Spiro Agnew who was shamefully disgraced and sent packin'. Ford was spoken of as a great choice, a well respected individual, and someone that would be great for the role he was to assume.
As it all turned out, Ford wound up replacing the man who put him into the office of Vice President after the Watergate mess blew up on everyone involved. Ford went from the job that few people even think about, to the number one job in the country as Richard Nixon boarded a helicopter flashing the V for victory signs and such.
Ford did the absolute right thing for the country, the best thing, and some would say the only thing, to get us back together as a nation when he pardoned Richard Nixon. While some would have loved the spectacle of having Richard Nixon hauled in front of the congress or in a court room, those that understood the harm that would come to us all and the absolute disgrace that would befall our nation from such actions knew that pardoning Nixon was the only real way out of the mess. It set a very high standard for the rest of the world to see and kept the U.S. political situation from becoming not just an embarassment for the nation, but an event that would perhaps have permanently shaped the world's political status.
Unfortunately though, Watergate was such a huge mess and huge embarassment within U.S. politics that the country desired change in the 1976 election and the electorate went with Jimmy Carter. The rest, as they say is history. Carter went on to be a huge embarassment in his own right. He failed miserably in the Iranian situation, and in other ways that we continue to pay for to this day. His only saving grace remains the Egypt and Israel situation that he helped to smooth over.
Revealing a bit of a secret here, when Reagan ran against Carter, I desperately wanted to vote. I wanted to vote for either Carter or perhaps Anderson. Anyone but Reagan. I, like others, felt he was a lunatic just waiting to get us all in a global thermo-nuclear war, if not worse. Sad to say, I was almost joyous over the idea that Reagan had been shot and we might get George H.W. Bush as President early in Reagan's first term.
Reagan went on to surprise me though. By the end of his first term, I was voting for him. Not just voting for him, but absolutely on board with what he was trying to do for the country. Especially voting for him because I couldn't stomach the thought of Walter Mondale as the President of the U.S. (especially given his election speeches)
There were rumors later, and talk later that when Reagan ran initially (in 1980) he might reach out to Ford as his V.P. That never happened, and of course as we know now, and assumed at the time, Reagan went with Bush as his V.P. to help bring the party together and establish unity behind his campaign. Some folks tend to forget that Reagan vs. Bush was a fairly close contest, and that Reagan had more than he could fight off almost until the convention.
Anyway, Ford pretty much slid back into the shadows and was rarely heard from again except for an occassional joke or repeat of an old SNL skit with Chevy Chase doing the Ford imitation. He came out again for a few later conventions, and held a position of honor at same, but his days in the party spotlight were gone.
I wish that he'd have gotten a better deal in the 1976 election. He deserved better, and did a fine job as President of the U.S. He helped keep the congress in check (by memory here, I recall him being one of the more prolific users of the veto pen in the last many years of the Presidency), and ran the country well during his time in the office.
He never embarassed the party, never embarassed himself, and set a fine example for what a politician should be.
I wish that there were many more like Gerald Ford in the Republican party. I fear that we've seen the last of his kind of politician for a while, but hope that isn't the case. Regardless, Gerald Ford will be missed, and deserves to be remembered fondly.
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