Tammy Bruce: Yes, I Know President Ford Has Died

Yes, I Know President Ford Has Died

I've received a number of emails asking me to post on President Ford's death and give my opinion of the man. I would prefer to give my opinion of Betty Ford, because she is worthy of great things being said about her. Her husband is another matter. And while we know he was indeed a very nice man personally, I have hesitated about posting because I risk ringing a bad note in the midst of all the Love Letters being proffered by the blogosphere. I suppose many do so because they're Republicans and see Ford as someone who essentially saved the party after the debacle of Nixon. I don't know--but I can tell you, as Not a Republican, perhaps I look at him (and Nixon) a little differently.

Frankly, I was simply not a fan of Ford. At 12:30am PT last night, I got a call from Fox to do a phoner about Ford. Some of the bookers keep thinking I'm a "Republican Strategist." I mentioned that if I were a "strategist" for anyone, I should be labeled an "American Strategist." And let me just say this: If I were a Republican Strategist, things would be just a tad different for the party. I'm sure they felt I would have glowing things to say. Let's just say I had ambivalent things to say. I also reminded them that I was 12 years old when Ford assumed the presidency, but that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion today.

Susan Estrich, who was on Fox before me via phone, said glowing things about the man, as she and the anchor purred about the success of his "bipartisanship" and ability to "bring people together." Yes, Dems and lefties love him because he ushered in the abandonment of Vietnam and was relatively harmless (i.e. never aggressively pursued an anti-left policy at home or abroad) in every other way. I noted, when asked to comment on the 'greatness' of his non- or bi-partisanship achievement, that it's not something we should strive for. That sort of compromise, where you get everyone to agree, usually can only be achieved by reaching for the lowest common denominator. And the direction of our nation at the time--down--confirms this.

Argument and debate, at least when presented with honesty and good intentions (unlike today's Left Elite) create better positions and demands everyone understand their arguments enough to defend them. There is nothing good about acquiescence and groupthink.

The result of the Ford and then Carter years was disastrous. And all this "he brought us together" emanating from the media. Oh, for crying out loud, we were exhausted. I remember being at a table with my Uncle Ed and a few other adults as they discussed Watergate and how they were tired and disgusted with everyone. They were simply happy to not have the Nixon bunch in office. Agnew resigned under scandal, congressional hearings on Watergate were televised, a presidential aide tried to kill himself, presidential staff were pleading guilty and being arrested, Nixon resigns, and in the meantime, the Soviet Union was still huffing and puffing, and the Left was having a field day hating this nation as they worked for our defeat in Vietnam.

Ford didn't bring us together--he simply wasn't Nixon and everyone was grateful that the "thing" was over.

The Fox anchor then asked me about Ford's "foreign policy accomplishments." Sheesh. The man inherited everything from Nixon, including his one true strength--an established foreign policy. Ford walked into a foreign policy and a team that had been working and successful and continued with their charge. As an example of how, well, disconnected Ford was when it came to understanding foreign affairs and the condition of the world, Power Line reminds us of one of the more revealing moments about Ford during a 1976 campaign debate with Jimmy Carter:

Thinking about President Ford today, the strongest memory I have is of his premature liberation of Poland in the second debate with Jimmy Carter in 1976. Recall what he said in response to the question posed by New York Times editor Max Frankel in that debate:

"There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration."

As the CNN summary of the debate notes, Frankel gave Ford a chance to rehabilitate himself: "I'm sorry...did I understand you to say, sir, that the Soviets are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there?" Ford responded:

"I don't believe...that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Romanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of these countries is independent, autonomous, it has its own territorial integrity, and the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union."

That, of course, opened the door for Carter to sound like a hawk (and certainly more informed) than Ford on international issues and the Soviet Union. It wasn't just the pardoning of Nixon, it was also this sort of moment that handed the presidency to Carter.

So, bottom line, no I don't think pardoning Nixon was good. I don't think presiding over the abandonment of Vietnam was good. I don't give him credit for implementing any of the successful Nixon/Kissinger foreign policy strategies, and hold him responsible for not blocking the bad ones. No, I don't believe he "brought us together." At the time, everyone was simply relieved we had what seemed to be a harmless man in the White House.

That is how far down this nation had sunk. Keep in mind--on top of everything else, we were dealing with Cronkite, Fonda, Kerry and all the other leftist Blame America First crowd battering this nation almost daily courtesy of the unchecked and uncountered MSM. Nixon, like most Republicans, was horrific at communicating, making everything worse every time he opened his mouth.

So, yes, I know he died, and I'm sorry for him, and his family. But there will be no Love Letter here. At most I'm ambivalent, and at worse, he was a good man and yet still he made a deal with which he was handed the presidency, which does not speak well of him. There are arguments, which I believe, that he was chosen after Agnew's resignation specifically because the party knew Nixon would not be able to serve out his term. Either because of impeachment or the a resignation, the Republicans needed a man who would do what Nixon wanted and was needed to wipe away the possibility of him (Nixon) being held to account for any criminality. I believe reports that Ford wasn't pressured to pardon the man--he didn't have to be.

Because of the incompetence of the Republican Party, they helped give this nation the worst, most damaging president in our history--Jimmy Carter who, to this day, still works feverishly to do us harm.

I know what it's like to make compromises, and even deals with the devil, for political expediency. I was a decent person during my time in the left, which makes my choices then even more disgusting. I believe the same is true of Ford. He wasn't some Innocent Everyman called up from the farm to lead this nation. He was a power player in the party, a consummate politician, who made choices, very often, that were not good for this nation.

And he was also a nice man personally. But to suggest that we should pretend his past, and ours, is different than the truth of the matter simply so we're seen as "nice", is short-sighted, selfish and even dangerous.

Related Link:

National Review "asked a group of historians and other experts how they and history will remember the 38th president of the United States." It's an interesting, and careful, array of comments.

Posted by Tammy · December 27, 2006 12:23 PM · Permalink
History | Politics

Comments

Tammy said it all, and it's hard to argue with. Ford was carried forward by momentum. He didn't exude greatness, but then I really have no idea what a great man would have done. The forces in play were very strong at that moment in history (it was an awful time!), and they would take a few years to wind down. So maybe there really was nothing to do except act as a steady-as-she-goes caretaker for a couple of years, and it would have been unreasonable and even dangerous to demand more.

Posted by: Talkin Horse at December 27, 2006 05:02 PM

I was considerably older than 12 when Ford assumed the Presidency. True it was a relief to have an apparently harmless man in the White House after all the rancor of the Nixon years. I believed then and now that a lot of the kind words for Ford were affectations to contrast to the raw hatred for Nixon. The Nixon-haters (who hated him from the Army-MacCarthy hearings well before Viet Nam) wanted to show themselves as being really nice folks who were wrenched out of their normal state of loving all mankind and involuntarily turned into vicious junkyard dogs by that Nixon creep. I was working in an office where most of my co-workers were hardcore Democrats and second to none in Nixon-hating. A day or two after Nixon resigned and before the Fords took up residence at the White House, there was a picture on the front page of the newspaper showing Pres. Ford in his bathrobe getting the newspaper from his front porch. In the accompanying story we learned he prepares his own breakfast--grapefruit. I remember it vividly because I thought it was hokum and expected to hear sarcasm from my co-workers who normally turned into gargoyles over anything Republican. Instead they started crooning over these man-of-the-people gestures. It had nothing to do with Gerald Ford himself. They had exorcised their demon. It was a substitute way of saying, “The Long Dark Night is over”.

Posted by: pat_s at December 27, 2006 07:44 PM

You didn't mention Ford's greatest legacy-John Stevens appointment to the Supreme Court. That appointment has to be one of the worst ever and one of the main reasons the MSM and others on the left are saying good things about Ford. The other legacy of Ford is that he was so bad Reagan attempted to dethrone him in 1976 but came a little short. Ford was a caretaker President, sort of like President Johnson after Lincoln was assassinated. Ford didn't have the decency to step aside in 1976 and let Reagan have the nomination, which gave us 4 years of Jimmy Carter (you nailed that one). I obviously have never had a high opinion of Ford (as a Republican), I've always believed he had a deal with Nixon to pardon him but I agree with you that Betty Ford is probably the real strength and shinning light in that relationship.

Posted by: SteveOk at December 27, 2006 08:03 PM

Why, Talkin Horse, would it have
been 'unreasonable and even dangerous to demand more' from President Ford? Should we not expect much from presidents, especially in times of crisis? It was an awful time, but so was The Civil War era, The Depression, WWII, etc. How would history have been different - and our lives today - had Ford been president during any of these tests of time? Or, how would things have been different if Ford had exercised true leadership during his tenure?

For someone who is being remembered as a 'great president' who brought about 'unity' in the nation and between parties, whom everybody loved and admired, then explain how in the world he lost to Jimmy Carter if he was all these great things to all people?

The 'forces in play were very strong' because Ford was very weak as a president. Sure, he inherited a very difficult and unstable situation & position, but he allowed himself into that position knowing the climate. He could have refused the job! When someone is given (and that, he was!) the keys to the nation, they control the steering wheel. In Ford's case, he put the car in neutral & allowed Congress to become the road moving the car along - or - he simply took a backseat to let Uncle Teddy drive (ok, cheap shot, I know).

And things did not simply wind down after Ford became president: many things became worse. Congress had a field day with Ford because he was willing to compromise - EVERYTHING! - including our standing in the world, restrictions on the use of the CIA, and the lives we abandoned in Vietnam (not to mention the carnage that ensued throughout Southeast Asia once we left), etc.

It took a truly great man, indeed, to fix the ills of that time. That great man won the election of 1980. Reagan took America from the grips of economic & social upheaval stemming from years of scandal, weakness, corruption, compromise & ruin to bring about the most prosperous era in American history. Reagan did this by instilling confidence, pride, strength and a vision - NOT by trying to be nice to everybody, making sure he had no enemies or compromising himself into the backseat.

I am more than a little put off by the glorification of Gerald Ford's presidency. I am sure he was good to his family & friends, and an overall nice person. But being a nice, non-threatening president did nothing to heal the nation, curb inflation, energy shortages, a congress gone wild or the slaughter of the millions we abandoned in Southeast Asia. I do not know why being strong and decisive is such a detraction in the minds of some today. That use to be a quality we wanted in our leaders.

Posted by: artgal at December 27, 2006 10:29 PM

You make a good case, ArtGal, but it's certainly questionable whether Ronald Reagan or even God Himself could have pushed things back on track in a timely fashion given the Democrat lock on Congress and the simmering and weary mood of the nation. And perhaps Ford deserves a few points for being unafraid to use his veto pen. In his brief time, he issued 65 vetoes (and was overridden 12 times); in vetoes per day, that's a lot. (FDR holds the record with 635 vetoed bills, but he had many years to do it. Reagan issued 78 over 8 years. George W. Bush has made only a single veto (he should have made a lot more!!); maybe that will change in the coming 2 years.) So Ford wasn't just a figurehead. But, yeah, his WIN buttons were moronic, and his comments about Poland were unbelievably boneheaded.

Posted by: Talkin Horse at December 28, 2006 03:23 AM

By the time Ford became president, the withdrawl from Vietnam had already been set into motion, and I doubt Ford could have done anything to stop it. I was in grade school at the time, and I remember popular sentiment was overwhelmingly against the war, and if Ford had gone against that, I doubt if he could have achieved anything by it, other than strenghening the backlash against the Republican party.

Some great comments here, lots of food for thought.

Posted by: chas at December 28, 2006 10:50 AM

I can't understand the media's reaction to this either. He wasn't even elected. My first reaction was to think that maybe they are trying to gin it up to diminish or downplay in some way our very heartfelt reaction when Reagan died. As if to say that America reacts this way everytime a President passes.

I'm sad for his family and think he was a decent and honest man, but he was 93, so it's not tragic. I've always felt sorry for him that he was launched into office at such a horrible time in our history. He was obviously in over his head on every level. I agree that Betty Ford has a much greater legacy.

Tammy, what successful Nixon/Kissinger foreign policy strategy are you referring to? I didn't know there were any. (I'm being serious)

What I do know of him makes me think Kissinger is a traitor to America. When I heard that President Bush was meeting with him in private to talk about Iraq this past year I just threw my hands in the air and gave up.

Posted by: Tink at December 28, 2006 11:21 AM

But Chas, Ford did not achieve anything by going along with the perceived public sentiment at that time either. He didn't get the presidency in 1976 and also had a low approval rating (despite the way he's being remembered today). How much more of a 'backlash' would have occurred if he had simply done what he knew was right in regard to Vietnam?

Doing the right thing does not always garner public support. Ford, to his credit, did see the gathering cloud if we abandoned Vietnam and warned Congress on several occassions in 1975 that a withdrawal would undermine our credibility throughout the world and put allies at risk. But his words were ignored and he did nothing to motivate congress to do the right thing, nor did he rally the American people - the way a leader should! He simply gave up! He did not have it in him to lead. Again, if this was all too difficult for him to handle, he should have never been VP nor positioned in the White House.

Frankly, I hate that many keep making excuses for Gerald Ford's mediocrity based on 'the times'. We will always be challenged (as long as we are a leader in the free world), and it takes someone who has something more than the rest of us to get us through the darkest hours. We're not even touching on the fact that our withdrawal from Vietnam killed millions and enslaved millions more beginning just DAYS after our withdrawal in 1975. That's what having a non-threatening, harmless, poll-driven, nice presidency did for us - and the innocent people wanting their freedom.

BTW, Talkin Horse: God Himself did put us back on track by giving us Ronald Reagan. I do not believe the Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford & Carter years occurred without reason.

Posted by: artgal at December 28, 2006 12:07 PM

I agree with much of what you wrote Tammy, but I still think well of Gerald Ford and believe that he was a better president than you give him credit for.

True, as some have pointed out, Ford did inflict John Paul Stephens on the nation, and his WIN campaign simply underscored how ill-prepared he was to assume the presidency. Some of Ford's statements since leaving office (most notably his support for affirmative action) indicate to me that he was at heart a Rockefeller Republican.

But in his battles with an out-of-control Congress Ford did have those 66 vetoes (where is W's veto pen?) that p****d off the MSM and their Democratic pets of the time. The attacks on Ford for these vetoes and the pardon of Nixon foreshadowed the filthy anti-Republican smear journalism that is the most notable feature about today's MSM. The country should have awakened then - but it did not.

In hindsight no one really doubts that the country would have been better off if Ford had licked the peanut farmer and sent him back to Plains (although I believe that Reagan would have won easily). And at least Ford put up a decent fight in the 1976 general election, which is more than I can say for W or the Republicans this last time around.

In 1974 the country was faced with a bloodthirsty MSM which had just deposed a president they hated and was hell-bent on using the resulting power vacuum to force one-party fascism in America. Thus in the years to come we saw a crackdown on the Constitution (in the guise of "campaign finance reform" and "gun control"), the gutting of the CIA (which still haunts us today), the cut-and-run in Vietnam that sparked genocide in Southeast Asia, and the unchecked growth of the Soviet Empire. Short of becoming a dictator, I do not see how Ford could have stopped this.

Posted by: Mwalimu Daudi at December 28, 2006 08:55 PM

The media coverage was not balanced proportionally to Mr. Ford's standing in American politics. Perhaps the most important event during the Ford Presidency, Reagan's defeat of Mr. Ford across the south and lower midwest, was largely ignored. Some commentator on CNN even went as far as suggesting that Ford defeated Reagan. While true of the actual nomination itself, Reagan's "tie" was unbelievable against a sitting President. Reagan had lost all of the major primaries in the northeast and upper midwest, losing Iowa, Illinois and New Hampshire when he very unexpectedly came back in North Carolina. He didn't have the organization or finance of President Ford, but an organizer in North Carolina believed that Reagan could win if they ran a 30 minute speech in all 15 TV markets. They ended up running that speech in 14 of those markets and Reagan won 52 - 46%. Reagan went on to win Texas by a landslide and swept other states in the south and midwest including Indiana. Reagan won the last half of that race up to the convention, and were it not for liberal Republicans in PA he would have gotten the nomination and would have shown the party how to win.

Tammy is correct to suggest that Mr. Ford was a "smoke filled room" politician. The Ford Presidency is historically important because of that defeat. Many conservative Reagan Democrats across the south either stayed out of that election altogether or ended up electing Jimmy Carter. Ford did not lose because of the pardon, he lost because he couldn't carry the south. Pat Caddell offered very interesting commentary about the Kerry loss in Ohio. Like Kerry, Ford ultimately did not carry Ohio because he could not carry the copperheads in southern Ohio. He ended up losing every southern state, with exception to Virginia because of voters in the northern part of that state. Switch those 12,000 voters in Mississippi and Ohio and Ford would have won, but he did not because he did not carry what would become the base of the Reagan revolution. Carter also did quite well in rural western counties. That election was important because it demonstrated that a liberal or moderate Republican could not win even with the electoral votes of the northeast and upper midwest, many of which Ford carried, without carrying the south. 1976 is also important because it was the last election in which a Democrat ran a successful campaign oriented towards southerners and rural westerners. Like Carter, Kennedy also focused strategically on the south. It's ironic that the commentators are implying, in rewriting the candor of the Ford Presidency, that the Republican Party somehow changed for the worst after Reagan's model. They have it completely backwards. After 1980, the Republican Party was no longer that northeastern business party that did things in the "smoke filled room." Rather, it became a grassroots party more in the form of the Democratic Party before 1980. The "people" were dictating the party and, thus, the government and not the other way around. At the same time, the Democratic Party moved in the opposite direction by taking marching orders from an even smaller liberal block, which never was a majority and lost the conservative base that Carter carried in 1976. Because of that, their only defense has been the dirtying of American politics. Where they lose power, they are as bitter as ever and make things increasingly partisan, even where the clear majority of Americans disagree with them and put the other party which represents their interests in power. Looking at the coverage, it's almost as if they would prefer the "smoke filled room" candidates as long as they did not represent those that aren't being represented. The "liberal" of today despise Reagan more than ever before because he took in those that had for too long been alienated by the party bosses. When you think about it, politcs today really are better off than ever before because at least one of the party's is representative of the majority of Americans. Those that think that politics are worse off, and indeed attempt to make it worse off, are those that never represented the majority of Americans in the first place. They are merely angry and infuriated because we at least have one party which actively attempts to represent those many voters. I couldn't say that of the old Republican Party. The Ford Presidency is important not because of its ascension to, but its fall from power. That election proved that the liberal, or candidate perceived to be liberal by conservative voters that will choose to stay home, could not win. Interestingly, Ford was the only Republican candidate since 1964 to carry the female, but lose the male vote. Perhaps that has something to do with the persona of Mrs. Ford, but for as much as the carrying of the female vote is hyped by the msm, 1976 proves that a candidate could win, even in a very close election, without falling for the hype of the current msm agenda. It should be noted that Ford's loss amongst men was by the same percentage as Carter's loss amongst women, so one group didn't skew the other. Carter simply had a majority. Ford also ended up winning the much hyped independent vote, yet Carter won. As for the media coverage, it was interesting that the most balanced and patriotic of networks offered the most comprehensive coverage. I'm talking about Fox. CBS didn't even break in and CNN cut live coverage after a while. The positive coverage there was, or at least the way liberals like Estrich tried to spin it, I suspect was an attempted minimization of the most successful and popular administration since FDR - Ronald Reagan. It wouldn't surprise me that there is an agenda at least amongst some to try to minimize the Reagan Presidency while at the same time minimizing the current President's emphasis on the uber successful Reagan model - the same model that took away half of the Democratic Party and sent the liberal bosses into chaos and pandemonium when they couldn't depend on keeping those votes because a candidate (Reagan or GW) actually represent their interests and say it publicly. It'll be interesting to see what else the msm pulls. However, an accurate portrayal of history would show that the 1976 election, and the consequences thereof, was the most important event of Mr. Ford.

Posted by: funfsinn1 at December 28, 2006 10:12 PM

Artgal,
How much more of a backlash? That's easy to ask with hindsight, he didn't know he was going to lose the election, and he wanted to win. If he tried to keep us in Vietnam, he might have lost by a much bigger margin.

I agree that using "the times" is perhaps too easy an excuse for everything, but it is still a factor. Could a stronger leader have overcome that? Could Reagan have succeeded where Ford did not? We can only speculate.

I admire Reagan, but even his eventual success I think had a lot to do with "the times" when he was elected; right after the big mess Jimmy Carter made. People were ready for him.

I am still amazed that people ever elected Jimmy Carter. I have to wonder if Ford had done some things differently, if he might have been able to win that election. We'll never know, because it didn't happen.

I think Mwalimu Daudi makes an important point too, about the MSM. They were hammering the Republicans with Watergate. They cast Ford as a clumsy idiot, and Lionized Jimmy Carter as the greatest thing since sliced bread. I think that is how we ended up with Mr. Peanut. It was part of "the times". And in OUR times, the power of the MSM is still a force to be reckoned with. If they have their way unapposed, we could end up another peanut in the whitehouse.

Posted by: chas at December 28, 2006 10:24 PM

Dang, your right again. Ford was a yes man for liberals that wanted to lose the war in Vietnam. I was there until the last day in 75. He also was ill prepared for a run against Carter. He left the door open for the worst president in history. I was in the military during that period of time and it hurt to be in uniform. Only Reagan was able to bring the country back after those two were in the white house. I had a feeling you would step up and tell it like it was. I salute you for saying your mind instead of getting in line with the "How nice he was" people.

Posted by: Michael at December 30, 2006 01:58 PM

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