Posted on 01/08/2007 10:23:36 AM PST by seanmerc
The passing of President Gerald Ford is a reminder that the Republican Party was once led by political moderates who have now been replaced by members of the radical right (read that as "neocons") and evangelicals.
Ford, who had served as House Republican leader, vice president and president, understood that politics is the art of compromise. He had many friends on the opposite side of the political aisle who heartily supported his nomination to be Richard M. Nixon's vice president when Spiro Agnew was forced to step down in 1973 amid bribery allegations.
That doesn't mean Ford was not a partisan Republican stalwart and fiscal conservative, but he knew when to compromise. On social issues, he basically walked the middle road.
There was none of that "with us or against us" rhetoric.
Decency is the word that comes through for Ford, who became president when the nation was traumatized by the misdeeds and coverup by Nixon and his palace guard during the Watergate scandal.
Ford was not Nixon's first choice to replace Agnew. Nixon apparently would have preferred former Texas Gov. John Connally, who had earlier served as treasury secretary. But Connally, who had been a Democrat, was not an easy a sell in Congress, which would have had to confirm the new vice president.
Ford was viewed as an "accidental" president much like Harry Truman, who was not Franklin D. Roosevelt's first choice for vice president in his fourth term. But both Truman and Ford defied the predictions that they were not up to the job.
Both men rose to the challenge. They not only excelled in the White House but carved special places in history.
Ford paid a heavy price for pardoning Nixon one month after Nixon resigned from the highest office in the land. The pardon was for any crimes Nixon may have committed in office.
I wish Ford would have publicly declared he was against the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq while he was still alive, rather than confiding his opposition to the war in an interview with Washington Post journalist-author Bob Woodward and then requesting that it be withheld until after his death.
Still, it was typical of Ford -- a team player -- not to want to rock the boat during war he knew President George W. Bush was determined to wage.
And yet somehow it seems there should be a larger meaning than presidential solidarity when it comes to war and peace.
In terms of friendly relations with the media, Ford ranked high, having been a Washington insider for years as a Michigan congressman. He knew the first names of most of the reporters who covered him and was friendly toward them. He had none of the pomposity and pretensions found in some politicians.
Ford once labeled my questions at news conferences as "acupuncture." And he told the 1975 White House Correspondents Dinner: "If God had created the world in six days, he could not have rested. He would have had to explain it to Helen Thomas."
In such divine intervention, I am sure I would have been asking my favorite question: "Why?"
Following Ford on his presidential campaign trail in 1976, we came upon a scale that also dispensed fortunes with one's weight. Reporters dared Ford to step on the scale. He dutifully did so.
Then he read aloud his fortune, which said something like: "You have a chance for greatness" and a "wonderful future."
I looked at the card and teased him: "They got the weight wrong, too." Ford roared with laughter.
Ford had a good sense of humor and reporters were always invited to his annual birthday celebration at the National Press Club, usually a fundraiser held in June, although his birthday was July 14, 1913.
His wife, Betty, who reporters doted on for her unique candor, also had a sense of humor. She was fearless, and her honesty was refreshing at a time when first ladies tried to hide their true personalities.
Asked in an interview on "60 Minutes" what would she think if her daughter Susan had an "affair," she replied: "I wouldn't be a bit surprised."
Once I asked Betty Ford if she knew her husband bumped his head a lot when stepping out of planes and choppers, she quipped: "So what else is new?"
As for politics, Republicans seeking the presidency in 2008 would do well to tear a page out of Ford's playbook: Move to the middle and stay away from the far right.
(Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com).
Almost forgot--IBTHTP!!!
If Helen Thomas thinks this administration is too 'conservative' and 'neocon', one more to my taste wold send her screaming round the bend!
Don't often agree with Helen but I see nothing in this article I disagree with.
In terms of friendly relations with the media, Ford ranked high............
Who cares?
Think this toad-like wart bomb would EVER say something like this to Pelosi, or Reid, or any Dumbocrat presidential candidate?
I wonder what she thought and wrote about Ford at the time he was in office...
They portrayed him as a dumb jock stumble bum. A guy that had played too much football without a helmet. For the media and Republicans that is "friendly" relations. If they considered him a threat (i.e. someone who might be tough to beat by a Dem), they would have been as viscious as they were with Reagan.
More praise from the leftwing for the Rockefeller Republican, Gerald Ford. Why am I not surprised. Ford was nothing more then a caretaker President at best. He should have stepped aside and allowed Reagan to take on the peanut farmer. America would have been spared four years of the incompetent Jimmah Cahter.
The only Republicans the leftist media like are the ineffective ones, doomed to fail in their election bids.
I guess the conclusion from this article, and from the leftist adoption of Ronald Reagan after his death, is that the only good Republican is a dead Republican.
I am certain that she raked Ford over the coals many times for pardoning Nixon.
Sorry, Helen. I remember how the media viewed and treated Ford while in office. All of you pilloried him and wrote about this bumbling second-rate halfwit football player as though he'd sprouted from a cornfield just that day in 1972.
~And the Ford kids came in for a drubbing, too, especially Susan if I remember the name correctly.
I expect to read sudden adulation for Ford in the MSM, especially after his posthumous ripping of actual conservatives and the Bush administration, but what was really disheartening was to read the seemingly endless adulation on this board. Evidently "Republican" has superseded conservative as the goal.
Still no pics?(Thank God.)
And the media went 90% for Carter in the 76 election.
That was my first thought; especially when he was running against Carter in 1976.
As you well know, a growing trend in recent years. ;^)
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