Artist rendering of the Ford Class Aircraft Carrier CVN-21.
Posted on 01/18/2007 1:23:54 PM PST by jamesestrada
A Ford, Not a Lincoln
By James P. Estrada
January 18, 2007
The passing of President Ford has led to the seemly unavoidable melancholy look back to his presidency with an inevitable comparison to presidencies past and present. Ford himself once said that he was “a Ford and not a Lincoln”, and so we got a Ford and not a Lincoln Presidency out of this man.
There are those that would say Ford was a great president and cite reasons from his unifying the country after Nixon to his seamless handling of the Mayaguez incident, where US Marines boarded and recaptured a ship that had been seized on the high seas by the Khmer Rouge .(1)
The man was not a great president, but what president has been remembered as being a great president for things that happened in the first two years of their first term?
As a president, Ford was not particularly noteworthy. He could not win re-election against Carter who was not a particularly strong candidate. He gave a pass to a president that abused the people’s trust, setting a precedent that later served Clinton well when a judge put aside criminal charges for perjury until his term was up. Ford should not be put on a post death presidential pedestal that he was undeserving of in life.
Ford is not great because he was President; Ford was great because he was a great American.If Ford looks good now it is possibly because he lived in a simpler time, and he was true to his convictions.
In retrospect, it is possible that Ford could have pardoned Richard Nixon and still won re-election, if he had not told New York City to “Drop Dead” (2) when they were seeking a bail out loan.
Ford was not a president of hand outs in a country becoming more and more a country of hand outs. He was a member of the WWII generation that believed in earning what you needed or wanted.
He believed in spending less than you earned and balancing budgets. He believed if the average family could balance their budget certainly New York City which has accountants on their payroll could balance their budget, or make agreements with their creditors, just like the rest of America had to do.
He was a veteran of WWII who served on an Aircraft Carrier and said once that his most memorable service was as that of a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. A Lieutenant Commander in the Navy, not a congressman or a minority leader or a member of the Warren Commission, not Vice President or the President.
A middle ranking sailor was for a man who had held Federal office from Congressman to President, his first, best, most desirable and missed calling. He was a man that preferred a life of discipline and hardship with his comrades to that of the trappings of office and a life of ease in the seat of power in the company of the elite.
Ford knew he was the president that was never elected and he remained a reluctant president throughout his term.
God has a way of working things out, and God has a great sense of humor. The pentagon made an announcement the other day, and in the statement they said that the next carrier would be called the Gerald R. Ford.
This is special for a specific reason: The Ford will be the first in a new generation of carriers, so all the carriers that follow in the same class will be called “Ford Class” carriers. The Fords are anticipated to be around for about 100 years. There is a precedent for naming ships after presidents that served on that type of vessel. For example, the Jimmy Carter is a Submarine.
Herein lies the irony of the situation: Ford was like a carrier, plain visible, long serving, practical, you could see what he believed and wanted coming a mile away, he was common, blatant, patent and obvious. He commanded respect, and what you saw was what you got. As a taxpayer with a carrier as with Ford, you can actually see what your dollars are buying.
Submarines on the other hand are frequently outdated, they serve short life times relatively speaking, they are anything but obvious; they rely on latency and sneaking as well as stealth. They are secretive and you as a taxpayer are left to speculate, never seeing what you actually bought.
Very few Americans that remember their respective presidencies would consider either Ford or Carter stellar presidents, particularly those like myself that think the corpse of the beloved Ronald Reagan was a better choice than we had available from either party in the last election. The significant difference in the two is that Ford was content to let history judge him, and with his new book it appears that Carter is intent on rewriting history.
The only way to properly sum it up is that Ford was content to be a Ford and did not write a book claiming to be a Lincoln, and blaming others for making him looking like a Ford. Ford accepted who and what he was and he was proud of it, and no rewrite of history is or was necessary.
(1) Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayaguez_Incident
(2) NY Daily News http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ford_to_City.PNG
Artist rendering of the Ford Class Aircraft Carrier CVN-21.
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