Many of us are old enough to remember the treatment of Gerald Ford. Sure, he was no true conservative, but he had a lot more principle and he did serve his country honorably. For the time he served as President, he was universally and relentlessly portrayed as an incompetent klutz.
He was a star athlete in college, and in the USN during WWII, an extra duty assigned to him was being in charge of physical fitness on the ship. Here he was playing basketball on an elevator on the USS Monterey:
And he was no slouch in his service, either.
During Typhoon Cobra in 1944, the USS Monterey was damaged by a fire, which was started by several of the ship's aircraft tearing loose from their cables and colliding during the storm. The ship was afire from stem to stern, and in the very short range TBS (Talk Between Ship) discussion which was the only kind possible during the typhoon, a talker on a passing ship was heard to say "There goes the Monterey...", meaning there was no way she could survive those fires.
(This is actually the USS Langley, nearly twice the displacement of the USS Monterey, so she would have generally rolled LESS than the Monterey...)
During the Typhoon, Ford got off watch and narrowly avoided becoming a casualty himself. After he left his battle station on the bridge of the ship in the early morning of December 18, he went onto the flight deck to get to his quarters faster, and as he did, the ship rolled twenty-five degrees, which caused Ford to lose his footing and slide toward the edge of the deck on the port side of the ship. He slid all the way across the slick flight deck and would have gone over the side to absolute certain death (no ship or launch could have gotten him out of the water) if it had not been for his physical prowess.
As he tobogganed on his rump, scrambling wildly trying to grab onto something, his feet hit a raised steel edge on the flight deck and he catapulted into the air. As he went through the air, he managed to flip and catch hold of a railing as he went over it towards the sea. Pretty astonishing in that sea and light state.
He went back to his rack, but smelled smoke. He got up again and made his way (carefully) to the hanger deck which was completely ablaze, with burning wrecks of planes, engines, and support equipment sliding to and fro in the pitching ship, and went into the inferno with a fire party.
Agree or disagree with his competency as a President or his policies, he deserved far better treatment than he got from the Left.
And Chevy Chase was the popular culture expression of the Leftist ridicule, and was willing and enthusiastic in his ridicule.