Monkey in the middle.
Posted on 12/26/2006 9:10:18 PM PST by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES - Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93.
"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."
The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.
Ford was an accidental president, Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straight-forward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.
He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared "our long national nightmare is over." But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to "look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation's wounds."
Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who also was forced from office by scandal.
He was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.
Even after two women tried separately to kill him, the presidency of Jerry Ford remained open and plain.
Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.
Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Richard Nixon, the transition to Ford's leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process — despite the fact that it occurred without an election.
After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.
They liked her for speaking openly about problems of young people, including her own daughter; they admired her for not hiding that she had a mastectomy — in fact, her example caused thousands of women to seek breast examinations.
And she remained one of the country's most admired women even after the Fords left the White House when she was hospitalized in 1978 and admitted to having become addicted to drugs and alcohol she took for painful arthritis and a pinched nerve in her neck. Four years later she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a substance abuse facility next to Eisenhower Medical Center.
Ford slowed down in recent years. He had been hospitalized in August 2000 when he suffered one or more small strokes while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
The following year, he joined former presidents Carter, Bush and Clinton at a memorial service in Washington three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. In June 2004, the four men and their wives joined again at a funeral service in Washington for former President Reagan. But in November 2004, Ford was unable to join the other former presidents at the dedication of the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.
In January, Ford was hospitalized with pneumonia for 12 days. He wasn't seen in public until April 23, when President Bush was in town and paid a visit to the Ford home. Bush, Ford and Betty posed for photographers outside the residence before going inside for a private get-together.
The intensely private couple declined reporter interview requests and were rarely seen outside their home in Rancho Mirage's gated Thunderbird Estates, other than to attend worship services at the nearby St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Palm Desert.
In a long congressional career in which he rose to be House Republican leader, Ford lit few fires. In the words of Congressional Quarterly, he "built a reputation for being solid, dependable and loyal — a man more comfortable carrying out the programs of others than in initiating things on his own."
When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York's Nelson Rockefeller and California's Ronald Reagan.
"Personal factors enter into such a decision," Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of then, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest.
"We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district," Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn't, he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally.
So Ford it was. He became the first vice president appointed under the 25th amendment to the Constitution.
On Aug. 9, 1974, after seeing Nixon off to exile, Ford assumed the office. The next morning, he still made his own breakfast and padded to the front door in his pajamas to get the newspaper.
Said a ranking Democratic congressman: "Maybe he is a plodder, but right now the advantages of having a plodder in the presidency are enormous."
It was rare that Ford was ever as eloquent as he was for those dramatic moments of his swearing-in at the White House.
"My fellow Americans," he said, "our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule."
And, true to his reputation as unassuming Jerry, he added: "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me with your prayers."
For Ford, a full term was not to be. He survived an intraparty challenge from Ronald Reagan only to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter in November. In the campaign, he ignored Carter's record as governor of Georgia and concentrated on his own achievements as president.
Carter won 297 electoral votes to his 240. After Reagan came back to defeat Carter in 1980, the two former presidents became collaborators, working together on joint projects.
Even as president, Ford often talked with reporters several times a day. He averaged 200 outside speeches a year as House Republican leader, a pace he kept up as vice president and diminished, seemingly, only slightly as chief executive. He kept speaking after leaving the White House, generally for fees of $15,000 to $20,000.
That's a beautiful tribute; many thanks for posting that for the Masonic ping list.
Gerald R. Ford, Jr. was a good man who took on an difficult job under the worst circumstances since Andrew Johnson. As Kipling said, "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you ..."
Ford did that, and as well as anyone could. He did his best in an office that he never sought. He didn't fix inflation or Vietnam in his short term, but if you know someone who could wrangle problems that big in time that short, please let me know. He served admirably and well, and I hope when his last moments came, he felt no regret.
Geopolitical issues aside, the child who was named Leslie Lynch King, Jr. at birth became the man named Gerald R. Ford, after his adoptive father, and he said so openly and without shame. He helped remove the stigma from adoption.
He couldn't live forever. No one does. But history wil be more kind than pop culture has been. Gerald Ford was not a klutz, nor a dolt, nor an inept idiot. He was a good man who took on an impossible task because someone had to. He did his duty when called, and even of you disagree with every word and every position, that earns respect,
I have a very simple eulogy. If I can't say it in good conscience, I won't give a eulogy. But if I can say something to the dying or something to the memory of the dead, it is this:
Ya done good.
If I can't say that, I have nothing to say.
Hello nopardons!
Humility is the mark of greatness.
I'm not surprised(although I didn't know he was a Mason) that Ford had a spiritual connection.
People generally feel the loss after such souls depart.
He will be missed.
Yes, President Ford was the last President, thus far, who was a Mason. If you ever read a thread on FR ( it usually starts out as some anti-Masonic thing ), you WILL find FR's Masons and those from Masonic families posting who was/is a Mason and President Ford is always on that list.
He was a very good man and an able president, who will be missed by more than just his immediate family.
Gerald Gord was a man who, when called, stood tall and accepted the difficult task. In my opinion, he was a much underated President. Bless him and his family.
A SMEAR concocted bu that pillar of competance, Lyndon Johnson.
Bush I said that public service is a honorable profession. Often we see that it isn't but Gerald Ford proved by his sterling conduct that it can be. MLK said don't judge a man by the color of his skin, instead, judge him by the content of his character. He was referring to blacks then but Gerald Ford was a perfect example of sterling character. We all wish you well in the great beyond MR PRESIDENT.
Wow, the DUmmies are being surprisingly charitable. To what do we owe this ?
I am actually glad to hear this. I just hope we are the same when Carter and Clinton dies. I am sure we will be.
Notice that Carter's LEFT foot is the only one forward ?
That'll be wonderful. Will he be buried in Grand Rapids?
If your point was that Drudge had some special prescience, I'm afraid I'm unimpressed. The dude was 93.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Look at their feet. Whose feet (which ones) are in the midst of being put forward. Indeed, a THOUSAND words....
Andrew Johnson ran for national office as did Truman. Ford never did. That's the distinction.
The war was won by the US Military and lost by the betrayal by the Democrats in Congress when they reneged on their agreement to support the South Vietnamese government with military materiel.
Get it straight!
A decent man who also became President of the United States.
Drudge had little information in that post but he did start me thinking about this great man. It was the good things about President Ford in the responses. I will always have fond memories of President Ford.
As I understand it, yes he will be buried in Grand Rapids. I'm actually surprised by that since he's lived away for so many years.
It's his museum that's nearby to you and his library is located in Ann Arbor, right?
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