View of GOP as buffoons a fabrication

Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | December 30, 2006 | Jim Wooten

[Cincinatus' Wife]

In retrospect, it’s hard to imagine that President Gerald R. Ford ever came to be viewed as a klutz or as a man of modest intelligence.

He was neither. As reporter Bob Dart noted in Ford’s obituary, he was probably the most accomplished athlete ever in the White House. After being named Most Valuable Player on his 1934 University of Michigan football team, he was offered professional contracts by both the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions.

His athletic prowess in football carried over to golf, skiing and swimming. JFK may have effected athleticism for the newsreels, but Ford was the genuine article.

And yet, it’s Ford who, in Dart’s words, “gained a comical reputation for clumsiness while in the White House.” Considerable assistance came from comedian Chevy Chase, who often portrayed Ford stumbling or falling on “Saturday Night Live.” Here’s what Chase said last week about the routine, as reported by Reuters news service:

“He had never been elected, period, so I never felt he deserved to be there to begin with. This was just the way I felt then, as a young man and as a writer and a liberal.”

While Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon for Watergate no doubt contributed significantly to his loss to Jimmy Carter, his depiction by the media and entertainment industry as a nice, well-meaning bumbler of modest intelligence conditioned the country to believe him inferior to the challenge.

But as his speechwriter, James C. Humes, wrote after his death, Ford’s “dean’s list grades at the University of Michigan were enough to earn him a scholarship to Yale Law School. In his rankings there, he topped fellow classmates Cyrus Vance and Sargent Shriver.”

Oft quoted was the LBJ crack that “Jerry Ford is a nice fellow, but he played too much football without a helmet.”

This genial dunce theme recurs in media treatment of Republican leaders, with some exceptions. Nixon was smart but evil. George H.W. Bush was genial, but intellectually inferior to Bill Clinton. Ronald Reagan was dumb and George W. Bush is too, while the Democrats they defeated — Carter, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry — were all intellectually superior.

The basis for that misperception about most conservatives and Republicans is that by and large they come from places unfamiliar to the New York-Washington media establishment. And it is that establishment, until the rise of the blogosphere, talk radio and cable television, that owned the business of deciding what’s news. They owned, too, the franchise on determining who in the political arena has substance, who’s serious and who’s not.

Conservatives were always disadvantaged in that milieu, and still are, because their constituents by and large were made up of what Ford affectionately called “the ordinary, the straight, the square [the quality] that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation.” It is, he said, “a quality to be proud of … a quality that many people seem to have neglected.”

That’s not Washington, nor is it the pressure groups demanding more government, nor is it the political industry that defines the nation’s problems in ways that make them the solution. It is therefore alien to everyday experience in the centers of opinion and government so, well, Grand Rapids and comfortable and straight.

It’s a mind-set like that of Chevy Chase that makes those “in the know,” in politics, academia, entertainment and the media, quite comfortable in dismissing Ford, Reagan or Bush as somebody who didn’t “deserve to be there to begin with” because they were the choice of the uniformed, misguided, self-interested, complacent and those lacking in compassion and kindness — in essence, the ordinary people who lived in places like Grand Rapids.

When liberal entertainers speak today of Bush, it’s with that same smug dismissive certainty that devalues his intelligence, his moral authority or his claim to the Oval Office.

Often with conservatives, it’s because the critics can’t comprehend their ideas, values or agendas — and therefore either assume they have none or that the ones they have lack merit. But in Ford’s day, a relative few news, opinion and entertainment figures in New York, Washington and Hollywood could turn an athlete into a national klutz and a Yale Law School graduate into an intellectual dullard.

That world passed, though, before the president did.

• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.

[Lion Den Dan]

Ford was Vice President. He became President. It has been many years since we elected a Vice President in this country. The vote is for the President.

[ALPAPilot]

Demagogue: (just about any Democrat)

A leader who obtains power by means of impassioned appeals to the emotions and prejudices of the populace. A flatterer of the people.

I just can't figure out whether the media falls for it or they just count on the elecorate to be affected.

[Hardastarboard]

Effected is a verb, and correct in this context. Affected is an adjective.

So he should have used effected rather then affected?

Before your cranial arteries blow out, the grammatical abomination above is my pet peeve. Then is a time, than is a choice. How much more effing simple than that can you get? I've seen that "typo" in over a hundred places and counting now, including major publications.

[Gondring]

Former President Ford deserves to be treated just like any other president, even if he was simply in the right place at the right time. What does not being elected have to do with anything?

And he was appointed to positions by people who were rightfully elected. To say that their appointments are not valid is like saying laws are not valid because we don't have referenda on them all.

We're in a @#$&* democratic republic, much as that pains the liberals to admit.

But it really is amazing how Democrats who score lower on standardized exams are viewed as smarter than their GOP opponents, or how Algore can flunk out of theology school but be called intellectually superior to W, who has an Ivy League graduate degree.

[cf_river_rat]

My misapplication, I'm sorry.

[Gondring]

And the votes were 92 to 3 (Senate) and 387 to 35 (House) to confirm Mr. Ford as VP. Clearly a solid margin--no way the lefties can use another favorite trick and say it was "stolen."

[mfish13]

Kerry is a dunce. Carter is book smart but has no common sense. Kennedy was trying to live up to the image his father wanted to portray in public. Dukakis? Anyone who looks that goofy riding a tank should stay home. The MSM always make the Republican Presidents out to be intellectually inferior. That is because the MSM knows better than the Americans who elect them what is "Best" for the country.

[Malesherbes]

The verb - To affect (v.t.): to have a preference for or to imitate.

[Coldwater Creek]

Well said!!

[Gondring]

ACK! Merriam-Webster? Ptui! ;-)

[Christopher Lincoln]

Constitutionally, that's not so. The Electoral College chooses both the President and the Vice President, and the electors cast their votes for their parties' respective candidates. What is true is that in recent years the presidential candidate has generally been able to name his own running mate.

But don't underrate the Vice Presidency. Of the elections from 1956 on (excluding 1964, when there was no incumbent Vice President), there was only one (1976) when the Vice President was not his party's candidate either for President or Vice President. It seems that 2008 will be another exception, which is unfortunate.

[thirst4truth]

That is because the MSM knows better than the Americans who elect them what is "Best" for the country.

They think Republians are dumb cause they are. Everyone knows that a journalism major, like a teaching degree, are at the bottom of the graduating classes. My daughter tried to default to a journalism degree, because she said the math for a business degree was too hard. I did not allow her to default. I pushed her to take the math, hire a tutor, do a class over, what ever it took not to succomb to a journalism degree as second choice.

She is graduating this June with a Business/marketing degree!!

[HawaiianGecko]

“He had never been elected, period, so I never felt he deserved to be there to begin with. This was just the way I felt then, as a young man and as a writer and a liberal.”

Chevy obviously doesn't understand the concept of the tyranny of the majority. Our constitution doesn't require that the President be elected, otherwise it wouldn't have a line of succession with the Speaker of the House third in line. A person elected by half of one congressional district.

I'm certain that Gerry Ford quite properly followed Agnew into office, and that every 'I' was dotted and 'T' was crossed in accordance with our constitution. Ignorant liberals have a tendency to think that if things don't work out to their liking then something criminal must have happened.

Remember, Chase's worldly talents are that he is funny, can stumble on demand and act like a fool. 

[Richard Kimball]

because they were the choice of the uniformed, misguided, self-interested

He meant uninformed. It seems sloppy for there to be two errors of this type in a relatively short editorial.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

The apotheosis of buffoonery:

One Jeff MacNelly cartoon on the inept Carter hit home more than all the tedious Dem attacks on the intellect of Reagan, Ford and GW.

[CyberAnt]

As I have said many times before .. making a baffoon out of repubs is just the normal media practice.

Bush was called stupid, idiot .. but he's the only president ever to hold a MBA from Harvard Business School. That is no small accomplishment. Gore on the otherhand flunked out of law school - and was thrown out of divinity school for drug use - but he was always lauded as being smarter than Bush. Remember, Kerry said, "I can't believe I'm being beaten by that idiot". Such smug arrogance will be their undoing.

Remember, it's not what you do or don't do that counts with the media .. it's whether you're a dem or a repub. One of the latest acts of lunacy by the left .. an Oscar for Gore's "Inconvenient Truth".

[OldPossum]

Two spelling abominations bother me:

there, their, they're (these are seen often on FR)

and probably the most misspelled words of all:

it's its

[prognostigaator]

right

[Wolfstar]

The basis for that misperception about most conservatives and Republicans is that by and large they come from places unfamiliar to the New York-Washington media establishment.

Generally good article. However, let's not pull punches, as almost all writers do when dancing around the truth, as in the above paragraph.

The "basis for that misperception" has little to do with misguided establishment folk who are unfamiliar with fly-over country. Most of the people presently in big media, academia and show biz grew up in places other than New York, DC, and Los Angeles.

The reason they have that attitude is because, to one degree or another, they are all "limousine" Marxists. As such, they are past masters at using the tools of propaganda to further their agenda. They move in concert, much like a school of fish, always swimming along in synch without any discernible message being sent from the fish at the head of the group.

[Norman Bates]

1996. Quayle dropped out early due to health issues.