Better than Jerry Ford (the man who brought us “Justice Stevens”, Whip Inflation Now, and a series of booby hatch schemes? That’s an easy one, just like saying he was a better president than LBJ, the hapless incompetent Carter or Obama. Better than Nixon? No way. Nixon had tremendous faults but he opened China to the West as a coutnerweight to the USSR, prosecuted the Vietnam War over virulent opposition that eventually brought him down, cracked down on crime, and yes, he was quite bright and reasonably well-spoken, neither of which attribute describes GW Bush. Neither, of course, comes close to Reagan, who was the best president of the last half of the 20th Century and one of our five best overall.
I hear yah