Posted on 01/12/2007 1:45:53 PM PST by NormsRevenge
I'm growing a bit tired of hearing about things Ford didn't want reported until 'after his death'.
The list seems to be growing.
A President needs to be a leader first and a manager second. Who cares if the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed if the country is wandering around in a funk. Carter managed the White House tennis courts while respect for the US went into the toilet. Reagan was the first President to try and win the Cold War. The rest assumed we'd spend eternity at each others' throats (detente - is that a Fench word?). That vision saved more lives than the world's greatest manager could even count.
When I think of Jimmy Carter (which is very rare) a ford pinto comes to mind. Actually his policies and pronouncements are more like Ralph Nader's comments about the corvair "unsafe at any speed."
Took one to recognize one I reckon.
Reagan was a great communicator, something badly needed in the Republican party, a skill that Ford seriously lacked himself.
"The best president of his lifetime, Ford said, was a more moderate Republican: Dwight D. Eisenhower." Yeah, he helped MacArther burn WWI veteran's Hoverville to the ground. Nice guy.
How come Woodward didn't report the Carter "news"?
During Carter's lousy presidency, I was working two jobs and trying to put myself through college. During the drive from campus to my night job, Reagan's radio program came on. It was one of the few things which kept me going during those dark years.
One of my fondest memories as an upper classman was election night 1980. When the networks didn't call Massachusetts and New York for Carter right away as they did Rhode Island, we felt something big was happening. The other fond memory was Reagan's inauguration with a split screen-- the ceremony in Washington on one side and Tehran with the plane load of hostages on the tarmac on the other side. The plane was not allowed to take-off until Reagan took the oath of office.
The whack-job Mullahs in Iran hated Carter despite the fact he put them in power. You would think he would have learned a lesson from that day.
Warren G. Harding had his "clinton/jfk" flaws, but he was much more conservative than the recently departed Gerald Ford. Justice Stevens is an everlasting testament to Fords' "moderation (liberlism)."
Ford was a new deal republican, whereas Harding was our first supply side POTUS. Coolidge was the second, followed by JFK and the great, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Harding's policies gave us the Roaring Twenties, Ford's the roaring funnies.
This helped win the "cold war". I was under the impression that communist dominated eastern Europe didn't receive any from the Marshall Plan.
Of course President Ford, bless his heart, didn't know that eastern Europe was under communist domination did he.
"Ford contended his own negotiation of the Helsinki accords on human rights did more to win the Cold War than Reagan's military buildup."
Yeah, right. And Poland was a free country in 1976.
But of course, it's sour grapes.
Carter was a disaster.
Gerald Ford is a footnote, a trivial speck in American history. Who gives a shit what he said?
What Reagan understood is that a modern President needs to be a leader, not a manager.
Gotta be frustrating to have become President during a constitutional crisis; not really be allowed to do much more than occupy the White House; and watch other ELECTED Presidents succeed or fail on their own merits.
I don't fault Gerry Ford his petty jealousies. He's human. In fact, I give him credit for keeping his opinions to himself until after he passed from the scene.
Gerry's attitudes & opinions show that he was a fully-evolved Republican politician of the late 50's & early 60's. An era when Republicans had no power, no ideas & few congressional prospects.
Must have been galling to sit in the House, be treated like a mushroom by your Democrat colleagues, and then see a Ronald Reagan come from the West Coast full of ideas & take in a single stroke what you had been dreaming of (a Republican majority) for over 20 years.
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