A Jeffersonian president

This a statue of Gerald Ford, 38th president of the United States as an Eagle Scout.  It stands at the Boy Scouts' Headquarters.

In many ways this statue typifies the man.  The Boy Scouts of America are a treasured national institution, an institution which teaches the kind of sturdy character, and forthright life grounded firmly in the soil and history of the United States that most Americans think of as typical of our people.  He was the kind of president for whom Jefferson hoped, a man who knew better than to imagine himself a kind of king, if only for a few years.

Jefferson, himself could never quite "pull it off."  He believed all the right things, but he could not escape his own time, circumstances or upbringing.  He was an upper class gentleman through and through. He tried.  He tried.  After his first inaugural, he deliberately walked in the dirt of Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, surrounded by children and tradesmen.  He struck down the abomination of the "Alien and Sedition Act," and freed the newspapermen who had been imprisoned by the previous administration.  He wrote the "Kentucky Resolutions," a perpetual manifesto against aristocratic, centralizing government.  Personally, I think he was the greatest of all Americans.  Yes, I know all about Sally Hemings.  I hope they were happy together.

Gerald Ford was in many ways the fulfillment of Jefferson's belief of what the president should be.  He was dutiful, honest, modest, humble, courageous, decent and a true citizen/magistrate.  He and his family lived for many, many years in Alexandria, Virginia in a unpretentious brick house set in the "Clover" neighborhood of the town.  He and his wife were noted in the town for their participation in the civic life of the city, their devotion to Alexandria's public schools (which their children all attended) and their constant involvement in charitable works.  They were well loved in the neighborhood where they lived throughout the years in which he served in the House of Representatives, as Vice President of the United States and for ten days as President of the United States.

Alexandria was the home of George Washington, Robert E. Lee, Werner von Braun and many other people of note.

We Alexandrians are proud to call Gerald Ford our neighbor.  pl

http://www.constitution.org/cons/kent1798.htm

Comments

[arbogast]

At the time, I despised Richard Nixon. He had the blood of thousands on his hands.

Ford pardoned him. It was the right thing to do.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

[taters]

Eloquently done sir, and worthy of the man. We're pretty fond of him here in Michigan, too. And of course, Betty.

[Mark Gaughan]

Pat, This has nothing to do with President Ford. I read sic semper tyrannis every day and I've come to value your opinion. I was wondering if you have seen loosechange911 and what you think about it if you have. I think it should be seen. It's at www.loosechange911.com.

[W. Patrick Lang]

Mark

Inept, self focused bureaucrats and politicians are enough to explain what happened.

Not enough NTs.

pl

[Frank Durkee]

Perhaps the simplest explanation for the difference between Ford's time and bush's is the simple fact of the absence of the soviet Union. They had the capacity to destroy us as we them, and between us almost everybody else. As the saying goes " the threas of hanging doth wonderfuly focus the mind". the absence of that threat alters both conciousoly and unconciously the mindset of those seeking to exercise power. There is no one to hold us up to account when we fail to live up to our best, that we 'have' to pay attentiion to. This last perhaps includes US voters also. In the very first days of this administration there was a lot of talk of this type from neocons and more centerist types. It was "in the air". A reminder perhaps "that those whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad".

[Babak Makkinejad]

Col. Lang:

Was Ford so sterling or did he look good in comparison to the men who preceeded and proceeded him in the Office of the President of the United States?

[Will]

Betty Ford is a genuine American heroine in her own right. Haven't heard much about her lately. She made treatment for addiction respectable and mainstream. A very fine lady.

Well that makes two presidents that attended my alma mater at UNC-Chapel Hill. James Knox Polk- the last President with enough political capital to have headed off the civil war and who had self inflicted himself with a one term limit. And Gerald Rudolph Ford, who attended preflight school there.

And the Nixon pardon, really had little to do with Nixon per se. It was for the good of the Res Publica which was mired in the mess. It was a clean break so we could move on. Of course, it would have been better if the proud Californian had shown some remorse and contrition to make it all easier to swallow. Another "Checkers" speech was not in him.

[W. Patrick Lang]

Babak

I think he was exceptional in the simplicity of his character. pl

[Cloned Poster]

My very limited knowledge of US politics in the early 70's makes me make the following comment.

Nixon was elected as were Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. Of those four I admire Bush I the most for his pragmatism, I despise Bush II for gross incompetence, Nixon was corrupt and should never have been pardoned and as for RR, well a failed actor but a good PR puppet.

Ford was probably all you say he was, as I value your opinion PL, but he was never elected, he was selected by Nixon (see above).

Would he have made President by right rather than accident?

[semper fubar]

Well, there's the little matter of the Nixon pardon. Ford took from the public our right to uncover the wrongdoings and ultimately pass sentence upon someone who worked very hard to subvert our laws and undermine the principles of our government. He did it for partisan reasons ("the nation could not withstand a trial"?? Poppycock!) so the Republicans and Powers That Be could sweep everything under the rug and continue on their merry way.

And now look where that's gotten us.

You can draw a straight line from Watergate-IranContra-Iraq, and the pardon goes through the heart of it.

I will never forgive Ford for that. And it far outweighs what a nice neighbor he may have been.

I liked Betty, though. Class act.

[chicago dyke]

betty gets mad props from me, no doubt. and as one born in MI, it's nice to say we've had one president from that state. i went to michigan, and i'm proud of his work on the gridiron there. that's about all i can say that's nice.

sure, he was a normal, nice, humble man. and some may believe that the nation needed the 'healing' pardoning nixon brought. i don't. ford's administration is one key link in the chain of anticonstitutionalists that has brought us to the point where we are now, with a reinvigorated imperial presidency, records levels of corruption and cronyism, and open lawlessness among elected officials.

two words for those lauding ford: rummy and cheney. they were elevated, and got a much needed boost in the project of making them legitimate leaders in DC, during their time in ford's administration. i'm sure i don't have to remind anyone of the damage they've done since holding their posts there.

america would've been bettered served by taking the hard road, as is true in almost all things worth having. opening up the nixon/republican cesspool of the time to public scrutiny, investigation, and prosecution would've sent a strong and lasting message, after almost a decade of highly damaging governance which set the stage for a weaker america of today. because we are weaker, in almost every respect, thanks to so much antidemocratic "leadership" in the last several republican administrations (and one can almost include clinton in that, for all his 'centrism").

it's worth noting that Ford would be a pariah in today's republican party. and that they more or less forgot him until he died. i found it cowardly for him to instruct woodward not to publish his thoughts on the iraq war until after his passing. and have we really come so far as to think that a simple man like Ford was as valuable to the project of freedom and liberty as Jefferson? Jefferson was a true intellectual, he wouldn't been horrified at the marriage of today's republican party with the religious right, and its lack of regulation and supervision over multinational corporations.

Ford was no great man. he did the best a simple man can do in troubled times: move along, sweep problems under the rug, make no waves or go for a deeper understanding of complex problems. you may say the cost of a full investigation into all of nixon's crimes would've brought unrest, but i believe that this would've been a far smaller price to pay, than the one we and our children will pay as a result of the republicans who came after him. with Ford, the Rule of Law took a heavy blow from which it's never recovered. no democracy thrives or lasts long without it.

[John]

Let me throw a thought out there. If we start having a track record of pardoning those at the highest level when they commit a crime does that not just encourage the next group who enters the office to go "No worries, there is precedent for a pardon."

Isn't a big part of the reason for punishment is to act as a deterrent to future actions. Maybe if RMN spent some time in the big house then all of his old stooges like Dumbsfeld and Cheney as well as the boy prince would have been far less likely to have twisted the truth and taken us into an unnecessary and costly (both in lives and treasury) war.

Sometime the pain is worth it!

[Grimgrin]

"Gerald Ford was in many ways the fulfillment of Jefferson's belief of what the president should be. He was dutiful, honest, modest, humble, courageous, decent and a true citizen/magistrate."

And he was the only unelected president.

Speaks volumes doesn't it?

[W. Patrick Lang]

All

Ford would never have been president except for the Agnew-Nixon debacles.

A message there? pl

[David E. Solomon]

Colonel Lang,

I am afraid that I agree totally with John's comment:

"Sometimes the pain is worth it!".

I am of the opinion that whatever else Gerald Ford did or did not do is overshadowed by his pardon of Richard Nixon.

[W. Patrick Lang]

All

Those of you who still want blood over Nixon should consider how much your attitude about judicial vengeance is like that of Babak. pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

Col. Lang:

Judicial retribution is for capital crimes and only applies to the relations of the victims and the victims - in Islamic Law.

The crimes of Richard Nixon (if any) - in the context of US Law - did not qualify as capital crimes.

Additionally, the posters here cannot claim being victims in a captial case.

I maintain that there is a vast difference between teh principle of "Qisas" and what you are referring to here.

[Grimgrin]

I don't mind that Nixon escaped punishment, I mind that he escaped having to confess what he had done.

Some of Nixon's defenders like to point out abuses of executive power before and since as a way of minimizing the man's crimes. That suggests to me that that because there was never a full accounting of Nixon's abuses of power, whether in a trial or a hearing or in a confession in exchange for pardon, the U.S. missed it's best chance to arrest the march of the Imperial Presidency.

I just want to know where the bodies were buried. I feel the same way about George Bush's father and the Iran Contra scandal, and I have no doubt that when Bush finally slinks out of the white house, probably after pardoning everyone who ever worked in his administration I'll feel the same way about him.

Maybe part of that attitude comes out of a desire for vengeance, or at least iconoclasm of the saints of the conservative movement. I'm not going to pretend all my motives have Cartesian purity to them.

As for Ford? He made a mistake, a huge mistake but given what else we know about him, one that probably had the best of motives. He gets to wear that albatross the way Lee gets to wear slavery and Von Braun gets to wear the Mittelwerk and "the widows and cripples in old London town".

"Ne dim ne red, like God's own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averr'd, I had kill'd the Bird
That brought the fog and mist.
T'was right, said they, such birds to slay
That bring the fog and mist."

[pbrownlee]

Pardons should be specific and only come after verdicts.

Anything else is gross subversion of the rule of law and an incitement to further criminality.

[semper fubar]

Those of you who still want blood over Nixon should consider how much your attitude about judicial vengeance is like that of Babak. pl

Oh please. That is insulting. Insulting to all Americans. What - are you going to tell us next "You can't HANDLE the truth"? I find it hard to believe you really believe this, Pat.

Ford stopped the investigation in its tracks. A Truth and Reconcilation period would have been healing. ChiDyke and John are exactly right -- we should have taken the medicine then - brought it all to light, exposed the criminals instead of setting the precedent that our highest officials will get away with whatever crimes they can think up to maintain power and make money.

Look at where we've ended up. Like I said, you can draw a straight line from the Pardon to Iraq.

I think much more of the American people than to believe that we have to be shielded from the truth, that our government works better when it works in secret and operates outside the laws the rest of us live by.

Ford might have been a personable, gentle man, but that doesn't change the fact that he helped subvert our government.

[anon]

I read in a history book that Jefferson also mingled with the common folk at public, open, receptions at the White House several times -one with a 'great cheese' and anonther with a great common man's bread, with cool eats to spread on the slices. And Jefferson was sighted to be gleefully diggin in. So, the first 'great cheese' with public mob party was during Jefferson's rein. Jefferson really did try hard, and tried harder than any of the recent quasi-royal occupants of the WH.

Ford may have had good intentions, or felt he was showing some common decency in his pardon of Nixon. But apparently he asked and thus, received nothing for in return. A mistake, and perhaps this decent President lied to himself that the pardon did not result in a de facto facilitation of cover-up, and also helped enable the current crop in the WH.

[lina]

"Ford would never have been president except for the Agnew-Nixon debacles.

A message there?" pl

Yes.

Low key, modest, congenial types don't run for president in the first place. Ford was not without ambition, but by today's standards it seems quaint. Today's presidential candidates are all about money and packaging. As a marketable product, Ford gets left on the shelf. Honesty and decency don't count much as "features and benefits."

[W. Patrick Lang]

SF

Please don't put words in my mouth.

Am I more forgiving than you? pl

[chicago dyke]

gak, forgive all the spelling & grammar errors. i think people got my point. "straight line from pardon to iraq" pretty much sums it up. thanks, semper.

[W. Patrick Lang]

Semper and Chicago Dyke

You seem to share the belief that the Nixon pardon "led in a straight line" to the present war in Iraq.

That is quite an assertion. How about explaining that to us in some terms other than animosity for the republicans. pl