By Dr. Earl Evleth PhD
The abiding clich=E9 about Gerald Ford -- who died Tuesday at age 93 --
is that he was a decent man who steadied the country but held the White
House too briefly to leave a major imprint. We've always thought that
view of his Presidency is too diminishing, not least because he led the
nation at a dangerous time and resisted political furies that could
have done the U.S. far more harm.
"America's Suicide Attempt" is how the historian Paul Johnson describes
the 1970s. And it is important to recall the bad temper of the times
that Ford inherited in becoming the 38th President. He succeeded
Richard Nixon, who had resigned over the Watergate coverup and amid an
unpopular war in Vietnam. He faced large liberal majorities in Congress
that were emboldened by their ouster of Nixon and set to revive the
Great Society. And he had to clean up the financial problems caused by
a burst of inflation and wage and price controls. Ford navigated all of
these traumas better than he gets credit for.
* * *
It is true that Ford was something of an accidental President, the only
one in U.S. history never elected as either President or Vice
President. Before Nixon picked him to replace the disgraced Spiro Agnew
as his Vice President, Ford had been contemplating retirement from his
Grand Rapids, Michigan, House seat. But like another unlikely President
from the Midwest, Harry Truman, he had reserves of honesty and
fortitude that served him well.
He made a particular contribution in pardoning Nixon, though he knew
Nixon's enemies would accuse him of a quid pro quo. The decision cost
him dearly in the polls and may have cost him the election in 1976, but
it also spared the country from years of division over a criminal trial
that special prosecutor Leon Jaworski seemed determined to pursue.
Congress had trampled over a weakened Nixon, and another Ford
contribution was restoring some measure of executive authority. Far
more than Nixon, he used his veto pen (66 times in 895 days), blunting
liberal excesses after Democrats picked up 46 House seats in 1974. He
also deserves credit for resisting the isolationism that was rampant as
the Vietnam War wound down. It was a rare period in postwar U.S.
history when the public favored spending less on defense.
Democrats exploited the mood in early 1975 to block Ford's funding
request for our allies in South Vietnam, as the North began its
offensive. Ford pleaded with Congress that "American unwillingness to
provide adequate assistance to allies fighting for their lives could
seriously affect our credibility throughout the world as an ally," but
to no avail. Saigon fell by April, and the boat people and massacres in
Southeast Asia soon followed. Thus one irony of this week's praise for
Ford as a unifying President: At the time, he was mocked as clumsy and
dull, and he was vilified for blocking Congressional priorities. Any of
this sound familiar?
Vietnam was a scarring American defeat, but it could have been worse
had Ford capitulated to the Congressional stampede. Instead, he
fortified U.S. relations with the rest of free Asia, and he sent in the
Marines despite liberal howls when the U.S. ship the Mayaguez was taken
hostage by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.
Given the weak hand he inherited, it is perhaps understandable that
Ford continued the Nixon policy of pursuing d=E9tente and arms control
with the Soviet Union. But that strategy was already beginning to fail
due to growing Soviet adventurism abroad and conservative skepticism at
home. Ford also joined Leonid Brezhnev in signing the Helsinki Accords
guaranteeing civil liberties in the Soviet bloc; while criticized by
conservatives, the Helsinki pact probably helped to undermine Soviet
moral authority over the years.
The Ford Administration's economic record is also better than its
reputation, sandwiched as it was between two of the three worst
economic Presidencies of the 20th century. Hoover's was the worst, then
Nixon's followed by Jimmy Carter's.
Ford is famous for having initially rebuffed New York City's bid for a
financial bailout, but New York's trouble was merely one symptom of the
financial woes caused by Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns's
monetary blunder. Burns opened the easy-money spigots in Nixon's first
term, leading to 12% inflation, a spike in interest rates and wage and
price controls, and setting the stage for financial crises from Mexico
to Britain, among other places. Despite such early follies as the WIN
program -- "whip inflation now" -- and a failed proposal to raise
taxes, Ford ran a strong Treasury under Secretary William Simon,
adopted sounder policies and left the economy better than he found it.
* * *
In historical political terms, Ford was something of a transition
figure -- from the traditional Republicanism of Eisenhower, with which
Ford identified, to the more energetic reform conservatism that would
triumph with Reagan. Arguably Ford's biggest political mistake was
choosing Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president over Reagan. The New
York Governor was deeply unpopular with the GOP base, and the selection
left Ford vulnerable to Reagan's primary challenge in 1976.
The Gipper came within a handful of delegates of taking the nomination,
a challenge that weakened Ford for the autumn race against Democrat
Jimmy Carter. In the event, Ford ran one of the better Presidential
campaigns of the modern era and came close to beating the former
Georgia governor who had run as a conservative himself.
Perhaps President Ford's greatest achievement was in demonstrating to a
nation angry and dispirited over Watergate and Vietnam that its
political system was resilient and the Office of the Presidency still
worthy of respect. In that sense his Presidency was a triumph of Ford's
personal character -- not the first, or last, time America has been
fortunate in the leaders our democracy has produced.
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