Wednesday, January 3, 2007
respect equals / admiration
I've been puzzling over the rhapsodic and gushy comments about Gerald Ford ever since he died on 12/26. Even allowing for the fact that many journalists like to pay hommage to the adage about never speaking ill of anyone deceased, they've demonstrated that they are either brain dead or have no memories or don't know how to do research or ask questions of their elders. In point of fact, during his tenure Ford was generally regarded as a bumbler. There were Chevy Chase jokes about him by the hundred and one had the sense that we'd elected our grandfather before he got old. I've had to rub my eyes a few times to make sure we're all taking about the same man. Please understand that I am all for paying lots of respect to someone simply because they are in a position of authority, but there is no equal sign between respect and admiration and I'm not sure why the media seems compelled to act as if there were. The reality is that Ford became president simply because he was the vice president when a president resigned to escape criminal conviction. And he'd become vice-president to replace a someone convicted of actual crimes. Not exactly auspicious. Are journalists simply overlooking (a) how Ford came to office and (b) that he never particularly rose to the presidential occasion, and (3) that his obsequiousness probably helped us get where we are today nationally and internationally? I have to assume so. I mean, apparently he was a decent and kind senator, husband and father, and he certainly had a compassionate and smart wife who brought social and personal respectability to recovery from drug addiction. But truth be told, he jettisoned into history books on a Peter Principle rocket and didn't do a lot with it. As Spiced Sass succinctly said:
One wrong step leads to another, Kennedy's intervention in Vietnam led to Johnson's escalation, led to Nixon's election, led to the Ford inter-regnum, led to Jimmy Carter! until finally Ronald Reagan got things back on the right foot. . . .It would be nice if journalists other than those with agendas could keep it all straight.
He did seem like a decent man, however.
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