March 19, 2004
The personal is political?
So, I've been doing research for this book about the 1976 election and I've had to go through a year's worth of news. I never realized what a terrible leader Gerald Ford was. I had always seen him as kind of harmless but with headlines like 'Ford says Moscow has no influence on Eastern Europe' and 'Ford says Arab cutoff of oil unlikely' and I was all worked up about the stupidity of Ford. I was telling my father this a few days ago and he said 'yeah but Ford is the one who put pressure on Brezhnev to allow Jews to leave Russia. You wouldn't be in America if it wasn't for Ford'. Hmm. Suddenly, Ford isn't the worst. Funny how that works.
Posted by Karol at March 19, 2004 04:29 PM | TrackBackTechnorati Tags:
Take a look at John Robert Greene's The Presidency of Gerald Ford from the U of Kansas Press or Palce Politics by Robert Hartman. Ford faced major problems in terms of inflation, lack of a public persona, Watergate, the Nixon pardon. He handled the Mayaquez incident and the collapse of SE Asia to the best of his abilites. He also had to deal with an unruly administration and a party torn between Reagan, Schlesinger, Rocky-Kissinger, Rummy-Cheney, Haig and the Nixon Proletariat Guard, etc. With the exception of Chester A. Arthur and Truman, no VP ever came to the presidency with a such a bad hand and played it so well as Ford. While not a great president, Ford was what the country needed after Watergate and for the bicentenial.
Posted by: Von Bek at March 19, 2004 04:44 PMNo. Ford bad. Very, very bad.
Posted by: Dawn Summers at March 19, 2004 05:55 PMFord did the right thing by refusing to bail out New York when the city was spending itself into bankruptcy. He shouldn't have pardoned Nixon, though. That's really all I know about him.
Posted by: Yaron at March 19, 2004 06:45 PMFord ends up bailing out NYC. Yet another reason I was hating him.
Posted by: Karol at March 19, 2004 06:46 PMHmmm... now, I support his bailing NY out policy, but not his bring Karol to America policy. Where do I go from here? Ford really is a puzzling figure in American politics.
Posted by: Dawn Summers at March 19, 2004 08:08 PM
