The greatest athlete to become president. Gerald Ford was also one of the nicest people to be president...
I agree, Jim. He seemed to be apolitical, although to be where he was in life, he had to be an outstanding politician. Following Nixon, he definitely was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he caught my eye, so to speak. If I had known then what I know now, I would have voted for him in '76. Carter was the cause of my complete disillusionment with my democratic party. I haven't seen anything since on the national scene to change my mind.
He took on a tough job that's for sure. RIP I voted for Carter as well, the only time I have ever voted for a Democrat.
Terry, I'm guessing yours was a backlash vote, which essentially is how Carter was elected. That and Ford's association with the disgraced Nixon meant Carter was in the right place at the right time. Carter displayed the correct persona to a country stung by the White House shenanigans and searching for a spotlessly clean leader. I'm certain there are many like you who, with the benefit of hindsight, would have voted differently. C'est la vie. Fortunately, the old cowboy (Reagan) came to the rescue four years later.
Sid you are exactly right, I was embarassed by all the Nixon watergate stuff and as a former Naval Officer I had great respect for graduates of the Academy. Jimmy was a Naval Academy graduate and seemed like the guy to return Washington to the people. But of course I was wrong. Terry
I wonder what this week will be like in Grand Rapids, that is Fords old district. I'd be surprised if he's even visited in 10 years or so, but still he was their guy for a long time. Bobda will have to fill us in on the details.
He had an unfortunate bad rap at a clutz thanks to some SNL skits about him. Actually, he was perhaps the most athleticly skilled of our presidents. Even so, I wouldn't have lined the fairway when he was teeing off. :lol:
8) Gerry Ford and his family were just typical Americans, with no special phobias or quirks. My favorite "scandal" of the Ford Administration was when the president and his son Jack were caught by reporters smuggling Coors beer back east on Air Force One. Coors was sold only in the Far West in those days, because the Coors family refused to use preservatives...
Phantom you are a historian, can you tell me how the media portrayed Ford while he was in office, esp the NYTimes, LATimes, WashPost. Now compare and contrast that to how they are now giving his interview with Woodard so much credence? I wonder if it would be so valued an interview if he'd expressed opinions that didn't fit their agenda.
The old MSM (Main Stream Media) are always on their own agenda. There was a time in this country when all newspapers represented either one political party or the other. That ended during the Great Depression, when most Republican newspapers went under or switched sides, leaving the Democrats in control of all information. With their monopoly in Congress, they also created all of the broadcast laws for the new medium of television, which cemented their control. This effort was led by Texan Lyndon Johnson, who used his wife's money and his position in the U. S. Senate to obtain control over nearly all of the TV and radio stations in Texas, just to give an obvious example. The MSM, CBS, NBC, ABC, NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post etc, are virtually a part of the Democratic Party and have been for many decades. They coordinate their efforts with the party during elections and attempt to steer the national debate in any way that they can. A good example in 2004 was the New York Times running Abu Ghraib headline stories for the 47 consecutive days leading right up to election day...then they've never run another one since then... In 1976, the MSM was on a crusade to eliminate Gerry Ford, because he had cheated them of their goal, which had been to overturn the election results of 1972, in which their arch nemesis, Richard Nixon, had won one of the greatest landslides ever. Ford had prevented them from "snatching a presidency" as Bella Abzug had urged and unlike Nixon, he was almost impossible to demonize, because he was obviously a nice guy who didn't really hate anybody. They tried calling him stupid (sound familiar?) Lyndon Johnson (a graduate of San Marcos State Teachers College) said, "Gerry played too much football without wearing his helmet." A story that was repeated endlessly in the MSM without ever mentioning that Gerry was a graduate of Michigan and Yale Law School. They made him out to be a bumbling uncoordinated oaf, trying desperatly to mask the reality that the former Wolverine All-American was the greatest athlete in the White House...ever. They smeared him with everything Nixon had ever done; but he wasn't Nixon. He was exactly what he appeared to be: a nice guy with way above average organizing and administrative skills. In other words, he was exactly what the country needed, after the Sixties and Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon... In the end, they succeeded in bringing him down...barely. Who remembers now how Jimmy Carter won the presidency by running as a "born again Christian?" In those days, the MSM thought religion in politics was just fine, because it suited their purposes. Its almost laughable now to look back and realize that the question of Mr. Carter's competence never came up. It wasn't until he began making his cabinet appointments that Democrats realized what a bumbler he was. In four short years he managed to ruin the reputation of the Democratic Party, destroy the old Roosevelt coalition of working-class Catholics and white Southerners, unleash the Ayotollahs of Iran upon the world in a jihad that will continue for a hundred years, downsized the American military in a series of maneuvers that almost saved the crumbling Soviet empire, and fouled up the economy so severly that economists had to create a new word to describe it, "stagflation." It had been previously thought that runaway inflation and high unemployment could never happen at the same time, but "Jimma" proved that with enough incompetence, anything was possible... The way Gerry Ford was treated brought about a backlash that continues to this day, as people realized that they had been duped. The MSM has lost readers and listeners and viewers in huge numbers; to the point where their very existence is now in question. Americans now go to the internet or alternative radio/TV/magazines for their main sources of news. The LA Times alone has lost half its subscribers in just the last ten years. Fox News has a larger audience than any other cable news network and it was internet bloggers who brought down the evil Dan Rather in 2004, when they caught him red-handed trying to invent news stories helpful to the lib/Dems. In the long run, Gerry Ford was as helpful to the Republicans as Jimma Carter was damaging to the Democrats. What the MSM did to both, set the stage for Ronald Reagan, the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of Islamic Facism and terror, the rebirth of the Republican Party as an equal partner in governing the nation, as well as the crumbling of the center/left media monopoly that dominated and strangled the free flow of information in a democracy that must have an unfettered flow of ideas to survive and prosper. History has shown that by losing in the right way and not retaliating or losing his temper as Nixon had done; Gerry Ford won. Like all linemen, Gerry was a scoreboard kind of guy. He wasn't much interested in heroes or dramatics. He just wanted his side to be successful and in the end, it was. ............TP