 "THE PRESIDENT OF ALL THE PEOPLE" A EULOGY FOR GERALD R. FORD
I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers. And I hope that such prayers will also be the first of many. If you have not chosen me by secret ballot, neither have I gained office by any secret promises. I have not campaigned either for the Presidency or the Vice Presidency. I have not subscribed to any partisan platform. I am indebted to no man, and only to one woman--my dear wife--as I begin this very difficult job.
have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it. Those who nominated and confirmed me as Vice President were my friends and are my friends.
They were of both parties, elected by all the people and acting under the Constitution in their name. It is only fitting then that I should pledge to them and to you that I will be the President of all the people.
-President Gerald Ford, August 9, 1974
Gerald R. Ford, the 38th president of the United States and perhaps the most fundamentally decent man to hold that office, died late last night. He was 93 years old and the longest living of the 42 presidents.
During all of the ceremony following President Reagan's death two and half years ago, I wondered what would happen when President Ford died and how he would be remembered. I've continued to think about that from time to time. I can only hope that history is kinder to him than his contemporaries were.
It is said that Mr. Ford never had an unkind word to say about anyone, in public or in private. Despite this, he was ridiculed while in office and generally forgotten after he left the national stage in 1977. President Ford, along with the first President Bush, is one of the very few national leaders in my lifetime that I had a genuine personal affection for. He was a good and noble man who entered office in the most difficult circumstances in his country's history, and he was never really given a fair shot.
Living as I do under a parliamentary system of government, I do not find unelected leaders all that unusual. Ford however was the only such president in American history - nominated and confirmed by Congress to replace Vice-President Spiro Agnew and elevated to the presidency upon Richard Nixon's resignation. Nixon's selection of Ford as vice-president was one of the last great decisions of his administration. There wasn't a better man to succeed him and heal the nation.
Anyone who thinks Washington is mired in a poisonous political atmosphere today should really study the period from 1966-76. The twin calamities of Vietnam and Watergate led to the single most dangerous period since the Civil War. Failed presidencies were becoming the rule, rather than the exception to it. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon - two great, if deeply flawed men - had been hounded out of out of office. In his retirement, Johnson remembered hearing what he called "that awful song;" "Hey, Hey, LBJ / How many kids did you kill today." During Watergate, the White House was often surrounded by signs that read "Jail to the Chief." And by 1974, that had become an accepted part of civic discourse.
Because of the deep trauma of the Vietnam War, America began to doubt its place in the world at a time when American meekness could have led to nuclear annihilation. Because of Watergate, the very foundations of the Executive Branch and the national security state were called into question and the United States could have reverted to an earlier era of congressional government reminiscent of the one following the Civil War between 1865 and 1901. Kennedy had been assassinated, Johnson was hounded from office, Nixon was forced to resign, and Ford and Carter were both beaten after one term. That seventeen year period of failed presidencies, combined with Congressional hearings into virtually everything the executive branch had done during that period, threatened the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution. Had a lesser man succeeded Nixon, the presidency itself could have been crippled.
Being one of the very few presidents to move directly from the legislative branch to the executive, it may have been thought that Ford would have deferred to congressional prerogatives. Instead, he was one of the most forceful advocates of his office in recent memory. In his 29 months as president, he vetoed 66 bills. The current president has vetoed one in six years. Despite not having been elected president, Ford did not shirk one of the most controversial and difficult decisions of the last forty years, the pardon of Richard Nixon.
By the time of Nixon's resignation, Watergate had being tearing America apart for twenty-five months. For the first time, a president of the United States had been forced to resign. The United States was more divided than at any time since Reconstruction.
If Nixon were indicted, even the special prosecutor conceded that it might take as long as two years for him to receive a fair trial by an impartial jury. Such a trial might have taken as long as a year. Any conviction would certainly been followed by years of appeals, after which a future president might well have pardoned Nixon anyway. Watergate could very well have stretched into the Eighties and the political divisions would have continued and deepened.
Gerald Ford knew that pardoning Nixon could very well cost him his presidency. When confronted with a decision that was bad for him politically, but good for his country, he chose his country. It was one of the most courageous and even heroic decisions a president has made in my lifetime. All of the goodwill that he came into office with evaporated and his administration ended before it really began. But almost everyone now agrees that it was the right thing to do and he never wavered from that belief.
As David Gergen pointed out in his book, Eyewitness to Power, Ford had the most capable White House staff of the post-World War II era. Among those Gergen served with were George H.W Bush, Henry Kissinger, Alan Greenspan, Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
Besides being the healer of a nation, President Ford was perhaps the last Republican who was conservative in the way I consider myself conservative. He believed that government had no role in the private lives of the citizenry. He did not engage in spending sprees while cutting taxes. He wouldn’t have invaded countries without first having realistic goals as to how to administer them and extricate American forces. If he believed a bill was unconstitutional or bad for the country, he vetoed it. He believed in the separation of powers and the rule of law. He was a man of firm convictions, but was also aware that the world is a complicated place and nuance is important. In modern Republican circles, he is considered a liberal for these things.
Gerald Ford, rather than Jimmy Carter, might have been the ideal ex-president. He left Washington, wrote his memoirs, rarely spoke out on matters of public policy and never undermined his successors in the White House. He assisted his successors when asked and kept his feelings to himself when he wasn't. Ford understood, as Carter seemingly can't, that there can only be one president at a time.
I'd like to close with a statement President Ford made as he assumed office on August 9, 1974;
I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad.
In all my public and private acts as your President, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy in the end.
My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.
President Gerald R. Ford was the right man at the right time. America is a better place because he was its president and poorer place for his passing.
Godspeed, Mr. President.
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