Yahoo news story:
RIP President Ford. You were a good man.
I always felt a little sorry for Mr. Ford. Having to take the position of President after all the crud, and not having even run for the position.
Ford stood up for public service, moderation, accountability and integrity. We’d be better off if today’s leaders had clue about the value of those concepts.
Sorry, but whenever anyone mentions President Ford, the only thing I can think of is how Chevy Chase made his fortune by immitating the stumbling and bumbling.
djm
Chevy himself got humbled after a very brief career as a talk-show host. I guess what goes around comes around.
And Ford was from Michigan!
… yet chose to retire elsewhere. 
djm
Born elsewhere, too – Omaha, Nebraska.
Mr Ford will be remembered, among other things, for using a sticking plaster on the Middle East. At least he didn’t try to export democracy to the region. Pardoning Mr Nixon was also slightly dodgy.
I thought he died during the Zimbabwe invasion
I am seen as left of center in the present political climate, but those are the very sort of conservative values I respect and try to uphold.
As the news stories point out, Ford was a superb athlete who
declined a career in professional football. Clumsy
he wasn’t. But once the media get you in their sights
they follow you around and seize on whatever clumsy
thing you do and howl it from the rooftops, so that it
defines you in the public’s mind.
Pardoning Nixon, which Ford knew might cost him
the presidency (he was referred to by the Dems as
‘the man who pardoned Nixon’), was a brave thing to do.
Ford believed a trial would do the country more
harm than good, tear it apart, in fact, and prevent it from
doing what it desperately needed to do: move on from
the debacle of Watergate. It would have been sheer agony for
most Americans, and Nixon had already been humiliated profoundly and
reduced to a remnant of the man he had been. It
wasn’t pay-back or corruption. Political courage is
costly.
Jimmy Carter summed up Ford and his presidency with
his pronouncement, immediately after his inauguration,
his first words as president:
‘Let me thank my predecessor
for all he has done to bring us together again.’
Carter, a more clever and articulate man, ate Ford for
breakfast in the presidential debates. But I expect
that Ford would have been a more successful president.
Justice is costly too, Jim. Mr Nixon was not a very good man, and Mr Ford let him off. I’m surprised at your expression of expedience.
Wasn’t that Henry Ford?
I don’t understand, Steve, why you describe what I wrote
as an ‘expression of expedience.’ Whether or not Ford did
the right thing, calling it ‘expedient’ doesn’t capture
what was in his mind.
Here’s part of an article
about the pardon, which I guess was the defining
moment of Gerald Ford’s presidency.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ford_nixon_pardon
Ford pardon sealed Watergate shut
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer Wed Dec 27, 7:01 AM ET
WASHINGTON - On a September Sunday in 1974, President Gerald Ford told the nation it was time to “shut and seal this book” of Watergate by pardoning his predecessor,
Richard Nixon.
Ford’s stunning announcement may also have sealed his political fate, since the nation’s only president never elected to nationwide office — a Republican — lost the 1976 election to Democrat Jimmy Carter. Many said the unpopular pardon was a cause of Ford’s defeat.
But years later, Ford’s act of conscience was viewed differently. In 2001, Ford, who died Tuesday, received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award named after the former Democratic president. He was chosen by a bipartisan committee of political and community leaders, who had the luxury of looking back at the fateful day of Sept. 8, 1974.
Ford was not known for his eloquence, but he was eloquent when he addressed the nation that morning in the Oval Office.
He said his was a solitary decision. “There are no historic or legal precedents to which I can turn in this matter, none that precisely fit the circumstances of a private citizen who has resigned the presidency of the United States,” he said.
The accusations of Nixon’s Watergate misdeeds “hang like a sword over our former president’s head, threatening his health,” Ford said. But his primary concern was for the nation.
“My conscience tells me clearly and certainly that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed,” he said. "My conscience tells me that only I, as president, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book.
“My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquility but to use every means that I have to insure it.”
Ford revisited the pardon is his autobiography.
“I simply was not convinced that the country wanted to see an ex-president behind bars,” he wrote. “We are not a vengeful people; forgiveness is one of the roots of the American tradition. And Nixon, in my opinion, had already suffered enormously.”
And, Ford said, so had the nation.
“It was the state of the country’s health at home and around the world that worried me,” he said.
Nonsense. Nixon very much deserved to be in jail. It was the spectre of precedence that politicians as high up as the president should become legally responsible for their actions that required swift closure. Especially for Republicans.
djm
I think we all agree that Nixon deserved to go to jail, and your point
about setting a precedent that politicians should be legally
responsible is a good one. I agree that would have been
a good thing to do. I don’t think it follows that
Ford did the wrong thing, however,
though of course I understand why you think he did.
Anyhow this act of conscience pretty well summed up
the man.
There were two attempts to assassinate President Ford.
People said we would have to start drafting presidents.
Here’s an account.
Among all the Ford xcoverage last night, a couple of comments will stick with me.
-
When told of Nixon’s enemies list he said that if you have so many enemies that you can’t keep them all in your head, you’ve got too many.
-
From an interview later in his life - he said he was shocked to realize how completely dishonest the White House (I assume the Nixon people) was to him personally. They lied to him about everything.
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Andrea Mitchell commenting on how depraved and corrupt the Nixon White House was.