An unwavering supporter of freedom of choice for women and gay rights. A stalwart champion of civil rights who helped shepherd the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through the House of Representatives. The appointer of Justice John Paul Stevens, the most liberal current member of the high Court.
A head of government who chose as his vice-president the most liberal national figure in the Republican Party. A proponent of marijuana decriminalization and overall rationalization of narcotics laws. A supporter of gun control.
A foe of the CIA who declassified countless documents detailing the imperialistic excesses of his Republican predecessors, including the first official U.S. acknowledgments of CIA sponsorship of reactionary military coups in Guatemala, Iran, and Chile. A tireless of advocate of global human rights who signed the Helsinki Accords with the Soviet Union. A successful practitioner of detente with the Communist bloc who avoided military confrontations with aggressive Soviet and PRC puppet regimes.
A commander-in-chief who refused to squander additional American lives and resources to rescue the failed Saigon regime, but did all that he could to remove South Vietnamese allies of the United States from the grasp of a vengeance-bent Hanoi as a matter of national honor. A World War II veteran and war hero who opposed militarism and American aggression to virtually his last breath.
An advocate of necessary and responsible governmental economic controls when the free market failed to operate as theorized by conservative economists. A self-made success, yet a genuine friend of the common American who never forgot his humble roots -- not just one who played one on TV. A President who vetoed countless acts of Congress designed to benefit corporate and other elite interests. A life-long public servant who took on the thankless task of leading a divided, angry, and cynical nation at one of its most critical historical junctures.
A statesman who did what he thought was right and in the interests of the nation even at the cost of incurring short-term popular disapproval and loss of re-election support. A politician long reputed by friend and foe alike as a man of principle, ethics, and sound judgment, as well as moderation and bipartisanship. The candidate who, in the 1976 Presidential election, earned the votes of George McGovern and his entire family.
This was Gerald R. Ford, 38th President of the United States. To a liberal Democrat in the early twenty-first century, his profile reads like a wish-list of qualities desired for national leadership. I would be elated beyond words if my party -- for that matter, either party -- could produce a candidate in 2008 with the potential to achieve a similar record, even within a full four-year term. Unfortunately, President Ford was a product of another time and place, another generation, another world view, another values hierarchy. To those who would demean the memory and legacy of this decent man and patriotic public servant merely by reason of his party affiliation, I say that you are guilty of the very closed-minded demonizing that has marked the Republican Party in recent decades.
No longer the party of Abraham Lincoln or Gerald Ford (hell, not even the party of Theodore Roosevelt or Dwight Eisenhower), the religious-rightist country-club-elitist party of Reagan and the Bushes, through their well-known hired-gun media mouthpieces, have, as we all know, promoted their political fortunes via a relentless campaign fueled by the spewing of hatred, intolerance, misinformation, anger, resentment, and all other forms of negativity against any member of the opposing Democratic party, irrespective of objective merit, effectiveness, good intentions, or other values advanced by his or her politics.
By contrast, the liberalism which I cherish entails adjudging individuals as individuals according to their own merits and demerits, not according to stereotypic assumptions about persons "like them" or by imputing to them the misdeeds of others with whom they are associated. The deeply disturbing Ford-bashing which I have seen in recent days, which has come from some supposedly liberal commentators, signifies, in my mind, a resort to the same sort of unprincipled -- indeed, reprehensible -- tactics lately employed by conservative commentators. I find this type of emotional, hyperbolic, and ideologically-driven attack no less distasteful when it comes from the left than when it comes from the right.
Gerald Ford was not a perfect President, nor a perfect man. Instances of flawed judgment, partisanship, and missed opportunities to have "done it better" can readily be cited. However, that Jerry Ford is not a viable candidate for canonization does not consign him a fortiori to the bottom circle of Presidential hell. All I know is that I would greatly prefer one Jerry Ford to a legion of Nixons, Reagans, and Bushes. The best qualities and contributions of those four Republican Presidents, in summation, fall as woefully short of the Ford standard as the sum of their evils and failures exceed it. We should be so lucky as to see the likes of another Gerald Ford in our lifetime.
