Tuesday, January 02, 2007
He belongs to history
Gerald Ford said of Richard Nixon that a man who can't keep all his enemies in his mind has too many enemies. Maybe the problem with Ford was that he wasn't willing to risk the enemies during his years in congress. He did risk them with the Nixon pardon. The thought of Nixon serving time in a federal penitentiary was not disturbing to me, what he had done was that bad. But since that time I've passed from youth to middle age. I now feel that the war, violence, criminal politics , & insane cultural climate of the years following my high school graduation deprived me & many in my generation of a chance to sort things out for ourselves. We were pressured into early life-defining choices, but they weren't the clear ones our parents faced in 1941. During high school, the great questions of the day were about civil rights, poverty, economic justice, & yeah, "world peace." There was optimism even after Kennedy's death. By 1974, everyone was worn out, the optimism broken by assassinations, Vietnam, urban riots & rebellions, drugs, & Nixon's "Imperial Presidency." When Ford became president, rightly or wrongly he decided it was enough. He let Nixon off the legal hook. Saigon fell. When Jimmy Carter took office, he immediately did what Ford had failed to do, which was to issue the same kind of a blanket pardon to civilian draft resisters. & the Sixties finally ended. It's history now.
The Ford family showed a good sense of proportion about this state funeral. The nation needed brief history lesson in the moderate-conservativism of Gerald Ford - the sort of politics George W. promised in 2000 but had no intention of delivering (can't say Texan Molly Ivins didn't warn us). The funeral was dull Episcopalian - granite monument religion; the four eulogies were like four middle school oral reports on the same famous man, but the strange organ recessional music was worthy of Vincent Price in "The Abominable Dr. Phibes."
It's amusing to think now that First Lady Betty Ford might have been so outspoken in part because she was stoned. But she was for the Equal Rights Amendment & for reproductive rights, & for being open about women's health issues. She was a sophisticated, middle class, middle-aged, middle-American woman of her time. It was sad to see her so old & grief-stricken, & sad to be reminded that Betty Ford's sensible views & values are still under attack.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
The Ford family showed a good sense of proportion about this state funeral. The nation needed brief history lesson in the moderate-conservativism of Gerald Ford - the sort of politics George W. promised in 2000 but had no intention of delivering (can't say Texan Molly Ivins didn't warn us). The funeral was dull Episcopalian - granite monument religion; the four eulogies were like four middle school oral reports on the same famous man, but the strange organ recessional music was worthy of Vincent Price in "The Abominable Dr. Phibes."
It's amusing to think now that First Lady Betty Ford might have been so outspoken in part because she was stoned. But she was for the Equal Rights Amendment & for reproductive rights, & for being open about women's health issues. She was a sophisticated, middle class, middle-aged, middle-American woman of her time. It was sad to see her so old & grief-stricken, & sad to be reminded that Betty Ford's sensible views & values are still under attack.
