2-12-07, 11:37 am
How can a just deceased two-year president get the coverage of a two-term president? Ok, we see a lot of attention given to Martin Luther King due to the official opening of the King Memorial in DC, and then of course the ceremonies focusing on both Martin and his wife Coretta Scott King on his birthday and Black History Month. Then there was the Christmas day passing of a man who sang for King records for years, James Brown. In between these, attention was directed to the death of a man who was born under the name Leslie Lynch King Jr., probably the most complex King of all, considering all the drama surrounding the aforementioned Kings. The profile on this King was that of a man who would later be named after his adoptive father, Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr.
From the beginning Ford seemed to be a simple man, primarily a loyalist, especially when it came to his friends. While a football player at the University of Michigan he and other players initially refused to play in a 10/20/34 game against Georgia Tech because of their year-long insistence that they wouldn’t take the field unless UM sits out their only black player Willis Ward. Ward was also Ford’s roommate on the road. Ward was fast and equally smart, he was known to beat the star runner of archrival Ohio State in track meets; Jesse Owens. But though Ward urged Ford and his teammates to play the GT game, he refused to go to the pros, and later became an attorney and judge. Ford also nixed the pros and went on to join the Navy. While President, in 1975 he approved an extension of the ’65 Voting Rights Act another seven years and expanded its range to that of foreign language minorities. These moves have all the earmarks of what Americans like to call a “standup guy.” Other moves however remain in stark contrast. Ford intimated to journalist Bob Woodward-on condition of silence until his death-that he didn’t agree with President George W. Bush’s policies. My question is why? Were it not for Ford, we may never have known the Bushes.
This man’s most famous words were “our long national nightmare is over,” what he didn’t seem to realize was pardoning a soon-to-be-convicted criminal, Richard Nixon, was not the way to end that nightmare, leaving him to face law enforcement and the judicial system was. What we didn’t know was, all Ford would eventually do was unleash an even longer national nightmare by introducing the world-at-large to Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George H.W. Bush.
During a time when once again the word Impeachment is being tossed around, it’s good to recall the 2-and-a-half-year administration that fumbled the ball more times than the Colts and the Bears did in the recent Super Bowl. Back then there was outrage over 5 Nixon operatives being caught burglarizing Democratic Party HQ in order to plant bugs and a president that sweated enough to have resigned in disgrace on 8/9/74.That outrage today is missing, but desperately needed.
--Chris Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Criterion, Email comments to him at
