As somebody who wasn't even a glimmer in my parent's eyes when Ford left office, what are your thoughts?

[ 27 December 2006: Message edited by: jrose ]

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Here at CounterPunch it has always been our position that Gerald Ford was America's greatest President. Transferring the Hippocratic injunction from the medical to the political realm, he did the least possible harm.

As a visit to the Ford presidential library discloses, the largest military adventure available for display was the foolish U.S. response to the capture of the U.S. container ship Mayaguez by the Khmer Rouge on May 12, 1975. As imperial adventures go, and next to the vast graveyards across the planet left by Ford's predecessors and successors, it was small potatoes.

Ford was surrounded by bellicose advisors such as his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger; his vice president, Nelson Rockefeller; his chief of staff, and later secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld and his presidential assistant, Dick Cheney. The fact that this rabid crew were only able to persuade Ford to give the green light for Indonesia's invasion of East Timor--an appalling decision to be sure -- is tribute to Ford's pacific instincts and deft personnel management. Unlike George W. Bush, Ford was of humane temper and could mostly hold in check his bloodthirsty counselors.
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As a percentage of the federal budget, social spending crested in the Ford years. Never should it be forgotten that Jimmy Carter campaigned against Ford as the prophet of neo-liberalism, precursor of the Democratic Leadership Council, touting "zero-based budgeting".

If Ford had beaten back Carter's challenge in 1976, the neo-con crusades of the mid to late Seventies would have been blunted by the mere fact of a Republican occupying the White House. Reagan, most likely, would have returned to his slumbers in California after his abortive challenge to Ford for the nomination in Kansas in 1976.

Instead of a weak southern Democratic conservative in agreement to almost every predation by the military industrial complex, we would have had a Midwestern Republican, thus a politician far less vulnerable to the promoters of the New Cold War.

Would Ford have rushed to fund the Contras and order their training by Argentinian torturers? Would he have sent the CIA on its mostly costly covert mission, the $3.5 billion intervention in Afghanistan? The nation would have been spared the disastrous counsels of Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Those who may challenge this assessment of Ford's imperial instincts should listen to the commentators on CNN, belaboring the scarce cold commander-in-chief for timidity and lack of zeal in prosecuting the Cold War. By his enemies shall we know him.

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Here at CounterPunch it has always been our position that Gerald Ford was America's greatest President. Transferring the Hippocratic injunction from the medical to the political realm, he did the least possible harm.

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But by that argument, wouldn't the greatest President have been William Henry Harrison, who died thirty days after being augurated?

Especially since, in those pre-Mexican War days, the American Empire was hardly a going concern.

Applying this standard to religion, the greatest Pope would have been John Paul I -- at least, the greatest in modern times. Maybe there were mediaeval popes who were in office for shorter periods.

[ 28 December 2006: Message edited by: 'lance ]

Under Reagan, many of those who lied to Congress about the illegal attacks on Nicaragua were then pardoned, up to and including Casper Weinburger, the Secretary of Defence, pardoned by Bush Senior.

In September of 2006, Congress pardoned all those who had ORDERED or committed acts of torture as part of the war on terror.

On the other hand, he was the President who single handedly liberated Eastern Europe during a debate with Jimmy Carter.

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Originally posted by jeff house:

So, as I see it, Gerald Ford initiated the practice, so common in third world dictatorships, of granting immunity to those in power who commit crimes against democracy and the rule of law.

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While modern analysts seem convinced that pardoning Nixon was some sort of selfless act on Ford's behalf he would have been a fool not to fear that evidence damaging to the Republican Party would have come out in the course of a Nixon trial and that simply having a trial of an ex-Republican president playing itself out on a national stage through much of 1976 and possibly beyond the election wouldn't have hurt GOP chances at every level in that election year.

Sure, he took a blow to his popularity for pardoning Nixon but the 1976 presidential election was still pretty close. He and the party would, I think, taken a much harder blow if there'd been a trial.

[ bit about Lincoln pardoning Davis removed since, as is pointed out below, he didn't.]

[ 29 December 2006: Message edited by: aka Mycroft ]

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Originally posted by brookmere:

IMHO it started with Abraham Lincoln's pardon of the Confederate leadership from Jefferson Davis on down. After all they started the bloodiest war in American history in defense of slavery.

Not claiming that Lincoln did the wrong thing though.

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Lincoln didn't pardon anyone, including Jefferson Davis. He was killed a few days before the war ended. As for Davis:

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In April 1865, as the Confederacy was collapsing, Davis fled from Richmond, Virginia, hoping to continue the war from the Deep South or from west of the Mississippi, or to organize a government in exile. On May 10th, he was captured by Federal cavalrymen in southern Georgia. For 2 years he was held in prison and threatened with trial for treason. His suffering during his imprisonment won him the affection of the Southern people, who came to regard him as a martyr to their lost cause. Although indicted, Davis was never brought to trial, and he was released on bond in 1867. His subsequent ventures into business were unsuccessful. Believing that he had done nothing to be pardoned for, he refused to seek a pardon and remained ineligible for public office.

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Originally posted by jeff house:
In September of 2006, Congress pardoned all those who had ORDERED or committed acts of torture as part of the war on terror.

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He was the last decent Republican president the US ever had (or probably ever will have).

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What?! Come on! There hasn't been a half decent Republican president since Teddy Roosevelt (OK, maybe at the biggest stretch, Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower had a trace of responsible attitude and a bit of integrity).

It seems that even much of the US left is turning Gerald Ford into some sort of folk hero since his posthumously released interview, where he condemns the Bush Administration's Iraq slaughter as a mistake and denounces Henry Kissinger as a violent thin-skinned paranoid and Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft as "pugnacious" dogmatists.

Impressive. So has anyone bothered to ask why, when he was president, instead of cowardly pardoning Nixon and associates, didn't he fire Kissinger's ass and block the other criminals from advancement in the state power structure?

Nope. Instead he went around cleaning up his colleagues’ messes and sanitizing them for the public like a good little skin flute player. It’s easy for him to shit on these people now that he’s dead. But when he was alive—especially as president—he could have actually done something about them and didn’t.

Ford was also reasonably bipartisan - in fact, he was chosen (and not Nixon's first choice) because he would be able to get the nod from a Democratic House and Senate that respected him.

He was certainly no progressive (although in his first bid at elected office, as senior class president in high school, he ran as the Progressive Party candidate and was defeated by the Republican). But neither was he a hard-right, supply side, neo-conservative, woman hating, gay bashing Republican of the sort that now dominate that party.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
And are we sure that the North waged war on the South with the goal of ending slavery in mind?. It certainly sounded like a noble idea.

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Paradoxically, the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery only in the Confederacy, where Lincoln had executive power to do so. Slavery was not formally eliminated in the US (including the slave states that stayed in the union) until the passage of the 13th amendment.

And BTW:

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December 8, 1863: Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction issued by President Lincoln; it offers pardon and restoration of property (except slaves) to Confederates who take an oath of allegiance to the Union and agree to accept emancipation; it also proposes a plan by which loyal voters of a seceded state can begin the process of readmission into the Union

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[ 30 December 2006: Message edited by: brookmere ]

I think we need to recall that the pardoning of Richard Nixon pertained only to such "normal" crimes as accessory to the Watergate burglary or its later coverup, obstruction of justice if you will. In no way did it pertain to the conduct of foreign policy where Nixon and Kissinger are despised by many, even though their opening to China stands as a legitimate achievement.

One of my colleagues, a very business oriented woman from an upper middle class family, is actually a Chilean refuge. Since her family are hardly socialist or union types, I really don't know why they had to leave after the coup, but they must have displeased somebody. I asked her once if she blamed Nixon and Kissinger for her family's forced removal to, of all places, Edmonton. She looked at me stunned for a second or two, and then said "Yes!", with a discrete degree of emphasis that amounted to saying, "Yes, you idiot, of course I do!"

None of that was ever on the table in Ford's pardon of Nixon.

And I think others are right in calling Gerry Ford the last, at least for now, of the old "moderate" Republicans of the Rockerfeller variety to be President. However, they may yet make a comeback if Bush and the rest of the Republican leadership don't get the message from last month's setbacks and decide that they must do more than simply appear contrite and cooperative. Further Democratic gains in 2008 including the White House could open the way for a Schwarzenegger type Republican, if not Arnold himself because of the American born requirement, to be the next viable Republican presidential nominee. Bush could be the final chapter in the Goldwater-Reagan period of US Republicanism if he doesn't pull back.

[ 30 December 2006: Message edited by: DavidMR ]

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None of that was ever on the table in Ford's pardon of Nixon.

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You are right that foreign policy was not part of Ford's pardon. But the Watergate crimes were hardly some minor quibble.

To start with, Nixon was conspiring to bribe felons who had broken into Democratic Party headquarters at the orders of the Committee to Re-Elect the President, which was headed by the highest law enforcement officer in the United States, Attorney General John Mitchell.

Of course, since Ford pardoned Nixon BEFORE he was tried, he left it open to all the apologists to then argue "Oh, Nixon never knew that the break-in was going to occur...blah blah."

I'd guess that Nixon ordered the breakin at the Democratic National Headquarters as part of his plan to subvert the election, and to get lists of Democratic donors he could punish.

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"I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I always treasured our relationship. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon, because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn't want to see my real friend have the stigma," Ford said in the interview.

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Ford was a pragmatic realist. If the system proceeded against Nixon, it could have been years before it even got to trial - let alone the dragging on of the trial, potential appeals etc., all the while undermining public faith in democracy and weakening government institutions. Setting aside the "right" answer for the "best" answer.

(Whether one agrees with that analysis or not, that was always the reason Ford gave for having issued the pardon, and I don't think anyone has ever questioned his veracity on that.)

Bush, on the other hand, is an idealist. Yes, his ideals a pretty freaky, but he and those around him actually did (and mostly still do) believe all that self-aggrandizing crap from the Project for a New American Century. He believes to the bottom of his blackened heart that if he just tries harder in Iraq (and anywhere else he "needs" to extend American power), he will eventually bring those benighted people to the light of American style democracy (and, of course, free enterprise).

So, regardless of the evidence on the ground that his strategy is failing, Bush will "stay the course" because he believes in the course.

Give me a pragmatic realist any day over a blinkered ideologue.

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Bear in mind that Ford pardoned a man who was responsible for the deaths of at least 600,000 innocent civilians. During the invasion and occupation of Vietnam, Nixon ordered secret bombings of neighboring Cambodia. The goal was to strike North Vietnamese supply and transit routes, but unfortunately for the Cambodian people, the B-52 carpet bombings did not distinguish the nationalities of victims(5) ...

Once Ford assumed the Empire’s helm, he wasted little time before collaborating with Kissinger in another imperial escapade. Consider the US role in Indonesia’s genocide that killed over 200,000 East Timorese:

"Jakarta Godfathers" by John Pilger, Guardian, 7 September, 1999:

"No help came, because the western democracies were secret partners in a crime as great and enduring as any this century; proportionally, not even Pol Pot matched Suharto's spree. Air Force One, carrying President Ford and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger, climbed out of Indonesian airspace the day the bloodbath began. "They came and gave Suharto the green light," Philip Liechty, the CIA desk officer in Jakarta at the time, told me. "The invasion was delayed two days so they could get the hell out. We were ordered to give the Indonesian military everything they wanted. I saw all the hard intelligence; the place was a free-fire zone. Women and children were herded into school buildings that were set alight - and all because we didn't want some little country being neutral or leftist at the United Nations." And all because western capital regarded Indonesia as a "prize"."

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Also thanks for pointing out Ford's connection to East Timor. The boring, clumbsy oaf certainly had his share of blood on his hands.

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Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975:
New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto

For release: 6 December 2001
 
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The National Security Archive at George Washington University today published on the World Wide Web previously secret archival documents confirming for the first time that the Indonesian government launched its bloody invasion of Portuguese East Timor in December 1975 with the concurrence of President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.  Since then, the Suharto regime that sponsored the invasion has disintegrated, and East Timor has achieved independence, but as many as 200,000 Timorese died during the twenty-five year occupation.

Twenty-six years ago today, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with Indonesian President Suharto during a brief stopover in Jakarta while they were flying back from Beijing.  Aware that Suharto had plans to invade East Timor, and that the invasion was legally problematic—in part because of Indonesia's use of U.S. military equipment that Congress had approved only for self-defense—Ford and Kissinger wanted to ensure that Suharto acted only after they had returned to U.S. territory.  The invasion took place on December 7, 1975, the day after their departure, resulting in the quarter-century long violent and bloody Indonesian occupation of East Timor.  Henry Kissinger has consistently denied that any substantive discussion of East Timor took place during the meeting with Suharto, but a newly declassified State Department telegram from December 1975 confirms that such a discussion took place and that Ford and Kissinger advised Suharto that “it is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly.” ...

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I think a legitimate argument can be made that America needed to move on at that point after three years of constant news about Watergate. Nixon resigned in disgrace, the king was dead!

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Originally posted by jeff house:
But if you distinguish between free elections and dictatorships, then Nixon committed terrible, unforgivable crimes.

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I agree that the Watergate situation was serious and certainly justified either impeachment or resignation. Of course, most Europeans don't, as I am sure you know.

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Originally posted by Malcolm French, APR:
Give me a pragmatic realist any day over a blinkered ideologue.

(And frankly, that pretty much holds regardless of the ideologue's ideology.)

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Right.

I would still like to see a poll done asking people whether they think that right wing nuts or left wing kooks are a greater danger in government.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
There was a vast amount of political corruption and wrong-doing before Watergate, much of which was ten times worse. What was unique about Watergate was that for the first time, people were charged and there were consequences. Nixon remains the only Presidentt ever forced from office.

Some would argue that the whole Watergate expereince ushered in a "gotcha" mentality in the US whereby Clinton was almost removed from office over the Monica Lewinsky caper etc...

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Some would argue that the whole Watergate expereince ushered in a "gotcha" mentality in the US whereby Clinton was almost removed from office over the Monica Lewinsky caper

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Yes, "some" would argue that. However, in the Nixon case, the crimes which were committed were directed at the basic democratic struc tures of the United States.

Breaking into the NATIONAL OFFICES of the only opposition party, and then paying off the perpetrators to insure they did not name their paymasters, is a dagger pointed at fair elections.

It is a monstrous crime.

If Nixon had a Veep who was not forced to resign due to his own criminal acts not associated with Watergate then we would never have had Veep Ford let alone President Ford.

It is interesting to note that Ted Kennedy condemmed the pardon of Nixon when it happened then decades later on the occasion of Ford being awarded the Profile in Courage Award stated that Ford did the right thing.

As far as the blood on his hands argument goes.
All US Presidents have blood on their hands. Repub or Dem all have committed sins and crimes that they should be tried for.

Some murdered those in the USofA, some murdered those outside of the USofA.

Some made deals with dictators, some appointed dictators.

But to try to say that Ford was good or bad is laughable.

Ford was as bad as every President at least since Truman.

Dems like to point out that repubs like Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush1 and Bush 2 are the devil re-incarnated.

Repubs like to point out that Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton are the devil re-incarnated.

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Not only did Nixon obstruct an investigation by instructing the CIA to tell the FBI to back off, and there is some evidence that he knew about, and maybe even approved, the break-in itself, but he authorized the payment of hush money to witnesses. Those were crimes by a president without precedent. Like you, Nixon defenders always argued that his only crime was in getting caught. That is simply not true.

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I'm glad Nixon was caught and I'm glad he was forced to resign. But I don't delude myself into thinking that he was the first or the last US president do do anything so corrupt. I don't doubt that a hard-assed bastard like LBJ probably did the same or even worse. We know he won his first election to the Senate by stuffing ballot boxes. Its too bad he wasn't caught as well.

What Reagan did in the Iran-Contra scandal was also dreadful. But at least that was revealed and there were political consequences and people went to jail.

There have been many vote-buying scandals in the US. The proper response is to treat each as the crime it is, rather than relativizing it by reference to earlier, unprosecuted crimes. The latter route will never raise the bar on public behaviour, and might lower it.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
At least in the US SOME of these scandals come to light and there are consequences.

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Canadian voters have a sorry tradition of forgiving governments even when they know there has been corruption. In BC, the old SC Govt of WAC Bennett was reelected in 1960 even after their Min of Forests went to jail for taking bribes, an investigation that the Att-Gen made go quite slowly so as not to upset the voters mood in the previous election in 1956.

Recently, at the national level, we had the Sponsorship Scandal, and yet the Liberals were reelected, albeit with a minority, in 2004. They did finally loose in 2006, but held 100 seats and 30% of the vote, and are now back on top of the polls. It wasn't a vigilant press that uncovered the Sponsorship scandal. It was an accountant, the Auditor General. The reponse of many Liberal supporters during the 2004 election was "what does Sheila Fraser think she's doing" by releasing a report that could influence the outcome of the election.

As for last year's revelation by the RCMP that they were looking into the Soott Brison email thing (what is the latest on that, does anyone know?), the Liberals have been furious. They were previously big promoters of the Force, especially during the Brian Mulroney and Glen Clark investigations. Now they want the Mounties punished, and you could see this in the way Liberal MP Mark Holland asked Zacardelli directly about when he perjured himself.

[ 01 January 2007: Message edited by: DavidMR ]

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It wasn't a vigilant press that uncovered the Sponsorship scandal. It was an accountant, the Auditor General.

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Originally posted by miles:
Dems like to point out that repubs like Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush1 and Bush 2 are the devil re-incarnated.

Repubs like to point out that Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton are the devil re-incarnated.

Both are correct every US President is equally guilty with blood on their hands.

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Often we see an ad here on Babble for President Jimmy Carter's book on Palestine.

The Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is currently offering people a chance to sign online a condolence book on Ford's passing.

President Gerald R. Ford: 1913 - 2006

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

I wonder how many authoritarian regimes even have "auditor generals" that have the power to uncover stuff like this?

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What ever do you mean? We have one here in BC!

It's true Premier Campbell and his government have taken steps to limit the provincial Auditor General's effectiveness, by limiting the funds to his office and others, but they would never be so brazen as to close down the office entirely. It's more efficient really just to have a large "communications" group, about 150 to 200 people all paid from the public purse, manipulating the press gallery, along with the other influences that flow from friendly owners of news media companies and the huge indirect pressure that bears down on everyone who makes a living in the media and that comes not from owners but advertisers. These businesses who advertise, rather than the temporary press baron of the moment (Black gone, Asper arrives), are the real paymasters of every reporter, every TV anchor, every photographer and press machine operator who wants to keep on making a living.

In fact, here in BC it would be interesting to find out how businesses and industries like forestry and mining that don't do any real amount of consumer advertising are able to keep the media in line with their needs. I am guessing that wining and dining of editors and reporters is crucial.

[ 01 January 2007: Message edited by: DavidMR ]

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:
He set the policy which allows attrocities such as Iraq. He set the Afghanistan policy which gave rise to the Taliban, Osama, 9/11, ...

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You've kind of lost me here. Carter did establish a kind of Central Command or something that would be the umbella structure for US forces in the Arabian peninsula and vacinity. But a structure is one thing, particular policy decisions twenty years later are another.

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Originally posted by DavidMR:

I would still like to see a poll done asking people whether they think that right wing nuts or left wing kooks are a greater danger in government.

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Originally posted by jeff house:

Yes, "some" would argue that. However, in the Nixon case, the crimes which were committed were directed at the basic democratic struc tures of the United States.

Breaking into the NATIONAL OFFICES of the only opposition party, and then paying off the perpetrators to insure they did not name their paymasters, is a dagger pointed at fair elections.

It is a monstrous crime.

Having an affair and lying about it is not in any way a political crime. Of course, the reactionary ideologues DID play "gotcha" with Clinton. But that doesn't exonerate or lessen Nixon's guilt as a conspirator against democratic government.

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Your distinction is entirely correct. But the point about the "gotcha" mentality in US politics and the US media is precisely that they don't make a reasonable distinction between "gotcha gettin' a bj from an intern" and "gotcha breakin' into the other party's headquarters."

...who better to put the stake in Gerald Ford's wisdom than one of his old lackeys. Ron Nessen the TV hack turned PR flack who took the Tony Snow role for Ford after his first choice resigned (after only one month) in disgust at Ford's pardon of Nixon. ...

Ron Nessen apparently had no compunction in defending Ford.

Until yesterday that is.

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Asked by Howard Kurtz on CNN's "Reliable Sources" about the careful deliberations of his former boss - and his decision to speak his conscience (albeit with a request to have it 'tape-delayed" till after his death) - Nessen spoke with simplicity. First of all he condemned the Washington Post for its timing on running the story. ...

But Ron saved his best for last:

"My one other issue with publishing that... when Ford talked to Woodward, he was 91 years old, or 92 years old. My mother is 95. You know, I'm not sure I'd like to see some of her quotes published on the front page of "The Post" because I don't think she has the same mental acuteness she had when she was younger."

Nice. Condemn your ex-boss AND your mother as senile. That's classy.

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Originally posted by Papal Bull:
Well, the Guardian shows that at least his ghost is a Casper like haunter

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1979662,00.html?gusrc=ticker-103704

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