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Those who believe that a kindly Providence keeps a watchful eye on America's welfare can cite the fact of Gerald Ford. On Aug. 9, 1974, at a moment when the nation was putting aside an unhappy, tormented president, and was aching for serenity in high places, to the center of national life strode an abnormality -- a happy, normal man as president.
Watergate and a presidential resignation were only two of the nation's problems that August. The mid-'70s were years when everyday things could no longer be counted on -- inflation was undermining the currency as a store of value, and lines at gasoline pumps testified to the power of foreigners to get between Americans and their best friends, their automobiles. Ford was a political sedative for a nation with jangled nerves.
He was one of five presidents who never got elected to the office. (The others were John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson and Chester Arthur.) He was the only person to be president without receiving any popular or electoral votes for president or vice president. He was about as exotic as . . . well, as he was fond of saying, he was "a Ford, not a Lincoln."
-- George F. Will for The Washington Post
I did not intend to mark President Gerald Ford's death, but Mr. Will makes it easy.
xXx
Those who believe that a kindly Providence keeps a watchful eye on America's welfare can cite the fact of Gerald Ford. On Aug. 9, 1974, at a moment when the nation was putting aside an unhappy, tormented president, and was aching for serenity in high places, to the center of national life strode an abnormality -- a happy, normal man as president.
Watergate and a presidential resignation were only two of the nation's problems that August. The mid-'70s were years when everyday things could no longer be counted on -- inflation was undermining the currency as a store of value, and lines at gasoline pumps testified to the power of foreigners to get between Americans and their best friends, their automobiles. Ford was a political sedative for a nation with jangled nerves.
He was one of five presidents who never got elected to the office. (The others were John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson and Chester Arthur.) He was the only person to be president without receiving any popular or electoral votes for president or vice president. He was about as exotic as . . . well, as he was fond of saying, he was "a Ford, not a Lincoln."
-- George F. Will for The Washington Post
I did not intend to mark President Gerald Ford's death, but Mr. Will makes it easy.
