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Sander Bellman: The Presidency and Person of Gerald Ford
This entry was posted on 1/1/2007 10:23 AM and is filed under Gerald Ford.
I have hesitated to post this because I do not want to speak ill of the dead. However, with the numerous hagiographies that have been written about former President Ford these past few days, I felt I needed to write about my emotions and thoughts after Watergate, during that most difficult time in our nation's history, as well as about the recent revelations from Bob Woodward.
I was in my early thirties during Watergate. I believe no other events in my lifetime have had more negative impact on the psyche of our nation than did the crimes of Richard Nixon.
Up until Nixon's administration, most Americans had this idea that although parties and politicians took pot shots at each other, we thought, naively, that we could essentially trust our government to tell us the truth. (At that time, we still hadn't come to the full realization that we went into Vietnam with a lie - the Gulf of Tonkin affair under Lyndon Johnson.)
However, as the scandal of Watergate unfolded, our country began its long nightmare; resulting in a total distrust of our government and its leaders. We had a criminal in the White House! Who could have ever believed that could happen?
So after the investigations, the hearings, and the impassioned testimony of patriots like Woodward and Bernstein, Barbara Jordan, Sam Irvin, John Dean, and others, the corrupt Nixon administration was brought to its knees. The night Nixon announced his resignation, was, we all thought, the end of a long national nightmare. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The crisis was over and we had weathered the storm. Our Constitution worked. No man was above the law. Not even our President.
So now we had Gerald Ford, an apparently honest and decent man who seemed to be above he fray. Someone who could bring about renewed trust in our government’s leaders.
Then the news came - Ford had pardoned Nixon for all past and future crimes related to Watergate. I felt as though I had been sucker-punched. It was a gut wrenching physical reaction. I could hardly catch my breath. I wasn't alone in that reaction. Instead of the long nightmare ending, we were faced with the fact that it was still politics as usual and we would never again be able to trust our leaders to do the right thing. It was the end of an age of innocence.
And so Ford ended his unspectacular Presidency in only two short years. Contrary to the hagiographies now being written, the country was not healed; instead, it was terribly wounded. And that wound has not healed to this day.
Now we learn, that back in 2004, Ford had told Bob Woodward that he was opposed to the Iraq war and occupation. Why, in God's name, did he want Woodard to keep that secret until after his death? Ford might have been able to make a difference! Perhaps Bush's cabal could have had second thoughts about continuing to "stay the course." (I personally doubt that would have happened.) It might have given Americans though, both Democrats and Republicans, pause to think that perhaps John Kerry and John Edwards had the right idea after all. Perhaps Kerry could have won and gotten us out of the Iraq quagmire by the middle of 2005, as he'd promised.
By keeping his opinions secret, Gerald Ford may have become complicit in the ongoing criminality of the Iraq occupation. Perhaps if he had told the truth to power and to the American people then, we wouldn't be mourning today the 3000th American soldier killed in Iraq. If he had told the truth in 2004, he might have made his long overdue amends for his pardoning of Nixon.
Sorry, while I think that while Gerald Ford was, in his heart, a good person and he certainly deserves to be mourned, he was not a brave person. He does not deserve the accolades of history.
Sander Bellman, 2006 ECDA Board Chair
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