Gerald Ford has passed away. It is unfortunate that my immediate thought upon seeing the “breaking news” online at 4:43AM is that of the Saturday Night Live skit of the early nineties, in which Tom Brokaw, as portrayed by Dana Carvey, pre-tapes news accouncements before going on vacation. The big laugh of the skit is Brokaw going through many variations of how Gerald Ford has died.
Perhaps because I have only seen him as an elder former president, I think of Ford as honorable and decent. I have the television on now, and I suspect I will learn much more about Ford in the coming hours and days.
I have a similar impression, although he did make some personnel decisions with eventually disastrous ramifications–Don Rumsfeld was his Secretary of Defense, and Dick Cheney was his WH Chief of Staff. It’s pretty unlikely either of them would have held the high positions they do today without Ford having chosen them for those roles.
Technically true, but I prefer to blame Teresa LaPore and her butterfly ballot for all of the evil that Dick and Rummy unleashed upon the world.
For whatever it’s worth, Ford came down pretty hard on Cheney and Rumsfeld (and Bush) with regard to the Iraq War in a 2004 interview that will be released tomorrow.