President Gerald Ford has died

[sracer]

Originally Posted by classicman2

The greatest service he performed for the country was the thing that he received the most criticism for - the pardoning of Richard Nixon.

Maybe if Ford waited until Nixon was charged with something specifically, he may not have received so much criticism. At the time, there was speculation that Nixon's quick pardon was planned from the very beginning (selection of Ford after Agnew's resignation)...especially considering the accelerated rate that Nixon's presidency was imploding at.

We will never know if Nixon's pardon was the right thing for the nation, but I can't help but think that a pre-charged/pre-conviction pardon short-circuits justice.

[WCChiCubsFan]

Ford was an affable man but let’s not let death sugar coat his legacy as President. His pardon of Nixon was one of the worst decisions ever by a US President. Instead of “healing” the country it solidified forever the cynical notion that some people are above the law. It would have been far better for the country if Ford had allowed the justice system to complete its’ process in regards to Nixon.

[classicman2]

Do you believe that the deals Clinton made with the prosecutor short circuited justice?

[NCMojo]

Originally Posted by classicman2

Do you believe that the deals Clinton made with the prosecutor short circuited justice?

Do you believe that the justification for Clinton's impeachment hearings was the equal of Nixon's?

I think the agreement Bill Clinton worked out through the legal system was pretty appropriate for a very weak perjury case. The evidence against Richard Nixon was far more damning, and the charges were much more serious.

[NCMojo]

You know, both in this thread, and in the thread about Saddam's execution, we bandy about the term "justice" quite a bit without discussing its real meaning.

What is it we're exactly referring to when we talk about "justice"?

[mikehunt]

Originally Posted by BrentLumkin

Is it bad that a part of me is laughing because of SNL? Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford and then, of course, the "Tom Brokaw Pre-Tapes":



"Tragedy today, as former President Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves. He was delicious."

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/96/96dbrokaw.phtml

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...458144460734&q

It was the second thing that I thought of when hearing this news, I'm sorry.

I've been doing the brokaw voice all day

[rennervision]

Originally Posted by BrentLumkin

Is it bad that a part of me is laughing because of SNL? Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford and then, of course, the "Tom Brokaw Pre-Tapes".

I'm not one to typically make jokes about people dying, but when I heard the news I said, "Gerald Ford dead today. He was delicious!" Man, that's awful.

And then I read this quote from CNN...

Ford, 93, "died peacefully" Tuesday evening at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, his widow, Betty Ford said in a statement. An official cause of death was not announced.

[Canadian Bacon]

Do I really look like Gerald Ford?

[dick_grayson]

[Red Dog]

He may have stumbled a lot, but he was the most athletic man to serve as President.

I always liked Bob Hope's joke about his golf game - "Ford could have played major league baseball - because he could hit the ball to all fields."

[VinVega]

Rest in Peace Prez. Ford.

[classicman2]

Many ex-presidents, upon leaving office, devoted a considerable portion of their time to public service.

Ford devoted all his time, upon leaving office, to making money.

I'm not being critical - just being factual.

[Duran]

Originally Posted by classicman2

Ford devoted all his time, upon leaving office, to making money.

I personally can't think of anything more American than that.

[Red Dog]

Originally Posted by Duran

I personally can't think of anything more American than that.

That's typical of many government employees I've known.

[classicman2]

Another thing that should endear him to Red Dog - he supported the ERA.

[Red Dog]

I'm indifferent about the ERA. I just found it redundant. At least the powers that be went the amendment route with that legislation as opposed to what they usually do which is ignoring the Constitution.

[classicman2]

One position that Ford had was one that I especially agree with. He was opposed to the Reaganite type tax cuts for the wealthy - like the one that Bush gave.

Have you noticed the interviews that Ford gave that are now surfacing? One was nearly 30 years old. The interviewer had to agree not to make public the interview until after Ford's death. The interview he had with Bob Woodward a couple of years ago was particulary 'interesting.' He expressed his opposition to the War in Iraq.

[kvrdave]

I just heard those. Interesting.

[kvrdave]

Hmmm, seems there is some confusion on what he really thought...
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/sto...p-407239c.html

"Saddam Hussein was an evil person and there was justification to get rid of him," he observed, "but we shouldn't have put the basis on weapons of mass destruction. That was a bad mistake. Where does [Bush] get his advice?"

[JasonF]

Dave -- you'requoting from a different intevew th the Woodward one that everyone's been talking about. In the Woodwad interview, he says something simlatr about the justification being a mistake, but he also says in no uncertain terms that the war itself was a mistake:

Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 28, 2006; Page A01

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.

"Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people," Ford said, referring to Bush's assertion that the United States has a "duty to free people." But the former president said he was skeptical "whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what's in our national interest." He added: "And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."

The Ford interview -- and a subsequent lengthy conversation in 2005 -- took place for a future book project, though he said his comments could be published at any time after his death. In the sessions, Ford fondly recalled his close working relationship with key Bush advisers Cheney and Rumsfeld while expressing concern about the policies they pursued in more recent years.

"He was an excellent chief of staff. First class," Ford said. "But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious" as vice president. He said he agreed with former secretary of state Colin L. Powell's assertion that Cheney developed a "fever" about the threat of terrorism and Iraq. "I think that's probably true."

Describing his own preferred policy toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Ford said he would not have gone to war, based on the publicly available information at the time, and would have worked harder to find an alternative. "I don't think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly," he said, "I don't think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer."

Ford had faced his own military crisis -- not a war he started like Bush, but one he had to figure out how to end. In many ways those decisions framed his short presidency -- in the difficult calculations about how to pull out of Vietnam and the challenging players who shaped policy on the war. Most challenging of all, as Ford recalled, was Henry A. Kissinger, who was both secretary of state and national security adviser and had what Ford said was "the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."

"I think he was a super secretary of state," Ford said, "but Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend."

In 1975, Ford decided to relieve Kissinger of his national security title. "Why Nixon gave Henry both secretary of state and head of the NSC, I never understood," Ford said. "Except he was a great supporter of Kissinger. Period." But Ford viewed Kissinger's dual roles as a conflict of interest that weakened the administration's ability to fully air policy debates. "They were supposed to check on one another."

That same year, Ford also decided to fire Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger and replace him with Rumsfeld, who was then Ford's White House chief of staff. Ford recalled that he then used that decision to go to Kissinger and say, "I'm making a change at the secretary of defense, and I expect you to be a team player and work with me on this" by giving up the post of security adviser.

Kissinger was not happy. "Mr. President, the press will misunderstand this," Ford recalled Kissinger telling him. "They'll write that I'm being demoted by taking away half of my job." But Ford made the changes, elevating the deputy national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, to take Kissinger's White House post.

Throughout this maneuvering, Ford said, he kept his White House chief of staff in the dark. "I didn't consult with Rumsfeld. And knowing Don, he probably resented the fact that I didn't get his advice, which I didn't," Ford said. "I made the decision on my own."

Kissinger remained a challenge for Ford. He regularly threatened to resign, the former president recalled. "Over the weekend, any one of 50 weekends, the press would be all over him, giving him unshirted hell. Monday morning he would come in and say, 'I'm offering my resignation.' Just between Henry and me. And I would literally hold his hand. 'Now, Henry, you've got the nation's future in your hands and you can't leave us now.' Henry publicly was a gruff, hard-nosed, German-born diplomat, but he had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."

Ford added, "Any criticism in the press drove him crazy." Kissinger would come in and say: "I've got to resign. I can't stand this kind of unfair criticism." Such threats were routine, Ford said. "I often thought, maybe I should say: 'Okay, Henry. Goodbye,' " Ford said, laughing. "But I never got around to that."

At one point, Ford recalled Kissinger, his chief Vietnam policymaker, as "coy." Then he added, Kissinger is a "wonderful person. Dear friend. First-class secretary of state. But Henry always protected his own flanks."

Ford was also critical of his own actions during the interviews. He recalled, for example, his unsuccessful 1976 campaign to remain in office, when he was under enormous pressure to dump Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller from the Republican ticket. Some polls at the time showed that up to 25 percent of Republicans, especially those from the South, would not vote for Ford if Rockefeller, a New Yorker from the liberal wing of the Republican Party, was on the ticket.

When Rockefeller offered to be dropped from the ticket, Ford took him up on it. But he later regretted it. The decision to dump the loyal Rockefeller, he said, was "an act of cowardice on my part."

In the end, though, it was Vietnam and the legacy of the retreat he presided over that troubled Ford. After Saigon fell in 1975 and the United States evacuated from Vietnam, Ford was often labeled the only American president to lose a war. The label always rankled.

"Well," he said, "I was mad as hell, to be honest with you, but I never publicly admitted it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122701558.html

[classicman2]

Originally Posted by Vandelay_Inds

WMD was a perfect rationale - if it had been true. An interesting question for historians will be who knew what about WMD before the war. He should have made human rights an accompanying priority from the beginning though.

The more books I read on the subject, the more I'm convinced Bush knew there weren't any WMDs.

[kvrdave]

Originally Posted by JasonF

Dave -- you'requoting from a different intevew th the Woodward one that everyone's been talking about. In the Woodwad interview, he says something simlatr about the justification being a mistake, but he also says in no uncertain terms that the war itself was a mistake:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122701558.html

I realize that. Just thought it was an interesting aside.

[JasonF]

Originally Posted by kvrdave

I realize that. Just thought it was an interesting aside.

OK. I read your post ("Hmmm, seems there is some confusion on what he really thought...") as suggesting that those who are characterizing Ford as being critical of the war were misquoting him, and he was really just critical of the justification. I think it's clear that he was critical of boh the war and the justification (of course, at this point, who isn't critical of the justification?)

[JasonF]

Originally Posted by Vandelay_Inds

But if he knew there were no WMDs, why did he set himself up for the fiasco that followed when none were found?

Because "I have a half-assed plan to spread democracy in the Middle East!" wouldn't have garnered enough support to allow him to invade. "OMG!!! Saddam has WMDs and he's going to give them to Osama and there's going to be a smoking gun and it's going to be a MUSHROOM CLOUD!!!!" did.

Keep in mind that while there's a fiasco, and while Bush is unpopular, he still got what he wanted -- U.S. boots on the ground in Baghdad. Sure, most of us are pissed at him, but so what? It's too late now to stop him from invading.

[classicman2]

Bush, unfortunately, bought the argument promulgated by the neo-cons about spreading democracy in the region.

Iraq became a 'laboratory' for their ideas. If we ever listen to these folks again, we deserve just what we get.