I have been reading the obits, both left and right. I have decided they miss the point.
Gerald Ford did have enduring appeal, for this reason. As Bill Clinton was sometimes called the "first black President," Gerald Ford was the "first suburban President."
Ford lived his life in the mold of Robert Young on "Father Knows Best." He was the ultimate suburban dad from the 1950s. He made his own English muffins, staying in his own suburban house for weeks after his inauguration, giving the Nixon people time to leave and fumigate the place before moving in.
I always liked that about him. Whatever else you might say about him, he was a "good Dad." Even while he was working hard as House Minority Leader, he was apparently present in his kids’ lives. And so, as President, they honored him by not screwing up. They are four decent, honorable people.
Consider the Fords in contrast to some of our other first children. The
Nixon girls and the Johnson girls, squinting in the harsh glare of the
footlights, ignorant of their father’s reality. Or even Margaret
Truman, who let herself be used by the publicity machine before finally
transforming herself into a fine writer of mysteries. (Susan Ford, shown at left, was still living at home when her dad moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.)
As to the Reagan kids and the Bush kids, let’s not even go there. (Especially the Bush kids.)
You can see a lot about a politician by the way his kids turned out.
I’d stack the Fords up with any of ’em. They are not screwed-up in any
way, they’re as stolid, grounded and American as their parents.
It’s also important to remember how we felt about Washington in 1974,
that it was a cesspool were decency had no place. And how he ran his
own White House, in a collegial and family manner.
In retrospect you can disagree on his policies (I do) and especially
his pardon of Nixon in the name of friendship (I do again). But he was
a good and decent man, at a time when that was enough, when that was
what we needed.
That was all he promised to be, and that was all he was. But transitional figures, too, can be important. Would that we had one now.
