The Passing of President Ford - An Opportunity for Grace the Left and the Media Have Forsaken
By Marion Edwyn Harrison (01/11/07)
The New Year began in an unprecedented fashion - honor to a departed President of the United States. Of course, it was honor well deserved. President Gerald R. Ford was a gentleman of character. He gave up a safe House of Representatives seat and the Republican Leadership of the House (and ultimately probably the Speakership) to risk becoming the first Vice President of the United States elected by other than the Electoral College. He did so further to serve our country, our national ethics somewhat damaged by the necessary resignation of Vice President Spiro T. (Ted) Agnew, revealed to be a common crook.
Not long after Mr. Ford took office as Vice President the disclosure of more trouble erupted. Soon thereafter President Richard Milhous Nixon resigned; Vice President Ford, abruptly and unexpectedly, Constitutionally was elevated to the Presidency.
Contemporaneously or since few politicians and fewer historians seriously have criticized the Ford Presidency. He was handicapped by the absence of a strong popular vote, or any popular vote, for his ascendancy to the Presidency. With time in office beyond less than 1,000 calendar days, there were issues he could have addressed.
Liberals and the media led an attack upon one Ford act and one only - his pardon of former President Nixon. Almost every objective analyst in the years since, and some contemporaneously, have agreed that in the interest of our Nation he had no alternative. Further, then as now, many serious and objective lawyers have questioned whether the resigned President could have been indicted and convicted of any crime. Surely nobody beyond inveterate Nixon haters and militant leftists believed then or have believed since that a criminal trial of former President Nixon would be in the best interest of the United States.
Be that as it may, liberals, many not so liberal and the media incessantly condemned President Ford for having granted a pardon. Without an iota of evidence, they repetitiously screamed “deal” and worse characterizations. An uninspiring Governor of Georgia got elected President, defeating President Ford, capitalizing upon the screams and smears launched against President Ford in light of the pardon.
One heard and read many tributes, some from liberals and the media, upon the occasion of the death of the late President Ford. One heard or read few, if any, profuse and abject apologies for the denunciations and smears of President Ford arising from the pardon - neither in connection with his death nor in the intervening years.
Those who so wantonly denounced President Ford for granting a pardon, which objective people at the time, and almost literally every serious analyst now, agree was in the best interest of the United States of America, should have had not less than the minimal grace to have apologized and confessed error. They could have done so, publicly and conspicuously, over the years, or finally, upon President Ford’s death.
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation.
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