ninme

I’m quoting myself, but this, too, it fascinating.

Times Online - Obituary: Gerald Ford
July 14, 1913 - December 26, 2006
The 38th US President played key role in picking up the pieces in the wake Watergate

First of all, I didn’t notice a lot of mention of Keynesian economics in the American obits (hey, he’s just our ex-president), but here’s some stuff that might take you completely aback:

(Well, no, first there’s this:

His swearing-in as Vice-President caused satisfaction both on Wall Street and in US labour circles, as well as among blacks and Catholics.

I mean, what? Anyway…) …completely aback:

By the time Ford came to the presidency in August 1974 America was reeling from a series of blows to its sense of direction and identity in the world unprecedented, perhaps, since the Civil War. The conclusion of a “peace” in Vietnam in 1973 confronted the US public with a humiliating and costly military defeat and the spectre of a complete failure of foreign policy, one which at the same time cast a large question over the fundamental morality of American actions overseas. …

His popularity slumped steadily, reaching its nadir in March, 1975, when the governments of Cambodia and South Vietnam collapsed under the weight of North Vietnamese military pressure, deprived as they had been by Congressional action of the lavish flow of arms and aid on which they depended. In April that year it was his unpalatable task to address the nation on the occasion of the final conquest of Vietnam by the Communist North.

The interception and arrest in the South China Sea of an American merchantman, the Mayaqüez, by the new government in Cambodia offered him the chance of speedy, resolute, and dramatic action. The ship and cargo were recaptured and the crew speedily released by the bemused and shaken Cambodians. It was a very small triumph. But it seemed an answer to the widely expressed fears of America’s allies in Europe and dependant in Israel and elsewhere that American resolution could, after the collapse in South-East Asia, no longer be relied upon.

I thought it was “peace with honour” (I love the “-marks around “peace” up there) and a shining example of good-world-citizenship and multilateralism which we must strive to match even today.

It ends:

Gerald Ford, President of the United States, August 1974-1977, was born on July 14, 1913. He died on December 26, 2006, aged 93.

Update (12.28):

Honestly, I don’t know why I bothered taking US Government in high school, when I could have just read foreign newspapers.

The Times - Ford’s great legacy - Ronald Reagan

I take issue with this conventional wisdom. Ford was not an “accidental” president if that label implies his rise was random. Nor was his conduct in power the most important aspect of his time in the White House. The right word for him is “unwitting” — he benefited, unwittingly, from the death of one President Kennedy, and then, unwittingly, prevented another Kennedy presidency.

Who knew that the 25th Amendment was written because poor Speaker of the House John McCormack’s colleagues all thought he was such a dud?

Without that change, Ford, then the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, would never have become President. In October 1973, Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace when it was discovered that he had taken bribes while Governor of Maryland. Richard Nixon sought a replacement who would not split his own Republicans and yet was acceptable to the Democrats who controlled Congress. Ford was not an “accident”; he was the most plausible figure who fulfilled these political requirements. Less than a year later Nixon himself was history and Ford was elevated to the presidency. …

The true Ford effect was, once again, an unwitting one. By beating Reagan in the battle for his party’s nomination he saved Reagan from himself. It is very doubtful whether Reagan could have stopped Carter in 1976 — Ford as the incumbent President was the only Republican with any chance of winning — and if Reagan had lost against the Democrat peanut farmer that would have been the end of him.

What if, as he nearly did, Ford had defeated Carter? He would have faced a heavily Democratic Congress, a severe economic recession in 1979-80 and an ageing cabal in Moscow intent on sending troops into Afghanistan. He would have been ineligible for re-election in 1980 but, in these conditions, the Republican candidate would surely have been doomed at the polling stations. The odds are that the White House would have been captured by the most prominent Democrat in the land — Edward Kennedy.

The world we live in today might have been very different if that Kennedy, not Reagan, had occupied the Oval Office in the 1980s. He would not have followed policies that led to almost constant economic growth over the past 25 years nor taken on the Kremlin to the point where the Soviet Union imploded.

“What if” is an ultimately unanswerable question in history. Yet it is the real story of the Ford years.

Fascinating.