Gerald R. Ford, 1913-2006

He was not one of our greatest Presidents, but he most certainly was one of our greatest Americans.

He set the tone for bi-partisan political cooperation, now a sad memory after almost six years of non-existence by the current minority/soon to be majority congressional group. He served his nation, his family, and his God well.

I thought this little story at NRO, by Peter Robinson said it all about President Ford.


"I met Gerald Ford only once. As a speechwriter for then Vice President George H. W. Bush, I had drafted remarks for the vice president to use in dedicating the Betty Ford Center, and, when we reached Rancho Mirage, the vice president asked me to show the remarks to the former president.

When I knocked on his door, Gerald Ford said simply, “Come in!” Then greeted me with a smile and a handshake and had me take a chair next to his. Ford read my draft in silence, then nodded, smiled once again, and said he liked it. When I asked for his autograph, the former president spent a few moments looking around for a piece of paper — we were in conference room — then simply signed the draft itself. “Well done. Gerald R. Ford.”

An inconsequential meeting, but it provided a glimpse of Ford’s simplicity, modesty, and businesslike, genial decency.

In the bitterest moment since the Civil War, Ford applied those plain traits to the nation, on which they acted like a balm.

Occupying the White House for less than three years, he displayed neither FDR’s ability to enchant nor Reagan’s to inspire; he was, as himself once put it, “a Ford, not a Lincoln.” Yet all the same he proved a great American, and, as chief executive, providential: exactly the man we needed, exactly when we needed him.

Well done, Gerald R. Ford."


Indeed.