Forgotten History - Gerald Ford

I don’t like being cynical, not for the shiny New Year. Yet, the coverage of Ford’s passing has me watching Cops instead. And I’m a history buff.

The thing is, I liked Ford. It bothers me that Robert Dallek neglects Ford on his Portable Professor series. I’m annoyed that Nixon’s history has been rewritten, but Ford gets short-shrift. The Republican media doesn’t want claim a man who had to clean up after one of their own.

Commentators will repeat the mantra that “Ford healed the country,” but he didn’t. Not in that way. Pardoning Richard Nixon taught a generation that a US President could lie and get away with it. All Nixon had to do is be patient and history would be redrafted in due time.

Forgotten history. The most challenging aspect of writing historical dramas is getting beyond the “I know it already” attitude of the audience. The history taught in high school has been politicized and spun. The news you see on television is the same. What makes you think you know anything?

Ford’s death is a reminder that history is constantly being reframed, then forgotten. So much coverage on Watergate, so little details about the “healing.” Ford did the best he could with what he was given, and squandered less than his predecessors. But all we hear about is the pardon, and how he lost the election to Carter. As if it was his problem that we couldn’t elect him.

Comments

[Joshua]

Amen to that.

Ford may have been a nice man, but he didn't make a wise choice to put a friend ahead of the ethics of office.

In the end, he will be known as the husband of Betty Ford, a far more courageous public person.