Commentary from Vince Carocci

FORD FUNERAL A REMINDER OF NATION’S GOOD FORTUNE

January 2007

By VINCENT P. CAROCCI

Through the decade, in times of turmoil or turbulence, history has been good in the main to the United States of America. “History,” former President George H.W. Bush observed in the first week of the New Year at funeral services for his predecessor twice removed…”History has a way of meshing man and moment.” Well put!

Gerald R. Ford, the 38^th president of the United States and the man former President Bush was eulogizing, certainly represented a memorable “meshing” of the man and the moment. And, as the historical record has so precisely and repeatedly documented, this was not the first time in the nation’s existence that this had happened.

Go back to the very beginning. The presidencies of Washington and Jefferson in the country’s formative years certainly have withstood the eternal test of time. So, too, did the tenure of Abraham Lincoln a century and a half ago when the nation was divided, North against South. Why Washington instead of John Adams? Or Jefferson instead of Alexander Hamilton? Or Lincoln instead of, say, Stephen Douglas? Who really knows?

(AP Photo)

Call it provident…call it divine intervention…or call it simply good fortune. For whatever reason, in whatever way, the political processes established by the country’s founding fathers for this newly born democratic society centuries ago, for all its convulsions and contentions, more often than not, have produced the right leader to lead the country at the right time.

There have been aberrations, to be sure. The tenures of James Buchanan or Calvin Coolidge or Warren G. Harding, to name just a few, are, fundamentally, nondescript. But their time in the Oval Office commanded nothing more and the country survived. It was, on historical reflection, when the times were troubled that the country responded…and responded well.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was there in the early 1930’s to galvanize the nation and lead it out of the dreadful depths of its economic depression. He still was at the helm—the last of our non-term-limited presidents--when the United States became engaged a decade later in a World War against the axis powers of Germany, Japan and, to a lesser degree, Italy, then under the boot of a tin-horn warrior named Benito Musolini.

With his health failing, Roosevelt scuttled his incumbent vice president, Henry Wallace, and selected that plainspoken man from Missouri, U.S. Senator Harry S. Truman, to be his second in command. It ultimately fell to Truman’s lot, in the wake of Roosevelt’s death, to make the final decision to drop two Atomic bombs on Japan to bring hostilities to an end.

Six years later, when the nation wearied of combat in Korea, the country turned to the leader of the Allied Command in World War II, Dwight David Eisenhower of Abilene Kansas—“I will go to Korea,” he pledged during his campaign for the presidency—to negotiate a truce and preside over almost a decade of relative domestic calm and stability.

When the tranquility of the Eisenhower era had run its course, and, in the words of the Democratic presidential nominee, it was time “to get the country moving again, ” John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts arrived on the presidential stage. The glamour of his wife, Jacqueline, and the youthful exuberance and energy of his Administration lifted the spirit of many Americans. But his finest moment came in staring down the Russians in the Cuban missile crisis months before his untimely death.

When an assassin’s bullet snuffed out his life and stunned a nation, a seasoned politician, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, was in place to pick up the Kennedy legislative mantle and pass much of what his more celebrated predecessor could not, including the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Were it not for the muck of Vietnam which overwhelmed him politically, there’s no telling where Lyndon Johnson’s ultimate rank in history would fall.

Richard Nixon, for all his insecurities and paranoia, did open a bridge to Communist China with a not-so-subtle nudge from his secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. But what will forever remain his most lasting political legacy was the good sense he had in selecting Ford as his vice president when Spiro Agnew was forced out of office. Why Ford as opposed to…say, Senator John Tower or Governor John Connelly or Texas? The most conventional wisdom had it that Nixon, increasingly under siege by the fallout from the Watergate break-in, believed Ford’s standing as the tenured and respected minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives would be sufficient to avert an impeachment vote by the full chamber if events came to that point.

Nixon’s rationale, if true, proved wrong. Ford’s presence may, in fact, have emboldened the Congress is its impeachment proceedings. That’s neither here nor there. In a historical context, once again, the country found itself with the right man (Ford) in the right place (the vice presidency) at the right time (impeachment crisis)--if even for the wrong reason. It was political columnist George Will who so eloquently captured the full magnitude of the moment when he wrote during the Ford funeral activities: “Gerald Ford was a political sedative for a nation with jangled nerves.”

History has not always been on the nation’s side, however. Nixon, forced from office in political disgrace, is modern Exhibit Number One. Jimmy Carter promised never to lie to the American people, but proved so ineffectual in the Oval Office that he was sent packing in four short years, his departure undoubtedly hastened by the fact that Americans were held hostage for approximately two years in the U.S. Embassy in Iran. William Jefferson Clinton’s personal misconduct with a White House intern his daughter’s age will haunt him for a lifetime and follow him as it should into the history books thereafter.

Which leads us to the current occupant of the White House. George W. Bush’s response in the immediate aftermath to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack only eight short months after taking his presidential oath was praised almost universally by friend and foe alike in this country and abroad. But now he has Irag to contend with, and Irag unquestionably will become his benchmark in history. The immediate prognosis is not good for Mr. Bush. He has, however, reason to take at least some heart. Harry Truman left office in 1953 a much-maligned incumbent. On reflection through the years, revisionists have reversed his fortunes to the point where he now ranks among the nation’s most admired chief executives. History came to his rescue. Depending on how events play out in the troubled Middle East over time, it may well do the same for Mr. Bush.

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