Gerald Ford, broadly condemned during his brief time in the White House for his decision to pardon Richard Nixon, was lauded on Wednesday for his efforts to heal a divided nation, with United States President George Bush leading tributes to the late president.
Ford (93) died at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, on Tuesday. He had been admitted to hospital four times over the past year, and in recent years was rarely seen in public although he did attend Ronald Reagan’s funeral in 2004.
Ford will also be accorded the honours of a presidential funeral, with a lying in state at the weekend in the Capitol Rotunda, allowing dignitaries to pay their last respects, before a service at the National Cathedral early in the new year. A private funeral is planned at Ford’s home town in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he will be buried.
On a day when flags flew at half-mast at the White House and all government buildings on the first of 30 days of mourning, and gun salutes were fired at half-hour intervals at some army installations from reveille to retreat, Ford was remembered as a force for reconciliation in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
”For a nation that needed healing and for an office that needed a calm and steady hand, Gerald Ford came along when we needed him most,” Bush said in a statement at dawn from his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The Vice-President, Dick Cheney, who served in the Ford administration as the White House chief-of-staff, praised the late president as his ”dear friend and mentor”, and said that Ford had helped America emerge from the traumatic months after Watergate.
”He assumed the nation’s highest office during the greatest constitutional crisis since the civil war,” Cheney said in a statement. ”When he left office, he had restored public trust in the presidency, and the nation once again looked to the future with confidence and faith.”
Other alumnae of the Ford administration, including the former Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld, who began his rise in Washington as a White House chief of staff, paid tributes.
There was also praise from Ford’s political foes. Jimmy Carter, who defeated Ford in the 1976 elections, called him ”one of the most admirable public servants and human beings I have ever known”. Bill Clinton called on all Americans to be grateful for Ford’s years in public service.
John Dingell, a longtime Democratic congressman from Ford’s home state of Michigan, also praised him. ”Jerry was a warm, gentle, friendly, pleasant courteous individual. He never used bad language, he loved his family.”
An unassuming midwesterner, Ford had never sought the presidency. He was chosen as Nixon’s vice-president in 1973, after Spiro Agnew stepped down amid corruption charges, and became president following Nixon’s resignation in the throes of the Watergate scandal. He was the only US leader never to have won election as president or vice-president.
His 29 months in the White House were a tumultuous time, embracing the aftermath of Watergate, the US’s retreat from Vietnam in April 1975, the Helsinki accords with the former Soviet Union and, at home, rising inflation and unemployment. In 1975, he faced two assassination attempts in 17 days.
In his first 30 days as president, he was astoundingly popular, with approval ratings of 70%. That changed at a stroke on September 8 1974 when Ford decided to grant an unconditional pardon to Nixon. Ford said he wanted to avoid the spectacle of a former president put on trial as a criminal. But, with several people already in prison for the break-in, the pardon was seen as a conspiracy.
Those suspicions grew when it emerged that Nixon’s chief-of-staff, General Al Haig, had suggested such a deal to Ford before Nixon’s resignation. But eventually Ford’s critics became convinced he was right to grant a pardon. – Guardian Unlimited Â