Reply #22: I don't feel the need to honor Ford's memory

[calzone]

I can't feel sympathy or the need to show restraint in criticism or tolerant respect to this man.
Here are some facts about Gerald Ford.

From various major encyclopedias:
"A month after becoming president, he startled the nation by granting Nixon an unconditional pardon for any offenses he may have committed against the United States. A storm of protest arose, amid cries that a deal had been struck. No one has made the allegation stick, although Ford and Nixon were in constant negotiations before and after Ford took the presidential oath. Ford, keenly sensitive to the lingering suspicions, has insisted that his sole aim was to help heal the wounds of the nation. With poor timing, he announced only a few days after the pardon his amnesty proposal for Vietnam draft resisters and evaders. Unlike Nixon, they would have to meet conditions.

The program did not offer automatic reentry into U.S. society—it did require two years of public service—it was unpopular with conservative groups and with the very men it was supposed to help. The amnesty program received applications from only 20 percent of eligible U.S. citizens and was discontinued after two years.

Unconditional amnesty, however, did not come about until the Jimmy Carter presidency

Ford's first press secretary and close friend Jerald Horst resigned his post in protest after the announcement of President Nixon's full pardon.

Nixon's chief of staff, Alexander Haig, offered a deal to Ford.

Bob Woodward, in his book, Shadow, recounts the Haig deal. Woodward recounts that Haig entered Ford's office on August 1, 1974 while Ford was still Vice President and Nixon had yet to resign. Haig told Ford that there were three pardon options: (1) Nixon could pardon himself and resign, (2) Nixon could pardon his aides involved in Watergate and then resign, or (3) Nixon could agree to leave in return for an agreement that the new president would pardon him. After listing these options, Haig handed Ford various papers; one of these papers included a discussion of the president's legal authority to pardon and another sheet was a draft pardon form that only needed Ford's signature and Nixon's name to make it legal. Woodward summarizes the setting between Haig and Ford as follows: "Even if Haig offered no direct words on his views, the message was almost certainly sent.
Ford had a tense relationship with the Democrat-controlled Congress, vetoing more than 50 bills

When New York City fell into dire financial straits, Ford was unmoved. A now-famous headline in the New York Daily News--ford to city: drop dead-- helped underscore his apparent insensitivity to the national significance of the city's plight. In the presidential campaign of 1976, he aroused sympathy but not much support. In the election, his loss to Jimmy Carter was widely interpreted as completing the fall of the Nixon administration, for he had retained as his own staff most of Nixon's appointees.

To deal with the economic recession, Ford proposed (1975) tax cuts, limited social spending (with continued high defense expenditure), and heavy taxation on imported oil. The Democratic Congress opposed many elements of the program.

Ford covers up CIA crimes
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd0828.html

http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/05/far04017.html

Ford's first chief of staff?
Donald Rumsfeld.
His second?
Dick Cheney.

I believe there was a corrupt bargain. I also believe in drawing a line at what I'll overlook in the interest of polite compassion. I don't celebrate Ford's death, but he had an opportunity to make the world a better place, and unlike his successor, he failed miserably...and showed poor character.
If he were a private citizen, I wouldn't bring up his shortcomings or transgressions at his funeral, but he wasn't, he was a leader of a great nation. I look at him the same way I'd look at a president that Dubya appointed just before he was being finally charged with crimes after a smoking gun emerged. A Dubya appointed republican loyalist president that one month later, out of the blue, gave a complete and unqualified PARDON to George W. Bush. Do you think Cindy Sheehan or the families of all the people killed in Iraq would refrain from criticism of that appointed president upon his demise? Do you think they would offer kind words and reconcilliatory sentiments? I don't.