What's To Miss?

Gerald Ford is dead.

Q: How can you tell?

The 38th president of the United States was Richard Nixon's last joke on the nation he distrusted and on the office he abused.

A life-long politician with little leadership ability, Gerald Ford was a compromise choice in a time when a criminal and paranoid occupied the White House, when the socialists and communists in our own country and government were plotting the downfall of our military in Viet Nam, and when the Soviets had their coldest grip on our national throats.

Gerald Ford is what compromise buys.

He was never intended to be a vice president. Yet, when Spiro T. Agnew had to leave the office under indictment for taking bribes as the Governor of Maryland, Richard Nixon and the country-club GOP needed a "nothing" to fill the absence.

When it became clear that Richard Nixon would stand trial for his orchestration and manipulation of the break-in at the Democratic campaign headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, and for his actions afterward in his efforts to quash the investigation through brutal thuggery, there was Gerald Ford, ready to occupy the position of the most powerful politician in the world.

Where there is nothing, a vacuum exists. What, then, can describe when something moves into the vacuum and measures less than nothing? Gerald Ford, 38th president of the United States.

Besides pardoning Richard M. Nixon, no one can name anything that Gerald Ford did. Compassion is one thing. Cheating justice is another. What Richard Nixon did to the office of the President of the United States has never been corrected. His crimes were never paid. His actions lay, like a pall, over every president since him. Justice delayed is justice denied. Justice denied is lawlessness.

A compromise died this week. And in the face of all our challenges, this nation honors a mediocre man whose only accomplishment was to be more useful in his absence than ever he was by his presence.

Many are amazed that a politician can go through an entire life without offending anyone. When the salt loses its saltiness, what good is it? When given the opportunity for greatness, Gerald Ford chose blandness. When asked to do the hard things, Gerald Ford demurred to consensus. When challenged in the darkest of times, Gerald Ford doused his lamp.

Those challenges extant in our nation when Gerald Ford became president: he left them untouched for the next leader. Against those problems with our economy: he used his blandness to no effect. Protesters in the streets when Gerald Ford became president were assimilated into politics and academia because there was no leadership to ferret out the poisons and toxins in our national discourse. All the ills and scissions and cancers in our society were still there when Gerald Ford left office. He touched nothing.

And that is why the socialist and US-hating press is praising Gerald Ford this week. They would love to see more politicians like him: weak, affable, non-confrontational. Nothing. As Islamo-fascists gather on our national horizon, as government grows to bloated and diseased proportions and the socialists and tyrants in our own government plot the further subjugation of the wealth-producers in the nation, nothing would please the press and our enemies more than to lead another Gerald Ford around by the nose.

Let's hope we never see another Gerald Ford in office again. Farewell, Gerald Ford.

I hope.

~ Dexter