R. I. P. Gerald Ford [Archive] - Horse Racing Forum - PaceAdvantage.Com

Tom

12-27-2006, 07:54 PM

The last of the centrists?
He denied us the satisfaction of frying Tricky Dicky's ass.
To his credit, he did in in September, before the elections ( which was another death knell for republicans) because he honestly believed his job was to heal the country, not play politics. I can't fault him for honoring his beliefs, even if I thought a pardon was 100% the wrong thing to do.
He bridged the presidential gap between dumb and dumber - two of the worst excuses for presidents ever.
His Supreme Court appointee is still serving, screwing up the country.
Even though he never won an election for the office, or even VP, he still stands heads above anyone who has run or won in the last two decades.
Mr Mediocrity, perhpas, but we sure could use another like him right about now, expecially considering what is out there prowling the cacuses today. :eek:

JPinMaryland

12-27-2006, 11:42 PM

He's a pretty neat guy if you study his career. I dont know what his honest beliefs were about the pardon, it's hard to say what was going on. Maybe they were just too afraid of what they might find?

I was listening to all this stuff about him today on radio and the thing about the pardon is...How can you pardon someone before you know what they did wrong? I mean you can only pardon someone for a crime and there can only be a crime if there's a trial and a guilty verdict. It seems to me quite a stretch to say that "Nixon is pardoned for everything he may have done."

it might be one thing to say I will pardon Nixon, but why not first try him in court and then find out what he did? WOnder why no one ever challenged this on the grounds that until theres a trial there can be no pardon..

The other thing is, if he doesnt pardon Nixon he probably wins that election. Carter was fading fast in the last few weeks of that one. I know myself I started to have real doubts about this guy after being real impressed at some pt. and I guess that was the feeling of a lot of people, in the middle because they were jumping ship real fast in Nov. The people of Texas some how didnt get the message, IL (a bell weather state of sorts) went narrowly Ford, but more rightist TX stayed Carter.

You wonder in the modern era with strategists more scientific polls and better information turnaround whether they would have managed that part of the campaign better and hit TX more.

THe other gaffe was the famous 'people of Poland dont consider themselves under Soviet domination."

I remember no one could agree on what Ford was trying to say. I thought he was just saying that just cause there's an Iron Curtain drawn on a map doesnt mean the people inside consider themsleves part of this monolith.

But my buddy would insist that Ford really thought Poland wasnt behind the Iron curtain then when he realized his mistake he just stuck to the same position w/o admitting he was wrong.

They played a clip from Ford interview in 2003 or whatever and he tried to explain it and he said that he should have used a sentence or two to try to explain it. Trouble is I still didnt get what he was trying to say, 30 years later.