Almost a week after the death of President Gerald R. Ford, the media frenzy surrounding his death continues and will likely accelerate over the next few days. An endless chorus of headlines, nationally, in Michigan, and in the local Grand Rapids corporate media, call on citizens to remember Ford for his “honesty” and how he “saved the nation” after the presidency of Richard Nixon. His funeral in Washington DC Saturday was widely covered and the local corporate media continues its own frenzy with front-page stories, calls for people to submit stories about their own memories of Gerald R. Ford, and updates on the numbers of people waiting in line to sign condolence books at the Gerald R. Ford Museum. As more media filters into Grand Rapids to cover Ford’s Michigan funeral and his burial, there has still yet to be any critical examination of Ford’s policies in the local media or in the national press. Even in the independent media, there has been relatively little substantive reporting on the death of Gerald R. Ford and his place in the history of the United States. However, there have been a handful of pieces that provide an illuminating counter to the sentimental–and often distorted–coverage of Ford as a presidential saint.
The daily news program Democracy Now was the first independent media outlet to provide a critical perspective of the legacy of Gerald R. Ford, publishing three stories on Wednesday examining various parts of his legacy. In an bluntly titled story, “President Gerald Ford Dies at 93; Supported Indonesian Invasion of East Timor that Killed 1/3 of Population,” Democracy Now discussed what was Ford’s worst act, his approval of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Ford explicitly authorized the invasion according to declassified documents and continued to supply Indonesia with weapons necessary for both the invasion and occupation of East Timor as well as Suharto’s dictatorship in Indonesia. Democracy Now also ran an interview looking at Ford’s pardoning of Nixon and the likelihood that Ford had a deal in which he agreed to pardon Nixon in exchange for taking over as President. Lastly, Democracy Now explored the roots of Bush administration members Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, both of whom served in Ford’s White House as well as Ford’s efforts to expand government secrecy and lessen oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Many of these issues were also address in a Media Mouse piece on Ford’s death titled “Sanitizing the Death of Ford, What the Media isn’t Telling Us.”
Foreign Policy in Focus published a piece titled, “Reasons not to like Ford” that expands on the legacy of Ford’s foreign policy. The author of the piece, Stephen Zunes, writes that “however decent and moral Ford may have been as a person, his foreign policy was anything but” and explains that “from Southeast Asia to Africa and Latin America, Ford made unsavory alliances and pursued unpopular policies that ignored international human rights standards.” In policies directly involving the United States in war, Ford spent billions of dollars propping up the dictatorship of General Nguyen Van Thieu in South Vietnam and directed an assault on Cambodia in response to the seizing by Cambodia of a United States merchant ship called the Mayaguez. In establishing questionable alliances, Zunes writes of Ford’s policy in East Timor, Africa, the Middle East, and Central America. While Ford’s actions in East Timor were mentioned previously, his actions in Africa, the Middle East, and Central America are less known. Zunes explains that in November of 1975 President Ford pressured the Spanish government to renege on its promise of independence for Western Sahara and allowed Morocco to seize the territory in violation of a ruling by the International Court of Justice and a series of United Nations resolutions. The territory remains under occupation to the present day. Ford also purchased millions of dollars in chrome from the white minority regieme in Rhodesia despite a United Nations embargo, allied with the Mobutu dictatorship in Zaire and the apartheid government in South Africa to arm rebel groups against the government of Angola, and “sidestepped” international efforts to impose sanctions on the apartheid government in South Africa despite its illegal occupation of Namibia and repression of student protests. In the Middle East, Ford provided military aid to the Shah of Iran and vetoed the first resolution calling for a withdrawal of Israeli security forces and the establishment of a Palestinian state in exchange for guarantees of security for Israel. In the Americas, Zunes writes that Ford supported more than a dozen dictatorships including that of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.
Paul Street, an author, professor, and contributor to Z Magazine, wrote a piece titled “‘To Show the World that Giant America Was Still Powerful and Resolute:’ Pardoning Ford and the Mayaguez Affair” that examines in detail Ford’s actions in the Mayaguez affair and the role they played in supporting the ongoing functioning of United States imperialism. Street begins by pointing out that Nixon was pardoned not just for the Watergate break-in but “any an all offenses” committed as president, including the illegal invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Ford further demonstrated his commitment to United States imperialism in the Mayaguez affair, with Street arguing that Ford ordered the assault to show that the United States, after being embarrassed by defeat in Vietnam, could still act “quickly and decisively overseas.” Consequently the military action, which resulted in the deaths of ninety United States soldiers and an unknown number of Cambodians, was essential in developing an ideology among the establishment, defined as the Republicans, the Democrats, newspapers, and television, that called for the United States to assert its authority throughout the world. Street ends his piece by wondering “how many non-white others are going to die so that the United States can look ‘still powerful and resolute’ in the wake of Bush’s fiasco in Iraq.”
David Walsh, who writes for the World Socialist Web Site, published an obituary for Gerald R. Ford titled “Former US President Gerald Ford Dies, Pardoned Nixon for Watergate Crimes.” Aside from looking at the politics of the pardoning of President Nixon, Walsh explains that much of the media coverage of Ford’s death has recalled a tumultuous or troubled time, but has failed to either explain the context or to identify Ford’s role in the political climate of the time. Walsh identifies the time of Ford’s rise to the presidency as one of United States capitalism and imperialism in crisis in light the military failure in Vietnam, economic problems in Asia and Europe, and the popular movements of the 1960s and the 1970s. He argues that Ford took the place of Nixon because the ruling elite lost confidence in Nixon and saw in Ford a dependable ally and loyal representative. Walsh writes that in 25 years in Congress Ford’s name never appeared on a major piece of legislation and that he strongly supported Republican policies by opposing the minimum wage, public housing, and the repeal of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act, all of which made him a dependable choice in the minds of the ruling elite. When Ford pardoned Nixon, Walsh argues it was a decision undertaken as “damage control” and to avoid a trial that “frightened large sections of the ruling elite.”
Earl Ofari Hutchinson has provided an examination of Ford’s record on civil rights in a piece published on AlterNet titled “Gerald Ford: The Conflicted President on Civil Rights.” Hutchinson gives Ford credit for his appointing of the first black Secretary of State and extending the Voting Rights Act, but argues that for the rest of Ford’s presidency he stumbled on the issue. Ford opposed bussing, a major and divisive issue at the time, and failed to listen to the concerns of both opponents and supporters of bussing, trying instead to play towards a narrow middle road that took no real position on the issue. Hutchinson argues that Ford took a similar strategy in the 1976 election, saying little about civil rights while ignoring calls to get rid of his pro-civil rights Vice Presidential candidate, Nelson Rockefeller. Ford’s lack of commitment to civil rights looks comparatively good when one considers the bigotry of Richard Nixon, but Hutchinson shows that it was not enough to help Ford win the presidency and could not take the place of a genuine commitment to civil rights.
At the Progressive, editor Matthew Rothschild wrote a piece titled “Gerald Ford, Unsentimentally” that questioned the notion of the “almost mandatory salutes” that those living within the United States are expected to offer each time a former president dies. In calling the idea that we must “say no ill of the dead” “hogwash,” Rothschild argues that with respect to both domestic and foreign policy there is little to remember positively about the Ford administration. With respect to foreign policy, he recalls that Ford was “a standard issue Republican” who vetoed social spending and programs and increased military spending, while his foreign policy–supporting Pinochet in Chile and authorizing the invasion of East Timor–was “damnable.” Rothschild also argues that Ford’s pardoning of Nixon set the precedent for a lack of legal consequences for lawbreaking in the White House and ultimately helps to guarantee that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will “float comfortably about the law.”
Rather than dwell on the negative aspects of the Ford administration, Alexander Cockburn writing for Counterpunch in “Farewell to Our Greatest President, Gerald Ford” described how at Counterpunch it has always been there position that “Gerald Ford was America’s greatest President” because “he did the least possible harm.” Cockburn writes that unlike other presidents, Ford’s military interventions were “small potatoes” compared to “the vast graveyards across the planet left by Ford’s predecessors and successors.” He further speculates that even Ford’s rightwing critics, who criticize Ford’s “timidity and lack of zeal in prosecuting the Cold War,” are further indicators that perhaps Ford was not so bad after all. Cockburn also contemplates what would have happened had Ford been elected in 1976 and the consequences for both the United States and those who bear the brunt of United States imperialism abroad.
Of course, no discussion of the Ford era would be complete without considering the role of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who served in both the Nixon and Ford administrations. When Kissinger visited Grand Rapids this past October to celebrate 25 years of the Gerald R. Ford Museum, Media Mouse ran an article titled “War Criminal Henry Kissinger Comes to Grand Rapids” that looked at Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. One of Kissinger’s greatest crimes, the authorization of Indonesian military dictator Suharto’s invasion of East Timor, took place with Ford in the room. Both Ford and Kissinger gave support to the invasion and occupation, an occupation that killed as many as 230,000 Timorese civilians. The fact that Ford–despite what seems to be a measure of personal integrity in personal matters–allowed Kissinger to stay on board despite Kissinger’s earlier involvement in the Vietnam War and in overthrowing the government of Chile in 1973, raises serious questions about his judgment.
