Notice my restraint in not linkifying the text for "one of the oldsters" to coblogger bios. You're welcome.

Hilzoy (as is to be expected) has a high-quality post, with a mix of high-quality and lunatic comments thereto. Also: Roy Edroso has a damn good post on James Brown.

Link, and link.

I loved that post on Brown.

So why does Ford get a post, and not the Hardest Working Man in Show Business?

(I heard on the radio that he actually *had a gig scheduled* when he died)

What I heard on the radio, Rob, was that his doctor let him perform a gig the night before he died.

4 -- Edroso is one of the finest eulogists I know.

Well, I was just reaching teenagerhood during the Ford Administration, and I remember when Ford unveiled his daring WIN ("Whip Inflation Now!")(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_Inflation_Now) initiative -- it still ranks among the silliest things ever promoted by a U.S. President -- but I suppose it was also fairly harmless.

And I still find it hard to believe that there wasn't some prior arrangement between Nixon and Ford about the pardon.

Nonetheless, in comparison with W. -- Ford was a wonderful president.

You're probably right--I was only half listening. Either way, damn.

A few years back I heard a great radio show that focussed on JB's work in the fifties and early sixties, before he started making funk hits. He was making straight R&B, but damn it sounded good.

Then yesterday I heard Terri Gross rerun an interview where she played a JB album of jazz standards and asked him to comment on it. He said that he wanted to do an album with a particular arranger, and also do a little bit of a Sammy Davis thing. Now I would never deny Sammy's vocal virtuosity, but JB was really in a whole nother league than Sammy. It was really incredible.

I would gladly wear a school uniform and a yellow ribbon and a Whip Inflation Now! sticker if it would bring an end to George's Adventure.

10: If you do, be sure to take pictures.

I would gladly wear a school uniform and a yellow ribbon and a Whip Inflation Now! sticker

Cool, novelty acts ATM.

helpy-pwned.

And they would all be earth-toned.

I started to put up a post about Ford, but then realized I really didn't have anything to say about him, since my earliest political memories were of Carter beating in '76. He always struck me as a thoroughly decent man, in stark opposition to Nixon and all of the GOP presidents who have followed.

Nonetheless, in comparison with W. -- Ford was a wonderful president.

Man, talk about damning with faint praise. . .

I mean, hell, in comparison with W., William Henry Harrison was a wonderful president.

2, 3: Thanks. I hadn't seen the JB link.

As for Ford: I can't remember which pop historian argued against the need to include a biography of every president in the standard American history overview. But I wonder whether Ford might have been one of his arguments for exclusion, along with the Franklin Pierces of the world.

Not that there is nothing to remember him by, of course, but that in the grand scheme of things it was a fairly unmemorable presidency.

16, 17: Faint praise was definitely my intention.

15: There is an agreed upon story that Gerald Ford was just a simple, good man, that restored decency to the White House. I'm not sure if there is all that much truth in it.

19--
yeah, probably simple, good and decent is too simple and too good to be true.

still: simpler, gooder, and more decent than what's come since.

republicans: defining deviancy down, for decades and decades.

All I keep thinking of is the movie Flirting with Disaster, and Ben Stiller's imitation of his B&B landlady's nattering on about Gerald Ford in stereotypical old lady voice...

Ford was vocally pro-choice and anti-homophobia during his decades as an ex-president, which makes him decent enough in my book. I mostly view him as the last gasp of moderate Republicanism. But sure, my estimation of his decency is likely enhanced by the sheer moral bankruptcy of Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush. Those four, honestly: horrible, horrible people.

I'm still trying to figure out what the hell the editors at the WaPo were thinking when they featured prominently this photo with yesterday's Style-section JB tribute.

Today's NYT has a good piece the musicians who worked with James Brown. (Though the article's romantic notion that there was a time when pop music wasn't commercial is just silly.)

(Hope the link works for non-subscribers; it's hard to tell since I'm a member of the elite Times Select.)

"the musicians" s/b "about the musicians," obviously.

23: Dude, Soul Brother Number 1 can totally pull that outfit off. WaPo showed that picture to say "James Brown was so super-bad he can wear this and it looks good."

24 -- Here is a link that will not expire or require you to be registered with the Times. To find such links, click at the top of the article where it says "Share", and then where it says "Permalink".

Aw, hell. This is what I meant.

I wonder. There's that old trope about how people get more conservative as they get older. There was that recent study that found evidence against it. But perhaps it was more understandable back when most Republicans were more like Ford. I can't imagine my mind changing so much that I'd campaign for Newt.

Of course, maybe you get more conservative by default as the world progresses past you, enfuddyduddying all of your formerly enlightened beliefs. Or it's all just a crock.

Gerald Ford: he wasn't batshit insane.

Ford was "good and decent"; he was picked to replace Agnew because of his positive reputation in the House, his known bipartisanship, and, with the departure of Nixon, he tried his best to pull the presidency out of the morass of moral bankruptcy it had fallen into. It couldn't have been pleasant or easy, overseeing the end of the tragedy that was Viet Nam, nor surviving two assassination attempts, nor facing a recession - but the man tried. He granted conditional amnesty to draft resisters who had fled the country - not a particularly popular decision, but his stated intent - as when he pardoned Nixon - was to get the country on the path to healing.

After he lost his bid for a second term, he spent the rest of his life actively working for charities, and as Apo pointed out, was pro-choice - whilst president, he had refused to support an amendment to the Constitution that would have outlawed abortion.

He may not have been the smartest president we've ever had, but he was certainly smarter than the one we have now. He was married to a woman with a mind of her own, who spoke out on equal rights for women, on choice, who went public with her breast cancer and substance abuse problems - an anti-Laura, as it were. I give him points for that.

He was delicious.

Ford was "good and decent"

That's what I heard from my father, who worked closely with (and sometimes against) him and his administration during the "WIN" campaign. Anyway, even right now he could do a better job as president than GWB is doing.

I had my initial say here and below that.

I didn't even get into his disgraceful attempt to impeach William O. Douglas on Nixon's orders.

Interesting how a guy who thought "Who would make a great Secretary of Defense? Donald Rumsfeld!" and "who do I want in charge of the White House for me? Dick Cheney!" is now someone who should be praised.

People have short memories.

33--
yeah, i hear ya on rumsfeld & cheney; that should clip a few points of ford.
but i think there is another factor in there--namely, that they themselves got worse (more corrupt, more malevolent, more evil) as the years went by.
i mean, we have adelman's word on that for rumsfeld, right? utter bafflement at how the guy could have gone so wrong.

not clear to me when they and the entire republican establishment stepped out of the country club and into mordor--under reagan? dunno. but certainly the history of the last 40 years of the republican party has been one of the gradual moral corruption of what were to begin with fairly standard-issue politicians (i.e. not good people, but not the utter spawn of satan that they are now).

so, even here, ford's hiring of them in '75 is not as damning as bush's hiring of them in 2000.

Nice work Gary; I agree completely. That a lot of people wanted, then and since, to avoid impeachment and embarrassing the president doesn't make it right. We've been bushwhacked by a lot of unfinished business from those years. My dad, who didn't do many impressions, had a good one of Ford, from the days long before the presidency, "Impeach Earl Warren" times. Now there's a real liberal Republican, his colleague Brennan too. This well-meaning doofus business always confused me: he was a pre-war Yale Law grad who had done pretty well there. That his gift to the republic, that has kept on giving, was Cheney and Rumsfeld was not the accident we—even I—sometimes take it for.

33--
and on the short memory thing?
that describes me alright. but a lot of the other people you're talking with weren't even *born* until reagan was in office.
not memory loss, just, wow, being so damned young.
(which is part of what makes yglesias' sense of perspective exceptional to the point of uncanny).

re 30 --"Ford was "good and decent"; he was picked to replace Agnew because of his positive reputation in the House, his known bipartisanship..."

This explanation doesn't make any sense to me when you consider that the person who chose Ford as VP was Richard Nixon.

More plausible-sounding motivations for Richard Nixon -- Gerald Ford was so naive and/or loyal he would continue to defend Nixon even after everyone else would give up...or Gerald Ford was so transparently unqualified to be President no one would want to impeach Nixon....or Gerald Ford promised to pardon Nixon if he did become President.

"not clear to me when they and the entire republican establishment stepped out of the country club and into mordor--under reagan?"

I'd say it was around McKinley, but probably somewhat before that; the corruption was seeping in in Grant's time, so basically between their two eras.

"so, even here, ford's hiring of them in '75 is not as damning as bush's hiring of them in 2000."

I don't agree too much. Up to a small point, you are correct. But the corruption -- of every sort, I don't mean specifically financial corruption particularly, but the willingness to tar people and ruin their lives with lies, to say anything, to send kids to war for bad causes, and so on -- was as bad as it would ever get under Nixon, and his original day, in the Truman/pre-Eisenhower days, into the Eisenhower Admin, when Eisenhower knowingly hugged the evil to his bosom by making Nixon -- whose every evil was infamous by then, after Helen Gahagan Douglas and HUAC and Nixon's demonizing of anyone who had a bad word about Chiang or a suggestion that we might want to talk to Mao and Chou En-lai -- was when their vast evil was fully clear to those who didn't see it in the Thirties, or dismissed the General Smedly Butler accusations of an attempted right-wing coup against FDR.

I don't see how it became any more clear after the days of Veep Nixon and SecState John Foster Dulles, myself. Republicans didn't get any worse after them, or HUAC and J. Parnell Thomas and company, after all. (Some Republicans were relatively innocent and not remotely as bad, I grant; Eisenhower, for instance, if we're looking for moderate Republicans to say kind things about -- but the real rightwing Republicans, before, during, and after, Eisenhower always hated him -- and the rot runs deep and long. To find those more innocent one has to look at the Elliot Richardsons, and the like, but even they were willing to work in Nixon's Cabinet, and were thus tainted.)

"that describes me alright. but a lot of the other people you're talking with weren't even *born* until reagan was in office."

One of the quotations on my blog's sidebar: "To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero

It's not as if I have personal memories of the Eisenhower, or FDR, era, after all (or even really of JFK; my first actual memory of him was the assassination, and my irritation that after three days after his death, they still weren't going to have my cartoons back on tv for another few days of funeral). (I was born November 5th, 1958.)

Short version of a famous saying: those who don't read history are doomed. Period.

37 is correct. (I don't, myself, believe the last, that there was a deal, though I can't absolutely exclude it, of course; but that Nixon thought people would be reluctant to have Jerry Ford in office is documented, and that he thought Ford would be a diehard defender is simply fact; Ford merely didn't carry it on to the point of absolute insanity, once the "smoking gun" tape surfaced -- but he defended Nixon right up until then.)

cicero, huh?
he musta been before my time.

I'd say it was around McKinley

In that case, Polk is the very face of the Democratic party. OK, maybe Wilson.

I hate the Republicans this much, but I defer to Gary.

"cicero, huh?
he musta been before my time."

I think he was some famous guy in Illinois.

I'm very fond of Lincoln, actually. And rather of Grant, and the other anti-slavery, pro-Reconstruction, Republicans.

It was downhill from there, though Teddy Roosevelt was certainly a fascinating mixed bag, and generally much more good than bad.

And as I indicated, I have some positive things to say about Eisenhower; just not so much for some of his hirelings and allies.

Herbert Hoover meant well. Was a good Secretary of Commerce. Calvin Coolidge didn't annoy with long speeches. The remaining traces of Progressivism in the Republican Party after TR were good. But, really, defending the Republican Party of Warren G. Harding, and the isolationists of the Twenties and Thirties, the America Firsters, or the McCarthyites of the Fifties, is beyond me; someone else here will have to make that case. What's to defend about them, md 20/400?

Anyone want to speak up for Charles Lindbergh?

"In that case, Polk is the very face of the Democratic party. OK, maybe Wilson."

I'd actually say that while Polk is pretty irrelevant to Democrats today, Wilson, and where he was right and wrong, is very relevant. (And, for that matter, I'll kick the Democrats by pointing out that Wilson's vile and vicious racism was a crucial factor in the Democratic Party of the 20th century, through until LBJ and Nixon/Wallace splitting off the Dixicrats.)

McKinley, on the other hand, is the President that Karl Rove has cited a bazillion times as his role model for G. W. Bush, and Mark Hanna for himself.

And, indeed, the attempts to update McKinley's political machine, and level of corruption, follow from that. So, yeah, McKinley is directly relevant (save that, of course, Cheney is the opposite of a TR, which is to say that Rove learned that lesson, as well).

I didn't pull McKinley out of thin air. I'm, in fact, perfectly happy to elaborate on why contemporary Republican evil goes straight back through the anti-communist exploiters of the Fifties, the isolationists of the Forties, Thirties, Twenties, and Tens, and back to the corruption of the 1890s.

Really, what bothers me is that more people are familiar with this. None of the stuff done by Republicans from the Fifties through now is new, or at least it has a direct forerunner in the Republicans since McKinley.

You need to have a certain double-vision to be able to see those things, Gary, without becoming an out-and-out conspiracy cynic. You need not to be surprised by the duplicity and obtuseness of generations of media interpretations, without losing your faith in the country or people.

It is possible; some of my friends' and neighbors' kids know a surprising amount of "alternative history" and yet are optimistic activists in their mid-twenties. My fourteen-year-old son knows who Smedley Butler was. But unless kids are really curious, they have to get it at home. I got it at home; you may have been really curious.

Okay, I don't want some wiseacre coming in after this and leaving a "Comity!" comment, but are the two positions (Republicans=usually evil vs. Republicans=only recently evil) that far from each other? When I think about the Republican party, post-Reconstruction, pre-Nixon, I think of a party that was as deeply divided (and often as ineffectual) as the Demoncrats have been these past 30 years. At the state level, there doesn't seem to have been nearly as much obsession with toeing the line and staying on message. Maybe that goes for the Dems too, but the Republicans of the past seemed a lot more at odds with each other.

Born under the sign of the Ford.

(which is part of what makes yglesias' sense of perspective exceptional to the point of uncanny)

This, exactly.

"I got it at home; you may have been really curious."

I got a little at home; my parents were classic wishy-washy Stevenson/Kennedy liberals who turned against the war and took me to civil rights and anti-war protests as a child, and my mother was briefly a member of the Communist Party during the Thirties, until the Hitler-Stalin (or Molotov-Ribbentrop, if you prefer) Pact.

But mostly I was exceedingly curious, turning into a news junkie particularly during the '67 Six-Day War, and ever thereafter, through the rest of Vietnam, Chicago, into Watergate, and so on. And as a book junkie, I naturally started reading history furiously since I learned to read, sucking down biographies and histories from the age of 6-7 on.

If anything, my parents were uneasy with my interest in politics; my mother had been in fear ever since her days as a card-carrying member of the Party, since she and my father (until he was finally fired for being completely crazy) were employees of the NYC Dept. of Education, which required loyalty oaths, and had done sweeps to root out the ex-Commies; I was forbidden to ever mention her background to anyone else pretty much until about 1990.

In 43 I meant to write "that more people aren't familiar with this," of course.

Otherwise I'm just turning into the old man shaking his cane and yelling about kids today! Hey, you, get offa my lawn!

And this hippitty-hoppitty music they listen to! It's just noise, I tell ya!

America First at least in the beginning had the support of people like Gerald Nye, Gore Vidal, Sargent Schriver, Socialist Norman Thomas. Anyone can look it up at Wiki, I won't link.

In general, I usually don't harbor a principled dislike toward pacifists or isolationists, and the initial idea may not have been that far from, say, why Eugene Debs went to prison. I don't know that it was a fascist organization, even there were proto-and quasi-fascists in it.

Gore Vidal has not changed much in whatever his philosophy was in 1939. I think Vidal as well as anybody understood the consequences and implications, and what America would become after, well, conquering half the world.

"(Republicans=usually evil"

Now, now, we shouldn't dismiss several decades of the 19th century; they were absolutely critical to shaping America, after all; credit where due to the Republicans having Started Good, pretty much.

And Teddy's reforms were darned important, too. The Food and Drug Administration, the National Parks, the Forestry Service, Civil Service: lots of crucial stuff. (Then there's the imperialism, but I did say he was a mixed bag, and besides it's not as if the Democrats were all that much better.)

I blame Rutherford B Hayes. And since the blogosphere seems to be jumping on the "Southrons won't vote for Yankees so it has to Edwards" bandwagon, I am really mad at Ruthergord B Hayes today.

The Ford coverage is as glowing as expected, but I'm still amused. The guy wasn't elected, wound up President, and lost to friggin' Carter. He's going to be one of those guys that third graders in 2040 struggle to remember with mnemonic devices about Watergate ('Gerard Fold.')

I dunno, I'm with the "mostly harmless = better than average" school of thought, especially as compared to what came before and after.

I've been listening to the coverage for five minutes and have heard 'our long national nightmare is over' twice. His presidency was only long enough for one speech, apparently!

52: Precisely. "Really good" in politics and war means someone earlier let the situation get so bad that pulling anything out of it at all required genius and luck.

"I dunno, I'm with the "mostly harmless = better than average" school of thought, especially as compared to what came before and after."

Ford: not insane, not criminal, and didn't blow up the world (or any place larger than the vicinity of the Mayaguez).

Or: Ford: much less despicable than Nixon, Reagan, or G. W. Bush!

If those are his epitaphs, I'll sign on. I just think it's not terribly high praise.

And I still think he deserved to have been beaten (read that as you will) for the pardon.

As Republican Presidents of the 20th Century go, I'd put Eisenhower considerably ahead of him. He's not even in the same league as TR. Hoover had worse effects, though was otherwise certainly as "decent" and personally honest and commendable personally as Ford, and was probably brighter. He was even less inspiring than Coolidge, but more competent than Harding. More forgettable than Taft.

Still winds up as: Ford! Not in the last rank of Republican Presidents!

I think the "better than average" argument would need to get into precisely which pool of presidents is being used to determine that point.

"More forgettable than Taft."

I had forgotten Taft.

Lucille Ball, like Gary's mother, was briefly a member of the Communist Party.

I generally agree with Gary about Ford. Another thing that gets missed about hisPresidency is that he was an appointed caretaker President who became President because of a Constitutional crisis. People tend to remember a normalized version of what happened. There was a real discontinuity, not quite a coup d'etat but not normal procedure at all.

As I understand, the precedents for the appointment of Ford and then Rockefeller were a bit shaky; I think that if any major faction had been determined to resist Ford's appointment, things could have gotten much messier.

I heard the 'our long national nightmare is over' bit on TV twice in five minutes, and it occurred to me that I had never before heard that phrase uttered with any degree of sincerity.

Not to be disrespectful or selfish, but Tuesday is now a Federal holiday in the Washington area. Not sure I (a contractor) will get paid, but another day off: woohoo!

"As I understand, the precedents for the appointment of Ford and then Rockefeller were a bit shaky; I think that if any major faction had been determined to resist Ford's appointment, things could have gotten much messier."

I don't quite follow this. It was done according to the 25th Amendment, which was ratified in 1967. What's "a bit shaky" about the Constitution?

I mean, yes, it hadn't happened before ("unprecedented"), because there hadn't been a dead, removed, or resigned President or Vice-President between 1967 and 1974, but so what?

Can you explain further exactly what you're talking about, John?

Just read the comments at MY referred to above. I'm wondering how many of our "Reagan birth cohort" here are following this discussion, or whether us old guys are the only ones who care.

I'm trying to think what political figure or event from just before my birth cast a long shadow worth fighting about in my adulthood. Wallace—Henry, not George—and Taft-Hartley are the best I can come up with. I was drawn to the open wounds those still seemed to be, and I loved the stories of old guys, but to be fair, most people my age really didn't care.

"a federal holiday in the Washington area" is an interesting notion.

(Tuesday is also a Federal holiday in the NYC area but: I am on vacation next week but: this would mean I only was taking 3 days vacation instead of 4 but: if all goes according to plan (and keep your fingers crossed please) I will be giving notice directly upon my return from vacation so the number of vacation days I have taken will be immaterial.)

"I'm trying to think what political figure or event from just before my birth cast a long shadow worth fighting about in my adulthood."

Depending on one's definition of "just before," for me that would be everything from WWII to the Korean War to Brown vs. Board of Education to Sputnik, and in-between.

But, hell, I was the sort of 7-year-old who sat around wondering why my peers weren't interested in which three-letter agencies did and didn't help fight the Depression, and what the ins and outs of special relativity were. I was, to put it mildly, an extremely alienated kid (you'd never guess, I know).

My mom's got the CBS funeral coverage—Katie and Bob— here in the room. Eulogy being delivered now is touchingly bad; I'm actually kind of digging it.

And now comes: Hastert!

Cheney!