Thanks, Kathy; although I couldn't vote for him, I always held Gerald Ford in high regard for his honesty and plain speaking and for his humble nature, and I am saddened by his death.

Steve

to the family.  I feel like Ford was the last decent Republican and to me he was rational and this is a great loss.

and one of the most genuine personalities to be president of the United States. He was more qualified to be president than a bunch of the guys who were elected! RIP Jerry
Go Blue!

First Bo before the game with the poisonous nuts, and now UM Captain Jerry Ford before the Rose Bowl. Maybe the two of them can come up with a winning game plan for the "granddaddy" and channel it to Coach Carr.

Gerald Ford.

Condolences to his family, especially his wife.

Ok I am saddened for the lost for his family, at 93  he was long lived fer sure.

His Pardon of Nixon was the thing that lost him the 1976 election, and let reagon and bush start their  reigns.

The  hatred of pardoning nixon was a foretaste of my ungrained hatred of all things republican.

But I digress..... Let the accolades continue.

I think President Ford was definitely one of the last Senior Republican Officials with some real character and integrity, but I am not so sure he opened the doors for Reagan and Bush. Lets say he had not pardoned Nixon, and whatever processes had gone through. Ford gets his second term- a term during a VERY difficult time with Opec - manages to save some integrity for his party, but I question if he would have left the door open for another Carter run. So we would still get Reagan and Bush senior. Trolls like Cheney and Rumsefled are already in the picture, remember, and now they might have better odds.

I think we would have still gotten Reagan. The difference would have been if Ford's actions as a president economically were able to give us Bush, instead of Reagan.

Based on the Fed's reaction to inflation from oil prices, I am not so sure. I think we would have still gotten a Volker type move, and ended up in a similar, if not quite the same location.

Nixon poisoned the minds of people like Cheney.

Maybe had Nixon been thoroughly crushed, it would have nipped the Rumsfeld/Cheney  devil duo in the bud. In which case, yes, I would agree with you.

For Ford's part, I think that he saw the nonsense like happened over Clinton being more damaging than beneficial. Perhaps he felt like the goal was to remove Nixon from office, and having achieved that, to spend too many resources on it at a time when we had a bigger crises like Iraq to focus on would be dangerous.

Since he was a man of integrity, I can believe that his decision was made with a lot of soul searching. Had it been Bush Jnr? PTH!

The ultimate turning point in the GOP was that Bush Snr was not elected in favor of Reagan.

Just think, if Ford would have accepted the Reagan VP offer for a GOP Reagan-Ford dream ticket in 1980, he may have saved us from the Bush family reigns of error!

And I think Bush Snr was a far better man than Raegan. The dream ticket would have been Ford Bush. By default, this would have given the son nothing to learn from the Reagan era, because the Reagan era would have never existed.

Years ago, as I sat in a doctor's office to get a physical for adoption papers my husband and I were filing, an elderly, semi retired doctor I'd never seen in the practice came in to help with the paperwork.  He was "old school" about family planning I suppose and made some sort of off handed comment to the effect that when you adopt you "never know what you're gonna get"....  I told him that applied to biological children, too.

I wonder if anyone ever told Gerald Ford's mom that she didn't know what she was going to get...No, she didn't know,  but I'll bet that she was surely proud and satisfied with what she did get.

You see, it's not mentioned in most of his obituaries, but Gerald Ford was adopted!

Ford's real name is Leslie Lynch King Jr.  That's by biological.  His Mom and Dad-King Sr gave birth to him.  However, King was an abusive father. This caused King Jr.'s Mom to divorce King Sr.  She remarried to a guy named Gerald R. Ford.  King Jr. was then given his adoptive Dad's name.  Ford and Clinton are both adopted by a Stepfather.

Rest in Peace Jerry, how we need you now.

When the affirmative action policies that the University of Michigan used in its admissions were challenged in two lawsuits that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Ford defended the policies early on.  (See his New York Times Op-Ed piece, entitled "Inclusive America, Under Attack" (8/8/99)).

In addition, Betty Ford strongly supported the Equal Rights Amendment, spoke out about her treatment for breast cancer (at a time when such a public revelation was taboo), and was open and honest about her dependency on drugs and alcohol (which led to the establishment of the famous clinic in her name).

The two of them, as a First Couple and then as a former First Couple, served our society well.  Thanks.

His immediate successor to V. P. - Nelson Rockefellor (sp?) was also appointed and confirmed.

  Ford however WAS the only President not elected as either President or Vice President.