Considering the immensity of the problems that face the US now, I do not think that a Gerry Ford clone would have the skill set we need. Ford, after all, is the prez whose chief economic initiative was to urge citizens to "Whip Inflation Now" and show their solidarity by wearing WIN buttons. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip_Inflation_Now>
OTOH, with the ship of state foundering the way it is, maybe we could use someone who has the sheer good luck that Ford did. Ford was the Athletic Officer (!) aboard the WWII aircraft carrier USS Monterey, which was part of the fleet caught inTyphoon Cobra, Dec. 1944, one of the worst typhoons ever (later fictionalized in The Caine Mutiny). At one point during the storm when Ford was crossing the flight deck, the ship rolled 25 degrees and sent him sliding toward's the deck's edge and oblivion. At the last moment Ford was able to grab a narrow steel ridge at the deck's edge and drop to a catwalk. "I was lucky," Ford recalled. "I could have easily gone overboard." Lucky indeed -- almost 800 US naval personnel lost their lives in the storm.
Beyond that, Ford was lucky enough to make it to 93 in good health and seems to have spent most of his life on the golf course, the Republican notion of il dolce far niente.
Carl
>--- Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [Utility opinionmonger Frank Rich of the NY Times,
> > who can bat out Broadway
> > reviews and political thumbsuckers with equal ease,
> > has an entirely
> > undeserved reputation as a scourge of America's
> > deepening decadence. In
> > truth, he's as much a misty-eyed sentimentalist
> > about the supposedly
> > permanent strength of America's "vital center" as
> > the now-dead NYT columnist
> > James Reston or the somewhat-alive WashPo pundit
> > David Broder. Rich's
> > column today is a classic: Saying that "Americans
> > are exhausted by anger"
> > due to the gross incompetence of the Bush
> > Administration, Rich claims that
> > the nation yearns for a "healer" like Gerry Ford
> > rather than some firebrand
> > ideologue (read: leftist) capable of challenging
> > conventional pieties.
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