Despite his reputation for physical clumsiness, Ford had been, after all, a Michigan football player. You don't get that slot by being a spaz.
Skill set, ha. "First of all, do no harm." From today's point of view, WIN buttons seem positively benign.
And Ford gave us Justice Stevens, another Republican of a lost type.
--- Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> >
> >Don't you think we'd be lucky to get a Gerry Ford?
>
> 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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