President Gerald Ford, who died December 26, represented the minority Republican Party of the post-war era. While living a decent, play-by-the-rules life, Ford was part of a generation of Republicans playing strategic defense against the militant expansion of progressive politics and its product the government welfare state.
A man who lost his father and his name in divorce, Ford married a divorced woman and then shared his life with Betty Bloomer Warren Ford, fathering four children and fifteen grandchildren.
Serving as president in the edgy 1970s, a decade of folly that included the retreat from Vietnam, wage-and-price controls, a vast increase in government social spending, the turn of the Democrats from an American party to a trans-national party, and a double dose of inflation, Ford was the completely normal man, who always did the right thing.
Now he is gone, at 93 past the age when life has any savor. We shall look in vain for a politician with the decency that he projected and practiced all his life.
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