The Accidental President.

In the weeks since Gerald Ford died, I’ve learned a lot about him I did not know. Ford at ninety three was, until now, our oldest living president, and held degrees from the University of Michigan and Yale. He was an athlete and a congressman for 25 years. I think the thing that impresses me the most is that he declined professional football offers to attend Law School. He set aside something potentially gratifying for something truly important He spent his career in Congress working hard, getting things done, and making friends along the way, according to those who worked beside him and are speaking out about it now.

I was sixteen when Nixon resigned amid financial scandal, antiwar demonstrations, and Watergate. Children lack context--the framework, a title. And so, what I remember from my early years are events--the assassinations of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his brother, Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. I remember Kent State; I remember Mi Lai. I remember the Black Panthers and the Hell’s Angels. Viet Nam surrounded and divided the nation, threatening to simultaneously suffocate and explode it.

Into this tinder box fell Gerald R. Ford, the “accidental” president who found himself appointed to replace vice president Spiro Agnew, and then became president when Nixon left the office. “Comfortable in his skin,” as someone described him, Ford took hold of the rudder and steered the nation clear of the rocks--and he made it look easy.

In responding to the former president’s death, the current president made note of Ford’s “integrity,” and called him “healing.” Others have spoken of his “openness.” He certainly doesn’t seem to have taken himself too seriously, and yet could get down to real serious business when necessary. He did the nation true service--and deserves to be commended for it.

As I watch the televised images of people streaming past the coffin of Gerald Ford, in California, in Washington, D.C., and in Grand Rapids, and as I read about what is happening in the world around me, in New Orleans, in Darfur, and in Iraq, I can’t help wondering if we couldn’t use another Gerald Rudolph Ford right about now. I'm wondering too just who that “accidental” president might be.

--a version of this essay was previously published in The South County Gazette.