President Ford

In the case of President Gerald R. Ford, his was a peculiar presidency unlike any other we have seen in quite some time. He is often referred to in historical review as "the accidental president." Woe to any man laid victim by such an "accident."

He was never elected president nor vice president. Instead, he was nominated and confirmed as vice president and made president by the resignation in disgrace of his predecessor little over a year later.

From the moment he lowered his right hand he was the leader of a nation wounded and bitter following month after wretched month of Watergate and years of division over the Vietnam war. He faced the task (the term "daunting" seems pathetically incommensurate in even beginning to describe that task) of leading a nation whose people had lost all confidence in his newly inherited office—and government in general—without even the benefit of having been elected and legitimized by their ballots as president or vice president in the first place.

Recognizing the apparent hopelessness of his situation, he observed in his inaugural remarks, "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers."

Prayer, and lots of it, seemed appropriate and necessary for our thirty-eighth president as he entered office. Under such weight and pressure most men would crumble. But fortunately for himself and for the nation, President Ford was not most men. He was genuinely good and decent. He loved his wife, his family, and his nation. He was the friend of many and the enemy of none. Of most advantage to his presidency and its context in history, he was uniquely courageous and concerned solely with the interest and welfare of America, even if that interest conflicted with his own personal and political interests.

This character attribute was manifested in his pardon of President Nixon, undisputably the weightiest action of his brief presidency. Many in the nation anticipated and relished the prosecution and punishment of President Nixon, and reacted to the pardon in vitriolic anger. But President Ford understood that the trial of a former president would only tear at the nation further, and that for wounds to be healed and for life to continue anew the affair must end and the ordeal must be put in the past. The pardon devastated his presidency politically, probably determining his defeat in ‘76, but it was a selfless act of statesmanship that advanced the national interest. It was highly unpopular politically, but it was the right thing to do.

This statesmanship is in short supply today, and given the consequence of the challenges and issues we as a nation currently face, we are in desperate need of it. It was this statesmanship, this sterling character, that guided President Ford through his trials as president and the nation through their own.

This alone validates his presidency. Beyond the immediate legacy and ramifications of Watergate and its effect on his presidency, one, especially a conservative, could easily take issue with a number of President Ford’s decisions and policies. But none of them measure up in importance to his calming influence amidst the storms of Watergate and the opportunity he provided America to heal.

He was the right man in a time of grave need. His presidency, his decades of public service, and his life and legacy are a credit to the United States. As his countrymen mourn his death we treasure his memory fondly and honor him with every measure of gratefulness for his contributions and service, most especially those rendered as president in our time of trial.

Thank you and goodbye, Mr. President.

The Iraq Study Group

For all the preemptive media hype behind the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group and its report and recommendations on the situation in Iraq, the Group’s actual final product has turned out to be, in all reality, a tasteless joke. Their mandate was to provide a well-deliberated way forward in Iraq. What they actually came up with was almost literally a plagiarization of the current strategy. Among their 79 befuddled recommendations, the Group proposes that American forces "should significantly increase the number of U.S. military personnel...imbedded in and supporting Iraqi Army units" so as to accelerate the training of Iraqi units and hasten the time when "U.S. forces [can] begin to move out of Iraq."

It did not take an independent review of the situation in Iraq from an independent study group to formulate this approach, it is simply a rewording of the current approach, which is and always has been to train Iraqi forces to assume the security of their country so American forces can come home. As the president has been fond of saying, "As Iraqis stand up, we stand down."

The problem is that in the three and half years that have elapsed between the deposition of Saddam Hussein and now, this strategy hasn’t worked, which was why the ISG was commissioned in the first place. We didn’t need James Baker, Lee Hamilton, and company—as venerated as statesmen as they are—to come up with the approach that they ultimately did. Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department had already done so and had put it into practice. For all intensive purposes, the ISG simply nodded towards Donald Rumsfeld and said, "Yeah, what he said."

Aggravating their farce of a plan further, the ISG calls upon "the United States to engage" the neighboring nations of Iran and Syria "constructively." Supposedly, we should employ incentives and disincentives—colloquially referred to as carrots and sticks—to persuade both nations to "influence events within Iraq" because it is in "their interest to avoid chaos in Iraq" just as it is ours.

That flatly is not true. Chaos and failure within Iraq is entirely within both Syria’s and Iran’s self-interest, or else they would not be actively engaged in deliberate efforts to incur both. A constructive dialogue between the United States and Syria and Iran would be completely pointless because our interests and theirs are diametrically opposed.

What is needed in Iraq is a new strategy for achieving the goals we had when we went into the country originally. The ISG was tasked to provide one. Upon that point they failed. Such is the rotten fruit of a commission whose main goal was to present a consensus report, not to present the fresh, cogent, and most of all useful path forward asked of them. The ISG got their consensus, but left us, to borrow from the headline of a recent editorial in The Weekly Standard, "a perfect failure" of a plan.