The Ford years had an air of unreality about them, as our only President not elected to be President or Vice-President presided over a country in decline, or so the chattering classes said. Reagan reversed that. To understand the Reagan years, you have to understand the Ford-Carter years and what a deeply bad time it was for the country.
Fifty Years Ago
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
I remember it. My father was unemployed for several years in the mid 70s. Looking back, we had very little for a time, so it must have been very hard for my parents. The Bicentennial celebration was a very bright spot and memorable.
Today I see the same derision that you remembered from 1976.
Before inauguration Jimmy Carter went to England and signed away our sovereignty to the Trilateral Commission. Like the United Nations also formed by Rockefeller wealth, the UN wanted an International Court which it got, a standing army (after condemning U.S. citizens?) and the power to tax American citizens. (for global warming this time)
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Thomas Jefferson
Ford was weak and incompetent, hence Carter. Yet after four years, everyone on my submarine cheered when Reagan won against Carter. A disgrace to the submarine force and nuclear energy in general (besides all his other manifest failings). But Barack Hussein Obama successfully managed to be a worse President than Admiral Rickover’s one big mistake. I think Carter was for the most part decent but incompetent, however, Obama was and is utterly evil.
There was a stronger sense of pride at our Bicentennial than today. I think part of it was seeing the country survive a presidential crisis. There was also a willingness on the liberal side to celebrate the country in general, and during a Republican presidency.
In an episode of All in the Family, Archie made a statement that Ford did a pretty good job as a president that nobody voted for.
I was 12 through most of 1976. There was more excitement about the Bicentennial than there is now.
Ford was portrayed a a bumbling fool, notably by Chevy Chase, a performer of limited talent as it turns out.
Reagan pushed Ford hard in 1976 and it was the most raucous convention I have ever seen.
If Ford does not lose to Carter than we would not have had Reagan. Reagan’s biggest mistake was not making Jack Kemp VP. If Kemp ran in 1988 we would not have had Bill Clinton in 1992.
Ford gave us the Whip Inflation Now buttons … Say what you want about him, but they can never take that away from him.
I don’t recall the term ‘Buycentennial’. The centennial of the Statue of Liberty received a great deal of razzing (some of it earned).
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Ford had IMO several issues.
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One was that he was a fairly ordinary local burgess who was in politics because it was to him a more agreeable way of earning a living than practicing law or mixing and selling paint (the latter a trade at which his father made a handsome living). He had certain baselines, sentiments, and boundaries he would not cross, but he had no systematic way of thinking about social life. He understood what the various committees of Congress were working on, but he had few tools to critique that work. That made him vulnerable to the political kultursmog. The Republican Party in Washington at the time was run by chronic temporizers (of which Hugh Scott was an exemplar). Same deal with Ford.
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You’ll note about Ford that he was an athlete. Not as competitive as papa Bush, but in the same zone.
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He was recruited to run for office by Arthur Vandenberg, whose primary interest was foreign affairs. His challenge was to knock off the incumbent Republican in a primary in 1948. He never faced a difficult election after that. He was in this respect at a disadvantage not only to Reagan but to most of the Democratic candidates as well.
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You’ll note something else. Ford (like Nixon) was a lawyer. He also arrived at adult life during the peculiar ration economy of the 2d World War. His principal economic adviser was the addled Arthur Burns. Alan Greenspan was the counterweight to Burns, but did not seem to influence Ford as much. Greenspan was embarrassed by the WIN program, which he thought was plum stupid, but comments made by Ford at the time indicated that Ford was inspired by WWii era scrap metal drives and the like. He didn’t think like an economist (or a paint merchant) and the economist he was consulting got the idea in his head that inflation was some sort of autonomous process unaffected by monetary policy.
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The economy in the 1970s was choking on the residue of bad New Deal-era policy regimes exacerbated by the work of Richard Nixon (a lawyer) and a Congress chock-a-block with lawyers. To that you add Arthur Burns. Jimmy Carter put some effort into scraping away the dysfunctional regulatory regimes, but his monetary policy was wretched.
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One other thing: Ford had never prior to 9 August 1974 run anything more elaborate than a Congressional office. Have a gander at Ron Nessen’s memoir of the Ford Administration. Ford was learning by doing, as was Nessen. His principal advantage, per Henry Kissinger, was that he was willing and able to have unstructured discussions with people and to actually negotiate with them (something Nixon was too twisted into knots to do). He also had more scruples than Kennedy or Johnson and a thicker hide than Nixon,
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Nixon and Ford were stymied by the Democrats’ control of the congressional committee architecture, but it mattered only a modest amount. Nixon had a few interesting policy ideas. Ford had none anyone this side of Geoffrey Kabaservice would recall.
Reagan’s biggest mistake was not making Jack Kemp VP. If Kemp ran in 1988 we would not have had Bill Clinton in 1992.
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You’ll recall Kemp did run in 1988. His campaign was a thoroughgoing failure. Kemp was a dynamo of a certain sort, a fountainhead of ideas (some better than others), a good interview for journalists, admired by the editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal and by the sort of people who show up for CPAC. Problem: he had no executive experience and he’d never run a campaign outside of a district in western New York. One of his nine campaigns was challenging. Thereafter, the legislature drew it as a collecting pool of Republicans to improve the chances of the Democratic pols seeking to represent surrounding districts. When he campaigned nationally, he was a disappointment. (The New Republic insisted it was because he didn’t use Reagan’s preferred ‘racial cues’). Pierre duPont was competing in the same space and was more interesting to listen to, though failed as well. A critical mass of Republican primary voters and caucus participants for decades favored ‘the-guy-whose-turn-it-is”, and both George Bush and Robert Dole were more appealing to that type.
Yes, Kemp ran in 1988. If he were VP in 1988 he may have done better than Bush and picked a better VP than Dan Quayle. The late John Heinz comes to mind.
https://tropicsofmeta.com/2021/07/26/the-peoples-bicentennial-commission-and-the-spirit-of-1976/
The late John Heinz comes to mind.
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Mr. Heinz was a Rockefeller Republican who prospered in politics by collecting the votes of liberals who disliked machine corruption in Pennsylvania. Lincoln Chaffee was the only Rockefeller Republican to enter Congress after 1988, and there were precious few after 1980. Not sure what would have been the benefit to anyone to putting him in the VPs chair.
“A disgrace to the submarine force and nuclear energy in general (besides all his other manifest failings). Admiral Rickover’s big mistake.”
What was Carter’s reputation as a submarine nuclear officer?
IIRC, Carter resigned his commission in 1953 at which time he had the rank of Lt. Cmdr. Would he have had a reputation twenty-odd years later?
Coolidge set the standard for Vice-Presidential succession of a controversial predecessor. Much could be learned from him.
“IIRC, Carter resigned his commission in 1953 at which time he had the rank of Lt. Cmdr. Would he have had a reputation twenty-odd years later?”
In the nuclear Navy, most likely, especially one created by the likes of Admiral Rickover.