RIP Gerald Ford

President Gerald R. Ford has died at the age of 93.

My memories of Ford’s presidency are not great. I was relatively young when he was in office and, in the wake of the disastrous Carter term and a Reagan administration that was at least as successful as Carter’s was dismal, Ford never really got his fair due.

In subsequent years, I got the chance to read about the man whose brief term was overshadowed by those who followed him and the two who preceded him and I realized that he really was a good man who did a good job in office – better than he’s given credit for. If nothing else, Ford should be remembered as the man who inherited a country dispirited by Nixon’s resignation and the self-made debacle of Vietnam and left the nation in better shape than he received it.

I think that historians will come to see Gerald Ford as perhaps the quintessential President – open, honest, ready to do battle with a hostile Congress, and as comfortable and gracious in retirement as he was in office. He could be the template or what a good President could be.