One of my favorite scenes from "Stripes" is when Bill Murray's girlfriend
complains about how he constantly plays Tito Puente albums. Murray responds
that, one of these days, "Tito Puente's gonna be dead, and you're gonna say,
'Oh, I've been listening to him for years, and I think he's fabulous.'"
In recent years, the Tito Puente effect has afflicted liberals to a stunning
degree. The press corps, the liberal intellectual establishment and the
Democratic Party once considered Ronald Reagan a warmongering, senile
fascist. Now it's hard to find a self-described liberal to offer anything
but praise. Barry Goldwater has also been Tito Puente-ized. His
granddaughter's recent HBO documentary depicts him as a cuddly-wuddly
live-and-let-live sort of guy. Hillary Clinton, James Carville and Al
Franken all pony up testimonials about how swell the 1964 GOP nominee was.
Younger readers might need to be reminded that the liberal establishment
hated Goldwater with such a blinding passion that reason, decency and
truthfulness were deemed luxuries his critics couldn't afford.
And now we have dear, sweet Jerry Ford. Everybody, it seems, loves Ford. Ted
Kennedy even gave him a Profile in Courage Award a few years ago. But
there's an interesting difference. Ford was Tito Puente-ized early. His
decision to pardon Richard Nixon - the courageous act for which he later got
his Profile award - elicited enormous criticism and, some argue, cost him
the election in 1976. But he quickly rebounded and was never hated the way
Reagan, Goldwater or Nixon were. Tricky Dick's rehabilitation will take a
while longer, even though he was more liberal than any president since. As
with Herbert Hoover, too much has been invested in his demonization to write
it off merely for decency's sake.
I went back through old issues of National Review - no reflexive friend to
moderate Republicans - trying to find examples of conservatives beating up
on Ford. I couldn't find much. I undoubtedly missed some barbs, but it seems
that even though Ford defeated Reagan, the conservative Golden Boy, for the
1976 nomination (and initially selected the reviled Nelson Rockefeller as
his V.P.), few could muster much bile for Ford. It seemed that the
serendipity, for want of a better word, of Ford's presidential ascendancy,
and the burning desire to put the havoc of Vietnam and Watergate behind us,
combined with his decency, inoculated him from rancor from all sides.
I think another reason Ford didn't divide Americans the way every president
since LBJ has is that he represented a consensus figurehead, unthreatening
to both sides. The left saw him as the sort of Republican they could roll.
Former Illinois Rep. Robert Michel, who would himself hold the position of
minority leader, told GOP freshmen in the 1970s: "Every day I wake up and
look in the mirror and say to myself, 'Today, you're going to be a loser.'"
He continued: "And after you're here a while, you'll start to feel the same
way. But don't let it bother you. You'll get used to it." Ford was in this
mold, and what Democrat couldn't love a Republican like that? Ford seemed to
epitomize liberal fantasies of an era of Republican pushovers as he fought
the Democratic effort to cut off American support for the South Vietnamese.
Conservatives, meanwhile, saw Ford as a bookend. They understood that their
ascendancy in the GOP was assured after the Nixon immolation. Indeed, Ford
presided over two transitions. The first was the end of the Vietnam and
Watergate eras. The second and more significant transition was away from the
New Deal consensus and "me-too" Republicanism. The left didn't understand
that after Ford came the Reagans and Gingriches, not the Rockefellers and
Lindsays.
But Ford's legacy is more important than the maneuvering of ideological
partisans. Politics is about moments. The American people in 1974 yearned
for a respite from the ideological clamor of the previous decade. Ford, by
the sheer force of his own character, turned the Oval Office into the calm
eye of a storm the American people had grown all too weary of.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan said Ford was the most decent man in politics he'd
ever met. Ford's "luminous affability," in the words of the National Review,
"enabled him to unite the country instantly, magically, in a way that would
have been impossible for the (men) who had been lining up for the job. ...
This accidental President was exactly - for the moment - the right man."
Considering the ideological clamor of the current moment, it's tempting to
ask who the right man, or woman, today might be. |