The USA in Gerald Ford’s Time
1974-1977
by Mike Donovan
Original name Leslie King – Sworn in Dec 6, 1973 as Vice President – Sworn in August 9, 1974 as President - The Stumblebum –Lawyer – Episcopalian – Mason - VP Nelson Rockefeller- “Whip Inflation Now” – WWII Veteran – Left handed - Park Ranger at Yellowstone National Park – Great football player – Could not sing the national anthem.
“Comedians began to ridicule me even more.”
The above quote is from his memoirs. It was ironic. The best athlete ever to make it to the Presidency and he becomes a laughing stock for falling down. Ford was a former Michigan college football star whose physical slips as President of the United States were caught on camera too often. Comedian Chevy Chase delighted the country on Saturday nights with skits mocking Ford falling down over and over. Every stand-up comedian working between 1975 and 1977 at least once said “Quick impression Gerald Ford,” and then knocked over the mic stand and got a laugh. Trust me on that one. Actually, make that 1975-1981. We milked it.
Lyndon Johnson said of him that he was a nice guy but had played too much football without a helmet (whatever, Lyndon, I’ll take him over you any day in every way.) The other joke that went around about him was that he couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. It was Lyndon Johnson who passed that line around also.
Catch a Falling Ford
Ford’s cabinet;
Secretary of State---------Henry Kissinger-1974-1976
Sec. of Defense--------James R. Schlesinger—1974-1975
Donald H. Rumsfeld---1975-1976
Sec. of Treasury-------William E. Simon-----1974-1976
Att. General-----------William B. Saxbe------1974-1975
Edward H. Levi--------1975-1976
Gerald Ford was the only president to reach both the Vice Presidency and the Presidency without being elected. Then when Ford became president and appointed his Rocky VP, it marked the only time in US history that both the president and vice-president had not been elected. Some were critical of this on Constitutional grounds since that document specified that these were elective offices.
BIO
Little Jerry Ford was born on Bastille Day 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska, the only president born in that boring state. But Ford is no Nebraska man. He is Mr. Michigan, perhaps the most successful man ever to come from that great state, with the possible exception of his Henry Ford (no relation).
Ford is not his original name. He was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. but his parents divorced before he was old enough to pronounce their names. Leslie and his mother rapidly moved to Grand Rapids, where she remarried a Mr. Ford. Gerald Ford senior adopted Leslie and made him Gerald Junior.
Gerald Jr. excelled in football, baseball, and track at Grand Rapids South High School. He graduated with honors from ‘Southie High' in 1931. It may be noting in light of his Mr nice guy image that Ford was ejected from a South High football game for a brutal late hit on a guy long after the whistle had blown.
At the University of Michigan Ford studied economics and politics. Ford was linebacker and center on the varsity football team, and was team MVP at center as a senior. Do you have any idea how good you have to be to win the team MVP as a center? Ford played in the East-West college All Star game, and was drafted by the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers of the NFL! Some klutz. I'd like to Chevy Chase try and get past him in a game if they were both 19. Ford would knock Chevy off his cam-shaft.
Ford preferred law school to the gridiron and declined the exiting offers. I'm sure some of his friends and acquaintances told him he was crazy to turn down a chance to play in the NFL. It was quick glory, but short uncertain money and the risk of walking with a cane for the rest of his life. Ford knew his own mind and went for two in the bush, courageously turning down the bird in the hand.
Like Bush, Bush, Taft, and Clinton, President Ford was a Yalee, class of ‘41. (George Washington received an honorary degree from Yale.)
Jerry had just begun life as an attorney in Grand Rapids when Pearl Harbor changed his plans. He enlisted in the US Navy in 1942.
From June of 1943 until December 1944, Gerald Ford served on the light aircraft carrier Monterey. This ship (CVL-26) saw extensive action in the Pacific campaign, giving air support to island hopping operations in places like the Marianas, the Gilberts, Wake and the Carolines. Ford was assistant navigator, athletic officer and commanded an anti-aircraft battery. The Monterey never came under Japanese attack but Ford nearly lost his life by, of all things, slipping overboard during a typhoon. In fairness to Ford and his klutz reputation this December 1943 typhoon destroyed three destroyers and cost 800 Navy men their lives! Several of the on-deck planes crashed into each other during the storm, igniting a major fire that severely damaged the ship.
Ford was a Lieutenant Commander when he left the Navy in 46, and remained in the reserves until 1963.
Gerald Ford won election to Congress in 1948 and was re-elected continually until 1973 when he became the Vice President.
In 1962 a non-partisan magazine named Gerald Ford as the “Congressman’s Congressman.”
By 1964 there was press speculation that Ford was the logical choice for Vice President with Republican Nominee Barry Goldwater. (Stephanie Miller's grandfather got the 64 nod instead. Steph is the nastiest, meanest, cruelest, most unfair, divisive and ignorant left-wing talk show host in America today, as granddad rolls over in his Republican grave – and she's a very poor stand-up to boot.)
National columnist Mary McGrory was tabbing Jerry as a front-runner for president in 1968.
With the resignation of Spiro Agnew, the VP spot had to be filled. After confirmation hearings, Ford was sworn in as Vice-President in December of 1973.
Ford was 61 and a month when he was sworn in as president August of 1974. He was President of the USA for 895 days.
EVENTS
A TIME TO HEAL
CHOOSING A VP
CYPRUS
VLADIVOSTOK AND SALT II 11-74
FALL OF SOUTH VIETNAM TO COMMUNISTS
FALL OF CAMBODIA TO COMMUNISTS
MAYAGUEZ INCIDENT
BICENTENNIAL
2 ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATIONS - 9 -1975
BUTZ RESIGNATION
NIXON PARDON
NEW YORK CITY FINANCIAL CRISIS
IBERIAN POLITICAL TURMOIL
PATTY HEARST KIDNAPPING
SCHOOL BUSING TURMOIL IN BOSTON
FORD MEETS MAO 12 1975
HELSINKI ACCORDS JULY 1975
STAGFLATION
LEGIONNAIRES DISEASE
THE NIGHTMARE IS OVER?
Ford was sworn in when Nixon resigned. He gave a sad speech in which he regretted the events which had led him to the highest office in the land. Gerry gave us the sound bite for history,
“At last our long national nightmare is over.”
Actually it would not end until he pardoned the Millhouse perp a few weeks later. At that point the nightmare ended for America but began for Ford.
25TH AMENDMENT IN PRACTICE
In 1965 the Congress adopted the 25th Amendment. It was ratified two years later. By the terms of 25 the President in the event of the resignation, removal, or death of the Vice President is to appoint a successor to the office. The Senate would have to confirm the appointment. Previous to this Amendment there were several instances when the Vice President succeeded to the Presidency on the death of the President and the nation had no Vice President. There were other times when the VP died in office and was not replaced. Fortunately, the active Chief Executive never died while there was no Vice President. If that had happened there would have been a crisis of succession.
After Agnew resigned in 1973 Gerald Ford was the first person to be appointed to the Vice Presidency under the 25th Amendment, and became the first man to rise to the Presidency as a result of an appointment. It was a double case of ‘his accidency.’
OFF TO A ROCKY START
For the first time in US history an appointed President was going to appoint the Vice president under rule 25. The press had as much interest in this subject as it did in Ford's new cabinet or Ford himself.
There were several people “in the hunt,” and most of them certainly wanted the job. The three top candidates were clearly George H.W. Bush, Ronald Raeygon and Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller (Gerald Ford was no Dickens and he actually misspelled Ronald Reagan in a key memo 'Reaygon!')
Considering how much abuse Bush took as President from 1989-1993, and all the horrible names the left called him, it is interesting to read memoirs of the key players in the 1970's. Every time his name is mentioned, the word is positive. GHW Bush was almost universally respected admired and liked by people at every level of the Republican Party and had tremendous respect from the other side of the aisle. Bush was a popular choice for VP in 1974 because he was a popular man. And no one ever called him stupid or corrupt when he was a Congressman and as chairman of the RNC. That all came out of nowhere once he came into power in 1989 and the left needed a whipping boy. Now that he is an elder statesman and former president, no one ever suggests that he is or ever was “stupid” but we heard that one thousands of times when he was in office.
After stupid Bush there was rich and famous Nelson Rockefeller. He was living in Maine and running the Rockefeller foundation and honestly didn't particularly want to be Vice President. The not so famous want the prestige and power that come with the job, and Rockefeller already had known those things since he was an infant in his gold-plated crib. The extreme left hated him with an unreasoned passion, that's their job, hating rich Republican conservatives with unreasoned passion, but most people, even lost liberals knew that Nellie was a man of intelligence and ability, and other than personal divource scandal that had prevented him from being LBJ's VP in 1964, he was a man of integrity with no dirt on his $1,700 suits. (I like the old spelling on divource, aeroplane and theatre.)
Next was Ronald Reagan of California. He wanted the job and Ford liked him ok, but he probably would upstage Ford too much and might even try to steal the number one spot on the ticket in 1976, making it difficult for Ford to run. Nixon almost picked him to be the anointed VP in 1973, but the man wasn't capable of being passive enough to fit the bill. Ford's ego wasn't as threatened by Reagan, so RR got serious consideration. Reagan would later challenge Ford for the nomination in 1976 and contribute to the party defeat.
Also in the hunt was Eliot Richardson, the former Attorney General, Donald Rumsfeld later the supreme vulcan architect of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, sometimes erroneously referred to as a “War,” and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, a man with a common face and bald head who still haunts my memory because of his distinctive countenance (I can't walk through an airport without seeing three men who look like Melvin Laird, and I rarely find anyone who gets it when I point that out.)
In the end the choice was Rocky. Ford was fond of “The Rock”. Nelson Rockefeller had come close to making the VP spot three times already (64-68-73,) the public knew him and respected him, and he was considered a Republican version of liberal, meaning he was to the left of the extreme right while to the far right of the extreme left.
But the main reason Ford chose Rocky was because “Nelse” had no Watergate baggage and he was the only one who didn't. Bush was a loyal Nixon friend at the DNC, Reagan had defended Nixon in California to the near end, then fell silent when it was hopeless, Rumsfeld would have run to the corner store to get Nixon some salt for his spuckie,1In Boston, a 'spuckie' is a hero or submarine sandwich. Philly people call that sandwich a 'hoagie' – In Cleveland is called a 'gooba'
It reminds me of the election of 1856 when the Democrats chose James Buchanan because he had been away for years as Minister to Russia and was the only guy who had no baggage from the recent slavery controversies.
‘Rocky’ was confirmed and served with honor, especially when his photograph appeared in Newsweek angrily giving the middle finger to a heckler. He was walking past a crowd of protestors when he stopped to deliver the bird. It wasn't flipped from a podium during a speech, but nevertheless it was a mark of the changing times, and a far cry from the day when Washington thought it was beneath his dignity to shake hands with common citizens.
TAKING OVER
The transition was not easy for Ford for many reasons. The most important reason was that Nixon's flying monkeys and Oleo Guards were still running the White House castle. Robert Hartman calls them the “Praetorian Guard,” but the idea is the same, even if I use a lame Wizard of Oz analogy which I think people understand a little easier than “Praetorian Guard.”
Nixon was the Wicked Witch of the West, and when he melted away, the guards looked up said, “he's gone, you ruined him.” But they didn't follow the script and say “Hail to Gerald, the wicked old Nixon at last is gone.”
They did quite the opposite. The monkeys and oleos, said that Nixon may be gone but his policies and his henchmen will still rule this castle. The King of the oleos was Al Haig. The more I read about him, the more disgusted I get whenever I have to type his name.
Ford had named a transition team to plan the new White House, and he had named several members of his permanent staff. But Haig and Erlichman, and Kissinger stayed on and did not back off one bit. They and two dozen other big players intimidated Ford and his team. It was disgraceful the way Ford let the old Nixon players bully him and his team around, and it hurt the country. This wasn't harmless insider political infighting.
After two years of political turmoil the nation had finally rid itself of the corrupt King. He was off on a helicopter as the nation yelled, “And don't come back!.” But thanks to Ford's nice guys finish last aura, the Nixon team continued to in essence still run the White House. So Nixon was gone but his flying monkeys still ran the White House.
Ford should have fired every last one of them on the first day. But he didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Mr nice guy was being Mr. fool. Ford had already hurt himself by not once condemning Nixon during the final weeks of Dick's fall from the White House. Since Ford had stuck by his President to the end, it would be a little awkward to fire all the Nixon staff and say its time for some honesty and integrity in the White House.
On the very first day of his Presidency, the writing of the oleos was on the wall. Ford was sworn in in the East Room of the White House. There was only seating for about 180 people plus some standing room up the back. Nixon's men handled all the arrangements, of course.
In the front row were Ford's immediate family. The rest of the seats were packed with Nixon's holdover staff. Up the back of the room, standing and angry about it, were Ford's new appointments and old close staff from Jerry's VP days. Haig and his cronies were in the second row and they had just been allegedly kicked out of power.
Ford gives his touching speech about “our long national nightmare is over.” Then he retires to a back room for some consultations with top brass. Ford's new press Secretary Jerry ter Horst starts to walk in with Ford. Haig turns around and literally stops him physically with an extended palm and says, “No, you can't go in there.”
Ter Horst was livid. The same treatment was being given to all of Fords people Nixon's thugs. They were still in charge. Ford could name his own team but they couldn't make any moves without Nixon's people approving them. Just who the hell is in charge here? Haig and his 30-ish young flying monkeys made a monkey out of Ford from day one. Nixon's numbskulls never left the White House until Carter took over in January of 1977. They ruined the Ford presidency and insured that their nominal Republican leader could not get re-elected because they made sure his leadership stayed weak. They had already disgraced the White House and the nation in the Nixon years, now they clung to power and repeated the same offenses in the Ford years.
It is disgusting to read about, and I can tell you that from all the memoirs of the era that I have read, and I have read a few, the one thing that stands out most clear is that the all time pig-snake was General Alexander Haig. Ford should have fired that back-stabbing scoundrel five minutes after he finished his 'national nightmare' speech in the East Room. And I tell you dear reader that I would give up a finger on my right hand if I could go back in time and somehow be assigned the job of calling him into my office and firing him. To look him in the eye and fire him would be more delightful than my sports teams winning it all 15 years in a row.
The Nixon monkeys gave a memo to Ford on what he should tell the press. They gave similar memos to Ford's top staff. Ford was now the President and Nixon's people were ordering him and his staff what to say!
The memos told Ford and his staff to praise Nixon for all the leadership and courage he had displayed. They were told to praise Nixon for all the work he had done for peace and how he had made the world a better place! The man was facing criminal charges and Ford was ordered by Nixon's men to go out to meet the press and tell them that Nixon was a great leader, a great human being, and a great president!
Every member of Fords new team had to sign on to this amazing Haig memo,
“President Nixon fought long and hard and with all his might to serve the American people well, ending his Presidency with a selfless and courageous act. You can still serve him and the Nation by helping me to carry on the essential functions of the Presidency.”
I would write it this way,
“President Nixon fought long and hard to avoid getting caught at all the awful and illegal things he was doing. He held on longer than he should have if he cared for his country, and only resigned to avoid the embarrassment of certain impeachment. There was nothing selfless in his resignation. You should not even think about serving him now. He is gone and good riddance. You should only think about serving your new President, Mr. Ford. And you shouldn't think of me as a person of any particular importance anymore because Mike Donovan fired me 20 minutes ago and included some needlessly rude language in doing so.”
The arrogance of the first memo is incredible. What's even more hard to believe is that Ford let Nixon's boys intimidate him. Ford in his first speech as President stumbled far worse than he did stepping off of jet planes later on. He announced that “General Haig has unselfishly agreed to stay on.”
Unselfish? Haig never had an unselfish bone in his body. He stayed on because he had a lust for power and felt that since “he was in control here, in the White House” under Nixon (he played Nixon like a violin, by the way, bringing him down while pretending to be his loyal friend - see Silent Coup, that is the gist of the entire book, and “reporter” Bob Woodward was Haig's secret helper!) he might as well remain in control “here in the White House under Ford.” Haig looked down on Ford as a weak entity, a nice guy, not to bright who could be manipulated, and Haig was not off the mark. It's an oxymoron to unselfishly leave the most prestigious office building in the world.
In May of 1974 when it was beginning to look like he might have to resign, Nixon and Haig were in the Oval Office. Nixon leaned back in his chair and said, “Honestly Al, can you imagine Jerry Ford sitting in this chair?” Haig's response is unrecorded, but the Nixon comment is a fact, and says a lot about how the two of them perceived Ford. Maybe part of the reason Nixon was not too afraid to quit was because he knew that Haig would rule the White House in Nixon's name for the rest of the 1972 term.
Haig and his jerky boys also gave this memo to Ford personally regarding what he was to tell the press. Brace yourself if you are a decent and fair person,
DO
1 – Stress your high regard for President Nixon
2 – Talk of the incredible stress that Nixon's staff has been under these last few months.
3 – Speak of how admirable it was of them to remain loyal to Nixon to the very end.
4 – Speak of the special and heroic role of Al Haig.
5 – Speak of how important it is for you to retain Nixon's loyal staff for as long as it takes for you to settle in and complete the transition period.
6 – Mention that Al Haig will be actively involved in your Transition Team efforts.
DO NOT
At this time, do not commit yourself to dealing directly with anyone except Al Haig.
Good God, where's the barf-bag? The word for a roll-call of saints is a 'hagiography.' Al Haig won make any hagiography.
You could write a separate book on the ways that Haig behaved dishonorably in the Ford White House alone, let alone things he did under Nixon and Reagan (I could, come to think of it.)
One day a Ford counselor dropped an official document on the President's desk reminding him that he had appointed Pat Buchanan as Ambassador to South Africa. The counselor said without emotion that, “I'm a little surprised that you'd pick a right winger like Pat to be Ambassador to South Africa.” Ford said, “I didn't appoint Pat Buchanan Ambassador to South Africa!”
“But sir, there is your signature.”
The two men looked closely and realized it was the fake signature made by a machine. The original note was tracked down. It had been signed, “H.” Then a final official copy was made with the fake signature of Jerry Ford. Alexander Haig had actually named his old Nixon friend Pat Buchanan Ambassador to South Africa and tried to slip it past the President. Ask any liberal today to name three famous racist Republicans and they will put Pat Buchanan on the list. I don't necessarily agree with the liberals that Pat is a racist, but just the idea that a guy like that is perceived as being one, and Haig would put him in South Africa in the era of Apartheid, and do it without the President's knowledge, let alone approval, gives you some idea of what an insufferable knave Haig really was. It would have been offensive enough if the person Haig tried to put in was a conciliator and a gentle and understanding soul. Who has ever said that about Pat Buchanan. Pat was man who campaigned in 1992 against fellow Republican GHW Bush on the platform that “Bush is a liberal! Vote a true conservative!”
This went on repeatedly. Haig was sending out one order after another with the initial “H” on the bottom. These were directives that only the president was authorized to order and here was “A H” giving commands as though he were Prez. The initials are perfect since he is the all-time “AH” as far as I'm concerned.
THE DODGERS GET THEIR INJURED PLAYERS BACK 8 1974
Gerry (not Jerry – People who pretended to be an old pal and spelled it Jerry gave their insincerity away) made a surprise decision to offer conditional amnesty to Vietnam draft-dodgers who had fled the country rather than serve in the Army in Vietnam. Coming from a Republican, this was truly an act of heartfelt forgiveness. For a Democrat it would have been an accepted move within the creed.
Ford was going on an August road trip to give two speeches, one to a liberal college, the other to a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Chicago. Ford shocked his staff by first telling them about the amnesty, and then by telling them he was going to do it in Chicago in front of the VFW. They begged him to reconsider. Do it in front of the college where he's get cheers instead of boos. Ford responded by saying “I played more than 120 football games at the center of the line of scrimmage. I'm not afraid of boos. Besides, if I can get it past the VFW, its as good as past the entire country.” The staff looked at each other and had to admit that his logic was pretty good. The one thing they all agreed on was that it had to be kept secret from Al Haig.
Ford opened the speech to the VFW with some easy mark remarks on how the draft-dodgers had shirked their duties while brave men had risked their lives and that they deserved to be condemned. This got a wild ovation. Then he waited till all was quiet and began to talk about conditional amnesty. The quiet got even more quiet if such a thing is possible. He stressed that each amnesty would be treated individually, and that deserters and draft-dodgers weren't in the same class. In fact deserters deserved even more of a break because they had served for a while before they succumbed to the stress and terror of war. It was more important that the nation heal its wounds than it was to punish the draft-dodgers. Showing some forgiveness might be the best thing for America right now. The war had never been popular and most of the dodgers were sincere in their beliefs. If the Vietnamese had attacked Pearl Harbor, he was sure that 98% of those same people who left the country would have been the first ones in line to volunteer for duty. By the time he wrapped up the speech the audience had been persuaded by his logic, moved by his appeals to their Christian spirit, and impressed by his courage in dropping the bombshell on them instead of a safe audience. Ford finished and the Chicago VFW's gave Ford a long ovation as Al Haig stood off to the side with a look of uncontrolled rage on his face.
PARDON MY NIXON
On September 8, 1974, less than one month after taking office, Gerald Ford granted a full Presidential pardon to the disgraced President Nixon, and as a result Ford’s approval rating plummeted. Most people believed that this was part of a “corrupt bargain.” It was the end of the Ford presidency, the torpedo in the ship that went down two years and two months later.
Maybe there was some sort of a back-door deal, maybe there wasn't. The big question was whether the deal was struck before or after Nixon gave the Presidency to Ford. If Haig and Nixon's friends in the White House had nagged Ford about pardoning their old boss, when Ford was their boss, and Ford denied it with a straight face, that would be forgivable. But if it was a squid pro quo, if that was the condition upon which Nixon agreed to give the Presidency, in the form of the Vice presidency, to Ford, that is not fordgivable.
When Agnew resigned in 1973 Nixon had been in a position to name almost anyone he wanted to for the Vice Presidency. Nix knew that Watergate was crashing in around him and that he may not finish his term. Therefore he was in a position to king someone, to virtually name the next president. It didn't take a suspicious imagination to think that he could have offered the presidency in exchange for a future presidential pardon if he were forced to resign. Or perhaps another part of the corrupt bargain would be that Nixon still got to have plenty of say in how to run the government as a sort of semi-regent. Nixon's input was only a Ford phone call away every day if that were the terms.
Ford used the Agnew example to justify the pardon of Nixon. When Agnew got in trouble, he faced possible severe criminal prosecution. But when he resigned the Vice Presidency the country generally felt that this was plenty punishment enough. There was no great clamor for putting him in jail, and the legal system allowed him a compromise charge, plea and no jail sentence. The whole affair was behind everyone. The logic behind not letting it slide with Nixon was, why allow him to avoid jail when some of his cronies were being prosecuted and being fitted for orange suits. Ford answered that argument with the Agnew example.
I don’t think it is in Ford’s character to directly make such an evil deal to obtain the Vice-Presidency. You can't study his life as in depth as I have (not very) and not conclude the same. Ford was nicknamed,
“Mr Nice Guy” in Congress. The leopard wasn't going to change his spots just this one time.
But in the world of politically experienced men like Ford, Nixon, and Haig it was more possible that they gently explored these subjects in language so indirect and guarded as to enable all of them to feel clean legally and morally, even if the conversation was being taped. They may have cut the deal with brilliant soft-speak language plus a tone or a glance, but not in some dastardly concrete plan sealed by them all cutting their thumbs and rubbing their blood together and making a vow.
Carter beat Ford in a fairly close race in 1976. Without the Nixon pardon Ford wins in 76. The pardon cost Ford and the Republicans the White House, sank the general esteem of politicians to an all time low (to this day), and enabled the pacifist Jimmy Carter to go to Washington and set back US foreign policy 70 years to the Grover Steven Cleveland era. The pardon also saved Richard Nixon from certain jail time.
If there was a secret bargain then of course we say, ‘Smash up the Ford.’ But if there wasn’t then Ford deserves credit for doing something he knew was going to destroy him politically. He had to know that the pardon would probably cost him re-election. If there was no deal, Ford showed a profile in courage.
I knew a guy at the telephone company in California when residing there in 1976 in San Jose, Pasadena and Altadena. He swore to me up and down that everyone at the office knew that the Ford-Nixon phone bills showed two hour phone calls every day, sometimes longer. He claimed had had seen photo copies of the astronomical San-Clemente to Washington telephone bills and it was common gossip around the phone company that Nixon was running he country by phone. That is a true story (that he told me that.) He insisted on it vehemently when I doubted him.1
September 8 was also the day Evil Kneival tried to jump the Snake River in Idaho on a motorcycle. The event was a media bonanza. For weeks we heard about the Snake River Canyon jump almost as much as Watergate. Then, halfway across the Canyon, the weirdo's parachute opens pre-maturely and he floats down into the river.
TEARY HORST
The day after the pardon, Ford's press secretary Jerry ter Horst resigned in protest (and yes, his last name is spelled with a small t in the first letter, and is often misspelled by historians as Ter Horst.
Some people feel that it was admirable for Jerry t to take a stand and let the nation know how he felt; Principles, above personalities.
I am inclined to agree with both Larry Speakes and Bob Hartman who both felt that ter Horst did an unfair amount of damage to Ford and the Republican Party by his action. Ford and ter Horst were old friends, or at least they were supposed to be. Ter Horst (start of sentence allows capital t) owed his big shot job in life to Ford and without Gerry, Jerry would have been an unknown back in Michigan when the pardon went down. Was there any real need for him to ter down his old friend in a grandiose gesture of 'look at how moral I am as opposed to my boss'?
Ford was certainly going to take enough heat and abuse from the entire world for his deed. He didn't need ter Horst piling on the old center. Such an act of protest resignation seems more appropriate, courageous, and productive when it is done in response to a President taking a popular action that one does not agree with. When Jimmy Carter ordered the doomed Rescue Mission to save the hostages in 1980, Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State resigned in protest. This was far honorable than what and when ter Horst did to Ford. Vance gave everyone fair warning ahead of time, and did not make his resignation effective immediately, in a move to show there were no hard feelings.
Ter Horst did not give the Ford staff early warning so they could try to adjust Ford's speeches to acknowledge that some within his own Administration did not agree with the decision to pardon Nixon, and he could respect that. Ter Horst Pearl-Harbored Ford by playing big man. JtH was really acting pompously small. Some analysts believed that in the quest to win the Election of 1976, the resignation of ter Horst caused as much damage to the Ford ticket as the pardon itself. At a moment in time when some damage control was critically needed, ter Horst poured gasoline on the fire. Then ter Horst then wrote a best seller about “The Future of the Presidency.” You should know plenty about that, ter Horst. You ruined it for your old friend.
KISSINGER
Henry Kissinger remained as Ford's Secretary of State. The press and the liberals didn’t have Nixon to kick around anymore but they still had his vice-devil, Kissinger as a substitute soccer-ball.
Many analysts thought that Kissinger was the power behind the throne since Ford was a weak president. Someone on Ford’s staff leaked stories to the press that Ford and Henry the K. had several disagreements about foreign policy that ended with Ford barely overruling Kissinger. It was a picture of a President who was barely allowed to make how own foreign policy decisions. The stories weren’t true. Ford and Kissinger always had a good relationship and Kissinger never conducted any rogue foreign policy of his own.
Kissinger was active in Middle Eastern diplomatic affairs throughout the Ford months. He was trying to solve the Arab-Israeli dispute in the aftermath of the 1973 war. I think he has done a lot of hard work for our country even if he did support some bad people in Chile for Machiavellian reasons a while back. I think on the whole, Henry does not deserve the vilification he receives from the left. 99% of his critics never read his memoirs. They could at least have the decency to give his side a hearing before calling him a Nazi.
Kissinger traveled to many dangerous parts of the world to seek peaceful solutions to violent situation, all the while under the threat of endless assassination plots. He did more to at least try to help his country than most of the people who call him Mr. Evil.
When the North Vietnamese overran Saigon and Cambodia in 1975, the right turned on Kissinger as being the dove who sold us out. This, after years of the left calling him the worst war-hawk fascist that ever lived west of the Atlantic.
CYPRUS CRISUS
Political turmoil was sweeping the Mediterranean island of Cyprus when Ford took the wheel. The first foreign policy bulletin for Ford to face came when Cypriot rebels murdered the United States Ambassador to Cyprus, Stan Tall. That was just one week into his Presidency.
The Cyprus Crisus carried over from the Nixon into the Ford Administrations.
Cyprus was an independent nation, with 60% Greeks and 40% Turks on the island. Greece and Turkey were arch-enemies. Gee, what could possibly go wrong?
In July of 1974 Greek rebels staged a coup, and installed a military dictatorship. Turkey could barely tolerate a Cyprus that slightly favored Greece in its foreign policy, but it could not tolerate a Cyprus that was a virtual satellite state of Greece. Turkey reacted to the pro-Greek coup by invading Cyprus without a declaration of war. Turkey gobbled up most of Cyprus in the fall of 1974 and there was serious fighting for every inch of land. Cyprus became a flaming Guadalcanal in the tourist trap Mediterranean.
The United States reacted with 127 speeches in Congress denouncing Turkey, and 12 defending it (Don't ask me where I got those stats.) Both Houses passed a resolution not only condemning Turkey for its aggression, but cutting of US funds. Turkey had been a bad bird and had to be taught a lesson.
President Ford vetoed the Congressional actions in each House and both Houses sustained the veto.
A certain amount of racial and religious bigotry was involved in the resolutions. Turkey was an Islamic state, Greece an Orthodox Christian.
Few Americans were of Turkic racial stock, while the Greek-American population was considerable. Ford also felt that Turkey had been a loyal ally and should be treated with more equanimity. On a US selfish level, Turkey was a very important member of NATO and a bastion of strength against Soviet Communist encroachment in the Middle East. It wouldn't be wise to alienate Turkey and it wouldn't be sane to cut off arms to Turkey when it was using those weapons to look after US foreign policy interests in the region. Congress just wanted to show how high and mighty they were on moral grounds without examining all the facts fairly or shrewdly. It was similar to the way Jimmy Carter later criticized the Soviets on “human rights” and irritated them to the point of ruining the chance for Cold War reconciliation.
In the spring of 1975, just as Ford was preparing for his important trip to the Helsinki Conference (much more on that later) Congress voted on a bill to lift the ban on arms sales to Turkey. The vote was no and Ford took it personally. The President said that Congress “has slapped me in the face.” Turkey responded by closing 21 out of its 22 military bases open to US forces. Turkish premier Demeril was scheduled to go to Helsinki to negotiate a settlement of the Cyprus Crisus with his Greek counterpart. Demeril told the US Ambassador in Ankara that he had changed his mind. “Tell the US Congress that I am going to stay home and watch soccer games. At least my team has a chance of winning.” Cy Vance quipped that “After reading this message from Demeril, I need a demerol.”
VLADIVOSTOK AND SALT II FRAMEWORK ACCORDS 11-74
Nixon had planned a trip to Asia for November, so President Ford decided to show some soul and honor the commitment in his place. Ford went to Souel, Korea and to Vladivostok. He met Brezhnev in that Siberian city and the two had a serious talk. Leonid lectured Ford on how the two nations must work together to achieve peace and he held on to Ford hand for a long time as they spoke. The two men rode together in the lack of a limo to the plane to see Ford off and Brezhnev held on to Ford's hand the whole time, making Ford a little uncomfortable.
It was here in chilly Vladivostok that Ford may have made his best contribution to humanity as President. It was here that Jerry and Leo signed the Salt II accords.
Salt stands for Strategic Arms Limitations Talks. This was the first attempt to freeze the nuclear arsenal of the two superpowers. By Salt terms, both sides could each only have about 2,800 missiles capable of leaving a crater where Moscow or New York used to be. At the moment they were chatting in Vladivostok, each had not quite twice that many, and this couldn't be done overnight and had much to do with stopping some deployment of new systems near completion and killing some research and development programs.
The Salt II Treaty would not be formally drafted and signed until 1979 when Brezhnev and Carter shook hands on it in Vienna. But in December 1979 the USSR invaded Afghanistan and Carter the next month went before Congress and asked them to postpone a vote on ratification of Salt II. The peacemaker Carter was missing a great chance to be one by striking back at the Soviets like a child. All that work by Ford and then Carter down the drain getting this nuke deal done. Reagan and the USSR voluntarily adhered to most of the terms of Salt II as outlined in 1974 and signed in 1979. But one of the terms of 1974 was that Salt II was good for a ten year trial. It expired in 1985. Reagan let it expire in 1985 and a lot of critics called him a hawk for it, but Reagan never believed in MAD Mutual Assured Destruction, and had long ago warned that he believed the United State should be allowed to build a defensive ballistic missile system.
VIETNAM EXIT
When Jerry King was president the North Vietnamese and their Khmer Rouge allies reneged on the Peace Treaty of 1973 and invaded and enslaved South Vietnam and Cambodia. Millions were murdered and The United States under Ford did nothing and reacted by not reacting.
This is the political event that changed me from left to center in three weeks. We were supposed to be the bad guys in Nam and the Southeast Asian common folk supposedly did not care whether they lived under democracy or communism. We all bought it. Well those folk certainly cared after the Communists took over and piled their skulls up to the clouds. Maybe our mission in Vietnam wasn’t that cut and dried wrong after all and maybe we should have fought it correctly and won it in the mid-60’s. I did say “maybe.”
The phrase was “decent interval.” The Paris Peace Accords signed in January of 1973 which terminated American military participation in the war, had stipulated that North Vietnam was not to resume offensive operations against the South. President Nixon gave South Vietnam his personal assurance that if North Vietnam resumed its invasion, then the USA would return in strength to enforce the broken agreement.
If the North Vietnamese had immediately resumed the attack in early 1973, a week or a month after the US left, Nixon might have even been able to send the forces back in. It's even possible that North Vietnam would have been properly condemned as liars and murderous cutthroats
But the sly cats waited out what was coined a “decent interval,” before starting up the third Vietnam War, the end game. The interval strategy paid off. By 1975 Watergate had reduced the former President's pledge to useless. 'Tricky Dick' had left the White House lawn in the helicopter of shame, Congress had passed the restrictive “War Powers Act,” and mild mannered nice guy Gerald Ford was the new Commander in Chief.
Congressman Ford had been a hawk on the war in the 1960’s, and in 1975 he actually did personally favor a strong reaction to the brazen NV violation of the 1973 accords, but the matter was out of his hands. By now the mood of the country was so overwhelmingly against any idea of returning to Vietnam that Ford had no choice but to betray the promise that Nixon had made to President Thieu and the South Vietnamese people.
Many presidents like to emphasize the ability of a strong president to do anything he wants if he or she has the will, but I don't think even Teddy Roosevelt with an approval rating of 75% could have sent the US Army back into Vietnam in 75 without being impeached and removed from office within the next 75 days.
In January of 1975 the North Vietnamese made a test invasion, a Dieppe Raid of sorts against the SV province of Phuoc Long on the border with Cambodia to the northwest of Saigon. As usual the attack was launched from Cambodia. The Communists were trying to raise the military and political reaction from the United States to see if it might be ok to start the final drive for victory sooner rather than later. Was the interval indecent or decent?
Not only did the United States gloriously not react, but the incursion met so little resistance that the test raid became the beginning of the actual invasion.
The North Vietnamese strategic military plan was to start the final drive sometime in 1975 and to win the pennant by the end of 1976. They did not expect to be drinking champagne in Saigon and renaming it Ho Chi Minh City before the United States celebrated the Bicentennial, but that is what happened. The South Vietnamese leaders fled the country. T-54 tanks from Russia and China crashed through the gates of the President's Palace and an empty American Embassy. For Giap and Dong it was too good to be Thieu. Ho was dancing in his grave, oblivious to my spit piling up on top of it.
At the height of the invasion Ford told a Missouri audience that the Vietnam War 'was over as far as the United States was concerned' and the college mob erupted into a rousing ovation greater than if he had scored a touchdown for Michigan in a home game. This was the US signal to the South Vietnamese Army that they were going to be conquered, captured, tortured and executed while the home front hippies cheered with delight and the conservatives had to start behaving according to the dictates of their long-haired constituents.
For by now, the hippies were everyone but a few squares that were ridiculed. Everybody was hip. Everybody was left. Hockey players and senators had long hair. The squares were at an absolute nadir of about 3% of the general population. Ford could more easily have led the USA into an invasion of Canada than he could have recommitted our forces to Vietnam.
The Communists celebrated victory in Saigon on May 7, 1975. By this time the North Vietnamese Army was the third largest in the world. Some underdog peasant heroes they were.
In the meantime the Khmer Rouge, with the help of the North Vietnamese army, both supplied by the USSR via China had overwhelmed the Cambodian Army and surrounded Phnom Penh. When this city finally fell, it was time for the Killing Fields. Countless Cambodian citizens were either murdered or relocated to terrible camps far from the city. The Khmer Rouge ran the country red with the blood of two to three million civilians dead. It was a genocide half as great as the one committed by the Nazis.
These events should have been an epiphany for the American left. So these were the people we had been fighting since the end of 1962. They weren't so noble after all, nor was their cause. Left leaders had been praising the Viet Cong and the Communists as admirable victims of US aggression since I was old enough to start reading political columns voluntarily.
And yet liberals who take a cursory look at recent history still blame US foreign policy for the genocide in Cambodia. It’s implied in our new high school senior or college freshman history books.
Let us clarify this error now. Communists committed the genocide in Cambodia. That’s why we were in Vietnam, to fight the communists. It wasn’t for oil. It wasn’t to stop terrorism, it was to fight Communism and everything it stood for. When we left they marched in and massacred in Hitlerian numbers. The cold war was not just a super power struggle for power alone. It was a moral crusade on both sides. There was something to their ideals and there was something to ours. But the war was on, cold, warm, or almost hot.
When Communism fell in the period 1989-1992 the Nam lefties joined in the celebration! The unbridled audacity! You were the ones who admired the Ho Chi Minh warriors and condemned the United States for intervening in a colonial war of oppression against a people who allegedly did not care whether they lived under Communism or Democracy. You were the ones who said that we were just as bad if not worse than they were. You were the ones who blamed the United States for the Killing Field in Cambodia. It was you who looked the other way when the truth was revealed after South Vietnam fell and even pro-communists were thrown into concentration (re-education) camps there. Now you join the celebration. If you wiped tears from your eyes when the Berlin Wall came down, how bout an apology for being completely wrong about the nature of Communism in Southeast Asia from 1962 to 1979? It was all part and parcel of the same philosophy. Ho, Giap, and Van Dong all studied and worshipped Marx, Lenin, and Mao. The idea that the North Vietnamese were an isolated nationalist group, who only accepted Communist support from Russia and China as a temporary expedient to win their independence is a lie.
MAYAGUEZ INCIDENT;
Most young people today have never heard of the US freighter Mayaguez. They know of 1975 as a time when Jerry Ford was being ridiculed by Saturday Night Left for stumbling, disco music was big, and cocaine was on the rise as a power drug. But to those who lived through the Ford presidency, the Mayaguez incident was the biggest banner headlines story of them all, bigger than the Nixon Pardon, the fall of Saigon or Salt II. It electrified the country as no other event in Ford's era.
On May 12 1975 the American merchant steamer Mayaguez was traveling with a cargo of food and paint from Hong Kong to the port of Sattahip in Thailand. 60 miles off the coast of Cambodia and in international waters by a clear margin, Khmer Rouge Cambodian gunboats surrounded Mayaguez, then fired on and captured it. The Communist navy took as prisoner the completely innocent crew of 39 men.
The situation was an instant crisis for Ford and his advisors. It was a difficult mess. It was Ford's Iran Hostage Crisis, and he handled his better than Carter did his.
Ford faced a lot of obstacles. America was in the midst of an anti-military hysteria, yet a military response was the only conceivable solution. American naval forces were more than a days travel away. Limited US forces on Thai bases were available but the Thai government would object to their use against Cambodia, since Thailand would have to deal with this murderous Communist neighbor long after the Mayaguez incident was settled. The Thai government’s position was understandable. Thailand helped by at least making it clear that it wasn’t going to try and stop the US from taking its own action.
Kissinger and Ford both agreed that it was essential that the US show some muscle. Our prestige in the world had shrunk to the status of paper tiger. Pacifism, defeatism and the War Powers Act shackled US military forces, and took all the teeth out of American diplomatic power. U.S. allies were beginning to think of forming their own defense groupings without the United States. SEATO was an old joke, maybe NATO was a joke too. By the summer of 1975 even Israel was beginning to question whether she could count on US support in future conflicts as she had in the past.
The USA did not even know exactly where the Mayaguez was. The carrier Coral Sea was steaming towards the area but even if it could send out an air combat group, it could not be sure that its ordnance would not be endangering the American prisoners if used. No one knew where the prisoners were or where they were headed. So the first priority was to locate Mayaguez and the second, to know for certain the exact whereabouts of the crew.
Ford called China to help as an intermediary, but that loyal friend of the Khmer Rouge said, 'There's nobody here, call back tomorrow.'
Various contradictory reports came in about the location of Mayaguez but finally a reconnaissance plane located the ship drifting in the water preparing to anchor near a small offshore Cambodian Island. Ford, remembering the Pueblo affair of 1968 when a US ship was kidnapped by North Korea in international waters and held for many months, humiliating the Johnson Administration, ordered US ships to block the space between the island and the Cambodian mainland.
Thai Premier Pramoj now publicly declared that the US could not use Thai bases as a launch pad for rescue operations. Ford ignored this warning as being only an insincere political gesture and sent 1,100 marines from Okinawa to Thailand. Pramoj was saying no and meaning yes. He needed a cover story for his neighbors later on.
US Reconnaissance planes went to the freighter Mayaguez and came under heavy ground fire attack. They reported that several small Cambodian military boats had tried to approach the Mayaguez, but US planes attacked the small-craft and several were sunk. Some US planes were damaged by the ground fire. American planes fired warning shots across the bow of Mayaguez while more US navy ships closed in.
Ford spent half a sleepless night worrying about the Cambodian gunboats that he had approved the attack upon. What if some members of the Mayaguez had been on those gunboats? Had he killed Americans through friendly fire? After tossing and turning over it, Gerold decided, unlike Carter in 79, that these risks came with the job and fell asleep like a tired football lineman after a long afternoon on the grass.
On Tuesday there was bad news. One of our helos had crashed in Thailand, killing all 23 US servicemen aboard. It was an accident that could have happened anywhere in the world in peacetime but in light of the situation it would be seen as a combat loss. The Chinese meanwhile still refused to deliver any messages to Cambodia for us but did hint that they would not react against us if we used military force, a wise decision since we were already in the process of doing so and they did not want to hurt the new rapprochement with America, and lose a trillion yen in future trade benefits. They also avoided a loss of face, like telling some punks to “Go ahead and deface the side of that building. Its ok by me.”
Next a report came in that an A-7 attack plane had spotted a ship heading for the Cambodian mainland and was about to destroy it when the pilot noticed what he guessed to be a group of Caucasians huddled on deck. It was something of a no-win situation if they were the crew of the Mayaguez. Not attacking would allow the Cambodians to move them to a prison on the Cambodian main. To attack would be to kill them with friendly fire. Meanwhile other small Cambo (the US headline writers used this term often) attack boats tried to leave the island and were destroyed from the air.
The US Ambassador to the UN John Scali delivered a letter to Gensec Kurt Waldheim requesting help. But The Unhelpful Nations lived up to the name I just gave it. So much for that long shot.
On Wednesday afternoon a NSC meeting examined several levels of military response options as US ships zeroed in on the Mayaguez. At the least the Navy would employ whatever means necessary to rescue the crew and then scoot home. Another debated option was to rescue the crew and then give Cambodia proper a megaton taste of our B-52 bombers as punishment and warning to all nations that the tiger still had teeth.
Kissinger, Ford, and Defense Secretary Schlesenger were arguing over these options. Schlesinger was arguing against military force over and above what was necessary to complete the rescue mission. Jim never backed down from his opinion that adding punitive raids to the rescue mission was just senseless killing that was't going to make a bit of difference in the political situation in Southeast Asia or in our relationship to it, except perhaps make it worse for the long haul. The rest of the guys told him he was wrong. They said that this was a perfect moment to show the world that the United States would not lightly be pushed around anywhere on earth. Just because we had withdrawn from Southeast Asia did not mean that we had become the laughing stock target for any aggressions anyone felt like hurling at us. Americans weren't clowns at the fair waiting for little nations to hit the bulls eye and dunk Uncle Sam into the little tub of cold water. Kissinger and others said that this was a provocation and should be answered in kind, and just getting the hostages back didn't fit the bill. The argument reached a deadlock and exhausted itself. “Slesh” had courage and what he said made sense. What the others said made sense too. No one could win or lose the argument. Ford looked at everyone and no one had an answer.
Then to everyone's shock an unauthorized voice spoke up. It was a man named Kennerly whose job title was only photographer. He had often been present taking pics of important national security meetings. He was a man in his 20's and had never spoken at one of these meetings before and had no formal right to. The mere fact that he was speaking had everyone listening in shocked silence,
“Has anyone ever considered that this might be the act of a local Cambodian commander who has just taken it into his own hands to halt any ship that comes by? Has anyone stopped to think that he might not have gotten his orders from Phnom Penh? If that's what happened, you know, you can blow the whole place away and it’s not gonna make any difference. Everyone here has been talking about Cambodia as if it were a traditional government. Like France. We have trouble with France, we just pick up the telephone and call. We know who to talk to. But I was in Cambodia just two weeks ago, and it’s not that kind of government at all. We don’t even know who the leadership is. Has anyone ever considered that?”
The argument resumed, based on this new point. After 20 more minutes, Ford announced that what Kennerly said made sense and the meeting adjourned! Kennerly's prescient comment helped persuade Ford not to launch massive retaliatory air raids on the Cambodian mainland as some in the room advocated. But he did compromise. Ford authorized some tactical punitive air raids on Cambodia, but nothing like the massive B-52 attacks that Kissinger and others wanted. (These air raids were never completed and reports came in to Ford during the drama tha they had been. Ford was given false reports of completed missions that were not completed or even started. The Cambodians were not punished with punitive raids that the President ordered! In his memoirs, Ford said he kept asking the military what happened and could never get a good answer so he dropped the matter! Some military historians should get on this one.)
Jimmy Carter maybe could have used this photographer during the Iran Hostage Crisis. There were some similarities between these days and 1979-80 when Carter did not have a real government to negotiate with in Iran.
Kennerly was fired the next day of course for speaking out of turn.
The Ford team thought the American hostages were still on the little island of Koh Tang. The Marines planned a sharp assault against the island to rescue the prisoners. The mission was timed to coincide with the re-capture of the Mayaguez. Ford informed key Congresspersons of the operation in detail, as he was obliged to under the War Powers Act.
Intelligence estimates of Cambodian troop strength on the island were off the mark. 175 Marines were assigned to the helicopter assault force and were expecting 20 to 30 Cambodian opposition troops. Instead they landed in a red-hot firefight against 200 enemy men. Three of the US helos crashed. Two whirlybirds were damaged enough to prevent landing and as a result only 110 Marines got in. They established a safe small perimeter base and expanded it in a hard fight against the gradually retreating Cambodians. But they did not find the crew of the Mayaguez.
Miles away, just a few minutes later the USS Holt pulled up alongside Mayaguez and stormed the ship. Once again, the crew was not found. There were no round eyes on Mayaguez.
While American force was unsuccessful in it’s immediate mission, the use of military force had gotten the attention of the Cambodian “government.” The operation had not achieved a military solution but it opened up path to the political solution. Phnom Pehn radio soon broadcast an announcement that Cambodia was willing to return the Mayaguez. Gee, I wonder why they are changing their minds? The return of the crew was not specified but the situation was changing for the better quite quickly.
Here we come to those “phantom air strikes.” If Cambodia had included the people of the Mayaguez, instead of just the ship in their conciliatory announcement, this attack would have been cancelled. But it wasn’t cancelled. The President ordered a limited surgical air strike on the Cambodian mainland. Schlesinger reported to Ford, "first strike completed." Later it would come out that this strike had never even got off the ground!
At 11 p.m. that evening Washington time, Ford received the good news. A reconnaissance plane had spotted a fishing boat headed towards the scene of the fighting and its deck was crowded with Caucasians waving white flags at the aircraft. Soon the USS Wilson stopped the fishing boat. “Rescue Eight” radioed its way all over the world, (the code for a complete rescue success.) Ford told his assembled advisors at the White House the news and they cheered like drunken soccer fans.
President Ford then got word to the Marines on the island to disengage as effectively as possible and begin evacuations from the island, from Cambodia and from Indochina for good.
Three dead Marines were left behind on Koh Tang. One account say that they were taken prisoner and then executed. All of the KIA's in the Mayaguez incident are on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. They are the last casualties of the VW.
The Mayaguez incident had cost the US 41 KIA and 50 wounded. More men died saving the hostage than hostages were saved. But that's what Marines are for. To give their lives so others may live. To fertilize the soil of justice and progress with their blood. (I'm paraphrasing the sarge in Full Metal Jacket, of course.) They did their duty in defending the innocent seamen of the Mayaguez.
The Mayaguez turned into scrap iron in 1979. It wasn't a particularly good-looking ship.
MAYAGUEZ POST GAME SHOW
Critics said that military force in the Mayaguez crisis was a political move but Ford did what had to be done as Commander in Chief and he deserves praise for this performance. It was perhaps the only bright spot on his presidency. It also showed that when you get tough with kidnappers it doesn't man they automatically will kill all the hostages. That was the basis for Carter not using military force in 1979-80, and here we see that force certainly didn't backfire on Ford in Cambodia.
After the rescue of the crew, Ford's approval rating jumped 11% in one week. Giant headlines compensated for our loss of military prestige in the big picture with martial praise for the smaller operation. US SINKS THREE CAMBO SHIPS! exclaimed the New York Post, for example, although a naval person would question the Post's definition of what constituted a ship.
We had lost the war but celebrated a victory in a post-war skirmish as consolation. Left writers mocked Ford and the US for gloating over a small victory over a small foe, as though we were the bullies. But the United States certainly hadn’t started the battle of the Mayaguez just for propaganda purposes. If anyone had done that it was the Khmer Rouge.
The left hit Ford hard for taking military action, a crime in and of itself for any reason. A New York Times article was titled 'Barbarous Piracy.' Guess which side was being called piratical.
Or how about the unfair account of the Mayaguez incident in a 1994 US History textbook 'Out of Many'';
The final U.S. military action in Indochina actually
took place a few weeks later when the new
Communist Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia
seized the American merchant ship Mayaguez.
Forty-one Marines died and fifty more were wounded
in a misguided attempt to save the thirty-nine crew
members who had already been released.
Wow.
WIN
President Ford made a speech before Congress with a big gaudy button on his suit that said WIN. In his speech he explained that it stood for ‘Whip Inflation Now.”
The economy was bad enough during the Ford term. But the slogan was even worse. The WIN button only increased the silliness of the Jerry Ford image. It was a win for comedians who used it for ridicule, adding fuel to the ‘lets make a fool out of Ford’ fire.
How bad was the economy? I lived in New York City were no swab the deck jobs on the island. That was bad. Today I can walk into any of 75 places and get a lousy job for minimum wage starting first thing next Monday, and the economy is supposedly in an Obaminable crisis. In Ford’s time there was near double-digit inflation. In recent years it has remained at around 2.5%.
Even though Republicans like to blame the stagflation (recession plus inflation) on the Carter Administration, the truth is, the hard economic Carter times were part of a bi-partisan effort that began in the Nixon-Ford era.
SOLSHYNITSYN
About the hippest guy in the United States in the Ford years was a Russian born author named Alexander Solshynitsyn. AS emigrated to the United States and wrote defiant rebellious novels, poems, and essays condemning the Soviet system. His work was hot stuff. The Gulag Archipelago was such a big-seller that you might find housewives on vacation in the Bahamas with that paperback in her purse (I said might.) People on the subway were reading “Solsho” for fun and colleges were requiring it. Alex never really expressed a great deal of love for the American system, but he certainly expressed a great deal of hate for his old system of Soviet Communism. I tried to read his work several times,
and only a couple of concrete essays in Foreign Affairs connected well.
Solshynitsyn was forever bothering President Ford to come to the White House to discuss Soviet affairs and his latest crusade. Ford often acceded to the demand and met with the Vermont hermit.
But Ford complained that he was just being used by “that greedy grey-bearded roosky.” All of Ford's staff felt the same, that Solshynitsyn had really nothing to offer Ford, and was using the meetings to help increase his book sales. Solshynitsyn's nickname behind his back around the White House was “Horse's Ass.” That comes straight from Ron Nessen's book, and was one of those juicy tidbits that they spotlighted when promoting, It Sure Looks Different From the Inside.
PATTY HEARST KIDNAPPING
The unluckiest man in the Ford years was Stephen Weed. Armed men break into his house, beat him up and kidnap his fiancee. The bride to be then joins up with the kidnappers, robs banks for them, has sex orgies with them, and never so much as kisses Stephen again. That's some serious bad luck. Not even a bad week at the craps table can compete with that!
Her name was Patty Hearst. She was 20 years old, rich, slim, pretty and single. Her grandfather was one of the most famous men who had ever lived. If you saw the movie Citizen Kane (allegedly the greatest movie ever made) it was not too loosely based on her grandfather the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.
Poor Weed thought he was in like Flynt. Life is good when you're engaged to a hot millionairess.
When Patty Hearst was kidnapped it was headline news all over the country. Where was she? The poor young woman! Poor Stephen Weed. For days the search for the missing Hearst was on and the nation feared for her life and had compassion for Mr Weed.
The all of a sudden out of nowhere a gang of armed robbers stick up a California bank with machine guns. Guess who's holding one of the tommy-guns. Who's that in the bank camera picture? Is it...? Can it be...?
Good Lord, Patty Hearst is holding bank employees at bay with a machine gun just two weeks after being kidnapped. What the hell is going on here? If she wasn't headline news already, the media blitz jumped tenfold! Photos of Patty Hearst holding machine gun was on the front page of every newspaper in the country. It was strangely sexy. The whole bizarre story was one of the top ten criminal dramas of the 20th century, right up there with OJ, Dillinger and the Boston Strangler.
Then the police get a recording of Patty Hearst in the mail saying she was now a happy member of the SLA, the Symbianese Liberation Army. She was the personification of “Stockholm Syndrome” where the victims of kidnappers develop a sympathy and maybe even an affinity for their abductors.
The SLA was a left wing violent radical militia movement of mostly black militants with a few honkys tagging along. Patty told the country she had changed her name to 'Tanago' and that she had a new boyfriend, the gang leader himself. Stephen Weed was supposed to get the message on that one.
A few weeks later, with the search for Patty and the SLA gang a daily news story, the bug breakthrough. The FBI and California law enforcement had found Patty Hearst and arrested her. The most famous woman in the country did not seem the least repentant. She smiled defiantly at the photographers as she was hauled in and out of police cars and courtrooms. These photos were all front page news.
As she tells her story to her lawyers, more crazy details come out. The Symbianese Lunatic Army at first treated her like a rich dirty dog enemy of the people because of who she was. They tied her and kept her in a dark closet for a week. Male members of the SLA were free to open the closet door and rape her in her defenseless condition, and she reached a point where she began to like it and so they untied her.
I would not be so insensitive as to play around with details like this, and it's a big part of why the story gripped the country. It also helped that she was nice-looking. It would be one thing if a gang of gun-toting conservatives kidnapped Rosie O'Donnell and raped her until she liked it and then she joined the Republican Party and robbed banks for them. Who would want to read about that? But Patty Hearst was another woman and another story.
Patty went to trial. More headline news for weeks. The whole country debated the case. Everyone had an opinion. I had weird dreams about her. A jury convicted Patricia Hearst of bank robbery, but due to extenuating circumstances, she received a minor sentence. A lot of people thought the jury would find her not guilty and not responsible for her actions.
I recently saw her hosting a documentary about nothing political or important. She spoke very low-key but seemed at ease with herself. She called herself “Patricia Hearst” as if she was just another random presenter out there in TV land. She was a little heavy and hadn't aged particularly well, but there was no mistaking the queen of the lurid criminal political scandal of 1975. If you lived through that year, you can't think of it without mentioning the Patty Hearst story.
The rest of the SLA was eventually tracked down and gunned down in two separate shoot-outs with the police out of a Jimmy Cagney “You won't take me alive copper!” movie. Good.
Stephen Weed is still in an insane asylum screaming “No! No! No Way!”
HELSINKI ACCORDS JULY 1975
Representatives of 35 nations met in Helsinki Finland in July and August of 75 in the interests of peace. The general idea was to reduce tensions between the Communists and the West. It was the Kellogg-Briand pact of its era, with the United States and the USSR in the forefront. Most of it was just the same old boring rhetoric about good will and peaceful solutions and mediation.
Many agreements trade and finance agreements were reached. 35 nations ratified it. Ford signed it in person.
Nuclear weapons and nuclear arms weren't even on the agenda, but there were major agreements regarding mutual notification of military maneuvers. Helsinki sought to help prevent accidental nuclear conflict, but did not negotiate the missiles themselves.
At first Helsinki seemed like a diplomatic victory for the Soviet the Union of major proportions because part of the agreements was that
the present boundaries must be respected by all signatories. That meant that for the first time the Russians were being told they could keep the countries the Red Army had conquered in WWII. It was the first time the USA ever admitted to such a thing and the boys were ecstatic.
But Ford in signing issued a contradictory declaration of his own stressing that the US had not changed it position of non-recognition of the Baltic States of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. The USA had refused to recognize these three Soviet “nations” since they were taken in a rotten arrangement with Hitler in 1940. It was one thing to heroically librate Hungary from the Nazis in 1940. It was another to take Latvia with Hitler's help in 1940.
This was the same Gerald Ford who made the blunder in the 1976 debate with Carter of saying, There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”
But the Helsinki accords over time became more than a burden than a blessing for Soviet leaders. There were so many human rights documents that the Soviet signed on to that it gave all the rebels in the USSR the wood to sink their climbing hooks into. They had a legal ground to walk on from now on whenever they criticized Soviet misdeeds. You not only did this bad thing! You did it in clear violation of the Helsinki Final Act! It was almost impossible to defend these criticisms logically and Brezhnev and Gromyko reached a point where they said, “If only we hadn't signed those stupid Helsinki Accords!”
FORCED BUSING
That's what the opponents called it. “Forced busing.” Those in favor of it called it “school busing.”
The Federal government with the backing of the Supreme Court was planning to finally put teeth into earlier rulings on school desegregation. Schools that were not integrated were going to pay for their racist ways. If certain schools that defied integration did not change, they would face a cut-off of federal funding.
The big busing showdown came in September 1974 at South Boston High School, my alma mater. I was a 19 year-old disc-jockey in western New York state reading the news for WEKT FM and what is the lead story for two months? The busing crisis at my old school I had only left two years earlier. I thought I was getting away from my provincial roots and moving up to the broad-based world, but every top of the hour I'm reading “More trouble at South Boston High School today as police broke up demonstrators who were throwing rocks at back students trying to enter South Boston High School.” It was Little Rock all over again after 20 years. And this time it was in the supposedly liberal North! And it was at the High School where I didn't even show up for classes 61% of the time in my senior year!
South Boston was all white when I grew up there. There was one family in the projects that was black and everybody knew them as the token black family and actually they were well liked. But their presence doesn't prove that South Boston wasn't racist. Racism was a way of life in South Boston. I grew up using the 'n' word because everybody did (males, that is.) Everybody. I never knew a black person until I was at least 15 years old.
South Boston was always a white haven. I saw a newspaper advertisement from 1855 that bragged that there isn't a negro to be found in the entire community. It was the same 120 years later, except for that one family I mentioned that I personally didn't know.
In this setting, the feds ruled that SBHS had to be integrated or else, and since there were no blacks in South Boston they would have to be imported. So a grand busing plan was devised where natives of South Boston were forced to board busses every morning so they could go to school on the other side of the city in a black neighborhood, while blacks would board busses to go to high school in hostile white South Boston. Gee, what could possibly go wrong?
Everyone had a lot to say about it for years and the one thing that I always said is that the big mistake was the failure to employ gradualism. Starting the forced integration at the high school level was square-dancing with nitro glycerine. 17 year olds like to fight for no reason at all. You want to give them this to work with? It's all the teachers can handle to stop them from fighting in the best of times.
If only they had started the integration at the first grade and then added a grade each year. First graders aren't going to have a racial brawl and parents would be embarrassed to riot in their presence on their behalf. But high school was another story.
The political right or wrong is another issue. I got so tired of the tirades against forced busing that I can't write with passion about it anyway. The wrong of it is obvious but the why can't be dismissed easily either.
The first week in September 1974 the blacks were bused into South Boston and it was an ugly scene. The Boston Police were out in force anticipating a near riot and they got it.
As these innocent students walked off their busses they were jeered, threatened, and harassed by angry mobs of whites, mostly adults. jeered threatened and harassed them. My high school was a war zone. There were rocks and bottles thrown, fistfights between students, fighting with the police, and frequent racist taunts. A crowd of a hundred or more adults sang loud and strong to the students as they walked off the bus, a sinister recital of “I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.”
It was strange for me to have to read these stories on the radio. My brother Dennis was attending the school.
In December of 1974 Michael Faith, a white kid from Southie got stabbed in the high school hallway by a black kid from Roxbury. Word got out all over Southie and the school was soon surrounded by a couple of thousand angry white people. The blacks were trapped inside the school and the mob wasn't going to let them leave until justice was served. The police tried to disperse the crowd, but the crowd became defiant and hurled rocks at the cops. The anti-busing crowd tipped over two police cars. Now that is serious business. Thomas O'Connor's history of South Boston talks of the Michael Faith incident and the mob being dispersed by the police, but he fails to mention that they tipped over two police cars. That, to me, is a whole 'nother level of defiance. My brother and sister were in the school at the time and they knew Michael Faith and said eh wasn't a trouble maker. And by the way, if you think this story is provincial self-indulgence, Time magazine did a two page story of the Michael Faith riot. The award-winning Civil Rights documentary Eyes on the Prize had a 35 minute segment on Southie and devoted plenty of space to it. I had forgotten about the police cars being tipped over until I recently saw the film.
The whole thing went on for two full years. The violence flared up now and then like aftershocks from an earthquake. Two years later I was visiting the old homestead and I heard a commotion at about 7 a.m. My entire block was being invaded by police cars. We lived four blocks from the high school, yet fear of attack was still so strong that the entire route through Southie was lined with uniformed cops. John F. Kennedy should have had as much protection in Dallas. I'm looking out my window and the birds are chirping, its a little after seven, the busses won't roll through for another hour, and there on the block I grew up on stands 8 cops on each side of the street at interval distances, looking bored. This was two years after the September riots.
That black family in the projects, even they had to move out once the busing started. From that point on for a few years, there wasn't a single black person living in a community of about 38,000 people.
But it stuck. The school is still forcibly integrated to this day. The South Boston sports teams are (except hockey) mostly black. Students still are bussed to the other side of the city to play 'ebony and ivory' so the school can get the federal stipends.
LEAVE THE CELTIC FANS OUT OF IT, NBC
One of the networks made a mini-series on the crisis called “Common Ground” starring SNL star Jane Curtin as the trashy racist housewife.
What was with the constant wearing of Celtics jackets by members of the racist mobs?
This is offensive on at least three levels. First of all, in 1974, people didn't wear jackets like that. The players wore their team shirts and jackets, the fans dressed normal except for maybe a cap. Today 80% of the fans at the park or stadium have lots of team clothing on, as if they think they're going to get called into the game after the next time out. But it wasn't like that back then. People didn't dress like that. That's a recent phenomenon. School kids might wear the team colors of their school team but that was about it. So its an historic and artistic atrocity for starters.
Second of all, its an easy and trendy cheap shot at the Celtics. Spike Lee made a 1980's movie called Do the Right Thing. One scene has a white guy walking through a black neighborhood and kicking over a black kid's bicycle just to be a bad person. Guess what the guy has on? A Celtics jacket. The black-left art community has been picking on the Celtics for a long time, because the Celtics dynasty had a lot of white guys on the team. Does anyone think this was a conspiracy on the part of Red Aurebach or the city of Boston? I never heard the end of how the Celtics are racist and represent white racist Boston. It always hurt my feelings as a white person, as a Bostonian, as a sports fan, and as a Celtics fan. The Celtics won it all in 2008 with all black starters and no one anywhere said a word about it. The Celtics hired the first Black coach in NBA history and the first black coach in a major sport, Bill Russell.
Thirdly, and most important, if there were white guys wearing Celtics jackets in 1974 (and there were not,) these would be the last white guys on earth that would go to a racist rally. Sports guys are less racist than the average guy, not more. What white man who studies the NBA over his morning coffee is also a fanatic hater of black people. Yet in many scenes there are those 'white trash' guys wearing Celtics jackets fans screaming “go home you n's!” Common Ground had every right to rip Boston racists, but it was uncommonly unfair to Celtics fans.
TWO ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS
There were two serious attempts upon the life of President Ford. Both took place in the same month, September of 1975, both took place in northern California, and both perpetrators were female.
The first came on September 5 1975 in Sacramento. Ford was walking towards the California State House to meet Governor Jerry Brown for the first time. He was going to tell the California Governor about a crime bill he was hoping to get through the Congress. Ford was walking past a roped-off crowd and shaking hands. One of these hands had a pistol in it. It was the hand of Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme a former member of the Charles Manson murder cult. Lynette had drawn a .45 on Jerry Ford. But no shot rang out. She was apprehended and arrested. As it turned out, there had been no bullets in the chamber. The Secret Service wrestled Ford a bit for his protection. Ford quickly regained his composure and walked on to the meeting as if nothing had happened. Ford finished his appointment with Brown who did not learn of the incident until after Jerry was gone.
The media didn’t play it quite as low key as Ford did, to say the least. It was a spectacular news day, with visions of Kennedy in Dallas revisited.
Lynnette Fromme was convicted of attempted assassination on November 26, 1975 and is still serving life in prison today.
Attempt number two happened in San Francisco on September 22. President Ford was leaving a hotel and was about to step into his limo to go to the airport. He gave a wave to a crowd of 3,000 people across the street that had gathered for just a fleeting glimpse of the Commander in Chief. A shot rang out and everyone froze in a moment of stunned silence, including Ford. The bullet had struck the hotel a few feet to Ford’s side. The mob collectively apprehended the perp. Again it was a woman that had tried to kill the President. Sarah Jane Moore was not using a .45 with no bullets in it like Lynnette . Sarah Jane had a .38 and she was aiming to kill.
The hero of the second attempt was Oliver ‘Billy’ Sipple, a Vietnam veteran who was standing near Moore and when he saw her draw her weapon he did not freeze. Someone shouted, “Billy Don't Be a Hero” but he ignored the advice and grabbed her arm, redirecting the shot, and possibly saving the Presidents life.
Ford never invited Billy Sipple to the White House to thank him in person.
Moore is still in jail. She writes poetry, paints, and found God. .... I'm guessing.
According to Ford, the President gets about 100 personal threats a month. Lord knows how many the first black President is getting at the present time.
KING FAISAL ASSASSINATED IN SAUDI ARABIA 5-75
Ford was a little luckier than the King of Saudi Arabia. Faisal's religiously intolerant nephew slew him in May of 1975 in Riyhad.
The occasion was a visit from a Kuwaiti delegation. The nephew was the son of an exiled brother of the King, and the motive was revenge. It seems that a few years back King Faisal had decided to allow television into the country. The nephew was part of a group who believed that the broadcasting of human images was forbidden by the Koran and a capitol sin against Allah. They warned the King not to allow any programming on the air that included human images. The King explained to those protestant voices that all rules of propriety would be observed. There would be no babes in bikinis or men without shirts, but that wasn't enough for the holy rollers. They expected the programs to be an endless parade of bricks, trees, frogs, clouds, soccer balls, pencils, buildings, tires and pens, but no human images. Faisal took a stand and let TV broadcast human beings in Saudi Arabia.
The nephew then led an armed assault on the television station in in the shoot-out his brother was killed. So when he went up to greet the King in May 1975 it was time for revenge. The King bowed his head in order to let the nephew kiss his nose, but the Islamaniac instead pulled a gun and shot the King in the brain.
The nephew paid with his head in the town square one month later. When the Saudis say that “heads will roll,” they mean heads will roll.
MICKEY MOUSE OIL DEAL
Ford and Kissinger made an interesting offer to the Soviets in the fall of 1975 to trade American wheat for Soviet oil. The Americans could dump a lot of surplus wheat that the Soviets needed and the Soviets could buy it without having to part with any of their desperately needed cash.
Soviet representatives met with major US oil executives in Washington and it seemed like the deal was making progress. They all took a trip to Disney World in Orlando to iron out the details and catch the parades and fireworks.
The deal fell through because Kissinger wanted to rub the deal in the face of OPEC very publicly, as if to say we have options if you keep pushing us around. The Soviets pleaded that it had good relations with OPEC and did not want to lose that good relationship over American posturing over the deal. Also, the Soviets were being asked to trade the oil at below market value and accept American wheat at full market value. The deal never happened but the Soviet delegates got their picture taken with Mickey Mouse. The Communists had come a long way since 1959 when Walt Disney would not let Nikita Krushchev into the original Disneyland in Anaheim.
SUPREME COURT
On December 19, 1975 Chicago-born John Paul Stevens sat down as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court. Stevens replaced the ancient William O Douglas. The Senate was deeply divided or the Stevens appointment. The final vote was 98-0.
Today in 2010 the old geezer is still going strong on the SC at the age of 90. He is the second oldest member of the Supreme Court ever. John Paul said in a March 2010 interview,
“I will never retire. And do what? Sit at home and watch
Survivor Gabon?”
TRIP TO CHINA
In December of 1975 Gerald Ford became the second American President to visit the People’s Republic of China. He met with a very old and feeble chairman Mao Tse Tung who had his eyes glued to Ford’s daughter Susan during most of the interview (Susan Ford was about 17 at the time.) When he finally got Mao’s attention Ford talked politics with the Chinese leader. Mao stressed over and over how he was counting on the United States to help him stand up to the Soviet Union, the enemy of China. Mao advised Ford that China was on the brink of war with the Russians.
Judging by his memoirs, Ford bought this line of absurd disinformation. Chairman Mao had stressed the exact same thing to diplomat GHW George Bush when those two had met earlier in the same year, 1975. Bush was head of the US Liaison office in Beijing at the time. Bush would ask Mao how he was feeling and Mao would say “We are going to war with Russia any day now and I’m fine, thank you.” George would ask if Mao had enjoyed the first snow and Mao would say “Snow will not matter soon since the Soviets will blow up China any day now.” The degree to which China always wanted the US to know it was a bitter adversary of the Soviets is suspicious. Wouldn’t it be more to their advantage to have us think they were friends with the Russians even if they weren’t?
The Sino-Soviet conflict was a staged play of disinformation that has reaped the dividends that 80 armed divisions could never accomplish on a battlefield. It helped disarm and disunite the western powers, and it made it unhip and foolish to even perceive of any united international Communist movement when in fact there was one. When Ford visited China the Soviets and the Chinese had just successfully defeated the United States by proxy in Vietnam. To deflect a political counterattack they pretended to not be gloating over it, as though victory in Vietnam was only a victory for Vietnamese independence, and not one for international Communism. The two Godfathers of the Vietnamese victory pretended to be at each other’s throats when reality they were (and still are) covering each other’s backs.
ASSASSINATION OF U. S. AMBASSADOR TO LEBANON
On June 16 1976 Islamaniac terrorists assassinated the United States Ambassador to Lebanon, The first suspect was Yasser Arafat's and his PLO wrecking crew, but it was a different pack of chimpanzees that did it, and then dumped Meloy's body on a pile of garbage in a PLO neighborhood.
Frank offended them was the fact that he was on his way to present his United States credentials to the new President of Lebanon, Tim Sarkis. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine wanted the old president to remain in power even though he had already been voted out, so when Meloy drove over to see the new guy he had to be killed.
ENTEBBE JUNE 27 1976
The Israeli “Raid at Entebbe” gave all the other superpowers an inferiority complex for decades over how to deal with terrorism.
On June 27 of 1976 Islamic hijackers took over an Israeli jet with 248 passengers and forced it to fly to Uganda. The Israelis struck back in force with a brilliantly executed commando raid on the plane.
You can rent a pretty good made-for-TV movie about this event, with Harris Ulin (Mel Berstein in Scarface) as Moshe Dayan.
There were seven dingo hijackers. They chose to take the plane to Uganda's Entebbe airport because the President of Uganda was in cahoots with them. That man was Idi Amin, one of the worse people that ever set foot on planet earth, a mass murder and an ego-manaic. Amin made the cover of Time for being a scum long before Entebbe.
So this was a rare hijacking in that the jet gets to land at a faraway airport where the government is actually on the side of the hijackers.
But this gave the Israeli government a key advantage to counter the ad given to the dingos. Because Uganda was the pariah of the planet, Israel didn't have to worry about offending the sensibilities of the Ugandan government if they took violent action to rescue the hostages. They could kill any Ugandan troops they had to kill several in order to pull it off. They could destroy the airport if they wanted to, and not one nation on earth would raise an international protest worth mentioning. No one from France or Ecuador or Tonga would be shouting against Israel at the UN, at least not effectively. All right, maybe Syria, but any protest would be inconsequential and would have to come from an anti-semite nation that was already discredited.
The racist hijackers first released all the prisoners who were not Jewish. One nun refused to leave, saying, “all God's people are God's people. If you won't spare them you mustn't spare me.” Ugandan troops boarded the plane and picked her up kicking and screaming and put her off the plane and on to a jet to France and a safety she didn't want. She was a much better nun than the one who knocked me around in front of the the ninth grade Latin class for getting a single answer wrong on a test. My nun (Sister Basil) was a sick person. This one was a fine person. Reading about her makes up for the basil.
The captain of the plane was also allowed to leave and he did in a heartbeat!
I'm only kidding. Captain Pierre Lashua and his crew all heroically refused to accept freedom and declared that the passengers were their responsibility. The hijackers said that Idi was going to provide them with a pilot and crew but shrugged their shoulders and told them, “ok, you want to play hero, be our guest. You can stay as long as you like. But we warn you, there might be some turbulence!” The other hijackers let out a sick sadistic laugh. A little levity to ease the tension. After the rest of the gentiles were removed, there were 105 hostages left on the jet.
On July 3-4 1976 the Israeli's struck Entebbe and in a violent military commando raid too good for a James Bond movie they rescued 102 out of the 105 prisoners and killed all 7 of the racist dingos. 47 Ugandan soldiers who got in their way also died in the Raid on Entebbe.
The raid hurt the prestige of Idi Amin, raised the prestige of Israel, and put pressure on the United States for the next 40 years to do the same type of thing whenever Americans were taken hostage. But the Entebbe circumstances were unique. Uganda was isolated both physically and politically, and Amin was so universally hated that most of his own people would have stuck their foot out to trip him if he walked near a cliff. The political logistics of Entebbe made it a great success as much as Israeli special-ops brilliance.
The comparison between how Israel handled this one and Carter handled 1979 is a perfect example of two different situations. If Iranians had taken US hostages to Teheran airport, and US commandos had hit the runway shooting, the entire population of Teheran would have risen up in 20 minutes to hack every American trooper to bits. No such support would come out fo the ground for Idi even if he did have some loyal bodyguards and soldiers.
BICENTENNIAL
It was quite the big deal. America celebrated its 200th birthday on July 4, 1776 with festivities the likes of which I had never seen before. The Statue of Liberty, a gift for the first centennial in 1876, got a multi-million dollar face-lift paid for from private donations. The TV ads to donate were on for months leading up to 7-4.
The big show biz event was The Tall Ships. The cities of the east coast received a visit from an entire fleet of first-rate sailing ships from all over the world, modern anachronisms from 100 years ago, better built and more beautiful than the clippers of the 19th century (one or two pre-Civil War clippers excepted).
They could have come up with a name less infantile than “The Tall Ships.” It made you feel six years old just to mention them. “Can we go see The Tall Ships?” - “Not unless you eat all your vegetables.”
What started out as a dazzling way to celebrate the Bicentennial has evolved into a semi-annual roving tourist-trap. They arrive in Boston now about every other July as 100,000 people a day line up to walk around the ship and try to think of something interesting to say about it. Foreign sailors hit the bars and steal our Debs.
LEGIONAIRE'S DISEASE AT THE BELLEVIEW STRATFORD
I was 21 in 1976 and living in New York City. Two comedian friends and I hitch-hiked to Philly late in July 1976 for three days of poverty riddled fun, something you can only pull off at 21. We were shocked when we got back to New York to read that a deadly disease had broken out in Philadelphia the very days that we had been there. Were we going to get sick? Were we the ones that had caused it?
The disease broke out at the Belleview Stratford Hotel in Center-city Philadelphia on July 27 1976. It was a sort of a mass pneumonia and it killed 34 people and put 228 more in the hospital. Ground zero seemed to be the older men who were attending a Convention at the BS of the American Legion at the Belleview Stratford, and from this it got the name, “Legionaire's Disease.” The story dominated the national news for some weeks.
The disease was eventually identified and understood and it still exists today as something to watch out for. It strikes older people primarily, so I was safe when it broke out and not safe now. The gene virus that causes it is now officially named legionallis gopotas (pronounced ‘how are ya’.)
The Belleview Stratford had to close down in November of 1976. It has gone through many changes and is now the Hyatt Belleview. For the rest of 1976 I had a punch-line in one of my edgier stand-up routines, “I love it here at the Belleview Stratford.” It was part of a satire called “Not So Famous Last Words.” LD became largely forgotten when AIDS made all other contagious diseases look like page four news.
BIRTH OF THE BACK-UP BEEPERS
Some day I hope someone can read this and not know what the hell I am talking about. Maybe common sense can prevail, and someone can read this some day and not know what the hell I am talking about.
All day, every day, no matter where I am, where I travel, life is filled with the nerve shattering sound of back-up beepers. Every time a vehicle larger than a car backs up for any reason, the sound of high pitched beeping squeals through the neighborhood. You can hear it three blocks away. I was at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas last weeks on the 25th floor with the windows closed and the air conditioner humming and pillows over my ears and I still couldn't sleep because of back-up beeprs from trucks busses, and miscellaneous construction vehicles. There is no serenity left in America left anymore. Even at 3 am the Brookline Police wagon beeps me awake every night dishing out parking tickets. There are bookstores in downtown Boston I used to frequent, but I can't go there anymore because there are so many back-up beepers going at once that its not worth the visit.
It all started in Ford's time. The villain is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSCA. It's usually pronounced “Ocea” like in ocean. I pronounce it “oppressor.” No one can take a nap when they are sick, no one can read for more than ten minutes without a beeper attack, and no one can just relax anymore. It's the alarm clock you can't shut off. And that's not even beginning to address how bad the problem is if there is an ongoing construction project near where you live. Then it becomes literally insufferable. I have had to go live somewhere else for a few days to get away from the beeping and I have corresponded with people on-line who have had the same experience. I have not met one person that does not at least agree that it is excessive. Even people who support the safety issue, even they agree that the use of the back-up beeper is excessive. I feel that it is the number one problem with America today, and I do not make that statement carelessly. How many lives does it save. every construction worker I walk to about it says they do not pay any attention to it after a while. I have read stories of people who died because they ignored the back-up beeper. It was the beeper who cried wolf.
Here is Gerald Ford writing about it in his book,
Contradictory: Concerned about accidents at construction sites. Occupational Safety and Health Administration bureaucrats issued orders requiring the installation of alarms that sound when trucks are backing up. Then they turned around and told construction workers to wear ear plugs because of the noise.
That's only one remark about one negative aspect of the problem, but it clearly indicates that President Ford had nothing to do with the initiation of the back-up beeper and, if anything, had a negative tone towards it. My SUV has a camera in the back so that I can see what's behind me as I back-up without disturbing the neighborhood. Why can't construction vehicles? And when was it decided that this lunacy should be extended to the flower delivery van in my neighborhood at 9 am on Sunday beeping everyone awake as it backs into a normal parking space with plenty of room to maneuver in and no one around?
The back-up beepers are a federal intrusion over the noise ordinances in thousand of towns and cities all across the country. Why have noise ordinances if they are not going to be enforced except when a teen-ager plays their music too loud? That is discrimination. The rich get to dump on the law and the poor have to obey it. The beepers go on all night. I remember when snowfall used to be a pleasant experience in new England. Now I dread every flake because it means all night long there will be the sound of the snow plows and their incessant back-up beepers. How is anyone supposed to get any sleep to go to work in the morning? Every morning at 7 am garbage trucks in a million neighborhoods beep everyone awake when people desperately need all the deep sleep they can get to stay healthy. That's a medical fact. These garbage trucks drop off more garbage in the neighborhood than they pick up.
The beepers may save three lives a year in theory, but they are detrimental to the mental and physical health of millions of Americans every day. The alarmist society must get a grip on reality and common sense. The beepers are applying the standards of an emergency ambulance with a critically injured patient in the back in heavy traffic to every time a vehicle uses reverse gear! It is completely insane, and I intend to write to Obama about it. Barry spent much of his life in Chicago and maybe he will understand.
DEFEAT
Ford was behind in the polls for re-election all year long. GF surged in the polls in the last week of the campaign. A media blitz which included 70 TV spots and $4 million in funds pushed him to within hope. It might be close.
But no. He lost. He wasn't blown away, but Ford lost pretty good for an incumbent. The Nixon pardon cost him re-election. That plus Chevy Chase making a national laughing stock out of him on Saturday Night Left.
THE REAGAN CHALLENGE
Having lived through the era, I can tell you that the young generation was shocked that Ronald Reagan became a serious candidate for President in 1976. We were so busy laughing at him as a caricature of a conservative that it never crossed our minds that this man could ever appeal to anything but the hard right. The idea of him winning the center as a Presidential nominee wasn't even on the radar screen.
But still, even though he made a run at it, we still didn't take him seriously after 1976. That was as far as that could ever go and it was so weird that it ever got that far. Little did the 40 million hippies know that he was going to become a two-term President and leave his VP to reign on for one more. Ronald Reagan was the hipster’s nightmare come true, like something out of a spooky sci-fi program.
Gerald Ford had three major things going for him. The public saw him as honest, the public saw him as likable, and he had the power of the incumbency. But when Ford pardoned Nixon he dropped the first two assets, and Reagan supporters felt that a certain line had been crossed where now it was perfectly in-bounds to challenge the sitting President of your own party for the nomination.
Former Nixon advisor John Sears became Reagan's campaign manager. John Mitchell had kicked Sears off the Nixon team for being too open with the press, the ultimate sin. In the spring of 1974 Sears told Reagan's friends that Nixon was not going to survive and that Reagan would be a more legitimate candidate than Ford. The public didn't like the way Ford came to power and he had no charisma, and he was not a true conservative. It all added up to Reagan in 76. 'The Sears Tower' (as Nofsager called him) was instrumental in convincing the Reagan team to get their engines tuned for the race. I do a dead-on voice impression of John Sears, a useful skill which, plus two dollars, will get me a cup of coffee.
Reagan put up a serious battle for the Republican nomination and came up short. But along the way he exposed the faults, errors, and weaknesses of President Ford in a way that rebounded to hurt the Republican party in the general election. A registered Republican will scoff at libs and Dems when they criticize a Republican. But when a Republican criticizes a Republican, Republicans listen. Pat Buchanan ‘Reaganed’ GHW Bush in 1992. His attacks stuck and Clinton cleaned up the debris.
Ronald Reagan was not out to be President. The groups that made him a candidate had him sit in on their meetings, but he said very little. He was an experienced actor and he knew how to take direction. There were plenty of people in the hunt who wanted it more than he did.
Sears and others thought that Reagan had to make himself seem a bit more likable. He could still hate the left, but he should zip the lip about that, and just try to be charming in a general sort of way.
In November of 1975 Nelson Rockefeller told President Ford that he was withdrawing from consideration for the VP spot in 1976. Ford should have immediately begged him to stay on, but instead he said, “We'll miss you, Rocky. You were a great Vice President.”
Rockefeller was tired of fighting with the Republican right-wing. This liberal New York millionaire was hurting the Republican chances for 1976. The party needed to first lock down its own base. Nellie made that a rocky road. His withdrawal was a welcome development in the R Party.
Also in the race was John “Magic Bullet” Connally, the ex-Texas governor. Connolly had been under indictment for fraud, but a jury acquitted him. JC felt not guilty enough to jump right back into the political field for president. If Reagan had not entered the race, it probably would have been Connally battling Ford for the nomination.
In the end, the Ford team felt betrayed by Ronald Reagan. The California Governor had made a serious run at the Republican nomination, challenging the incumbent. Ron lost a good fight and now the Ford team needed RR's support and his supporters. They didn't exactly get it. Reagan punished Ford by withholding his affection.
Reagan was a baby about it. He agreed to make a few TV commercials for the cause but refused to say the name of Gerald Ford on camera. He said “Don't vote for Jimmy Carter,” And he said “For gosh sakes, make sure you vote Republican.” But he would not say the name of Gerald Ford.
CARTER
The man who would defeat Ford in November was a peanut farmer from Georgia named Jimmy Carter. The former governor of Georgia conducted one of the great political campaigns in American history, in many opinions the greatest. It was done through hard work at the trench level. It was all so above board, so based on dedication, determination, planning, and commitment, that it's impossible not to tip your hat to a brilliant job well done. Carter was a good candidate, not a great one, and he had no voting record on the Vietnam War. Behind a good candidate stood a great young strategy team and an army of people who would ring doorbells all day, including a tireless huge family. Carter started to campaign for 1976 one month before Nixon was re-elected in November of 1972. This was the first time a viable campaign had been seriously started so so soon, before the current Election.
The Carter for President team had a big serious meeting about 1976 with the candidate in the summer of 72. Carter hadn't talked about the presidency much in public or private. But on the other hand he had allowed this team to push him openly for the Vice President spot at the Democratic Convention in July of 72. So Jimmy was hardly unaware that this might happen.
Ford and Carter held two debates that were so boring that Johnny Carson told boring-debate jokes in his monologues for three weeks. The big moment was when Ford said that there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe nor will there ever be under a Ford White House.
That made no sense at all. That blunder may have cost the Republicans the Presidency.
Carter had a major advantage in that the economy was very bad. Stagflation was so bad they invented the word. As long as people are mass-miserable, the party out of power has the ad, plus the Dems do better with the poor anyway, so Carter was in a good post at the gate.
Ford was never sure if campaigning too hard would produce diminishing returns. His team was divided about looking presidential versus holding up babies in diapers and talking to coal miners in a hard-hat. Jerry probably would have been better off if he had picked one approach and stuck with it. But he was back and forth. Plus Jerry kept banging his head on stuff and making verbal blunders. He cut his head in the White House swimming pool by misjudging the distance and clanging into the wall. That doesn’t help. Reporters followed him around the ski slopes of Vail, and only sent in the pictures of him when he fell, which every skier does.
Comedy played its evil part. Saturday Night Live ridiculed President Ford relentlessly and mercilessly. He tried to defuse it by appearing on the show and going along with the gag and laughing at himself, but that made him look worse. I hate it when Republicans under attack from that show appear on it as though that undoes the damage and all is nice now. You fools are giving them a pass on the one thing you can get them on, being shallow and cruel and only occasionally funny. Now you can't even call them “Saturday Night Lame,” because you were lame enough to be on it. 7% of it is usually very funny.
Ford had a couple of fairly significant challengers on the left within the right. One liberal Republican Senator from Maryland thought the party had drifted too far to the right, especially for these left-leaning times. Ford was too redneck for some liberal Republicans, and definitely too moderate for some right-wing Republicans.
Imagine of Ford had graciously approached the Party and told them that he had not been elected to either office and that Bob Dole should be number one on the ticket and that Jerry would gladly take his old job at VP that would have made for a close race and I think the Republicans win. No reason they couldn't have done it. Jerry would make a great back-up goalie. He had the experience now to come in if needed, but we want to start the better talent.
Ford came closer to victory than history remembers. He was picking up points in the final weeks and there was a point in the middle of the night where it looked like maybe... In the end Carter won comfortably.
Dole wouldn't have banged his head in the swimming pool, and he's the one with the bad war injury. A Dole wouldn't have angrily boasted that Poland is not under Soviet domination, and a Dole would have been witty enough to fight SNL with wisecracks at least as well written. Hats off to the great Carter campaign but he was up against a straw man in Ford who really was a straw man.
THE FORD VS THE LORD
Ford couldn't beat Carter because Ford didn't have enough leading man skills.
Hawaii Five-0 was one of the most popular TV shows of the Ford era. Chief Detective Steve MgGarrett is stern, tough, fair, suave, a man of immediate action and clear decision making, a man who always has the right thing to say and says it articulately, a man who carries himself like he was born to be in charge, wherever he is, and whatever he’s doing. In other words, Jack Lord was playing a man exactly the opposite of Jerry Ford. Ford was one of the most liked men in Washington, while Jack Lord was one of the most hated men in Hollywood. The National Enquirer had a cover story about how only one Hollywood actor went to his funeral. Maybe a cross between Ford and Lord would have made a good president. Being nice got Ford close, then sheer luck got him the presidency.
AFTER OFFICE
Ford left office on a cold January 20 1977. Jimmy Carter began his inaugural speech with a thanks to Gerald Ford for the national healing he provided with his presidency. Top hatted Ford wiped a tear from his eye.
Ford wasn't as publicly politically active as Carter and Nixon after office. Privately he lectured for big dough and also worked as a consultant. Privately he also hung out with a guy named Jimmy Carter.
That’s right. Jimmy Carter invited the man he defeated in the Election to consult with him at the White House. The two men became genuine friends and Carter listened often to Ford’s opinion on all matters. Ford slipped into the side door and the reporters seldom knew he was there, but Ford became something of a secret advisor to Carter, especially during the first year. Ford didn’t show up quite as often during the latter part of the Carter term.
Ford became a cochairman of People For the American Way, a group dedicated to stopping the religious right from hijacking conservatism and the R Party. Jerry did give a couple of fine and witty speeches at the Republican National Conventions. They wheeled him out as one of the big gun speechmaker every four years.
RIP 12.26.06
On December 26, 2006 Jerry Ford became a ghost of Christmas past at the age of 93. Mr Ford died from complications from being 93. His had been ill for a year or two and his last words were, “At last, my long personal nightmare is over.” He met his president-maker as the oldest living ex-president ever, a tie with Reagan by years, at his home in Rancho Mirage. There was a famous murder case in Rancho Mirage. The book about the Rancho Mirage murders is in my condo library but I'll never read it.
CONCLUSIONS
I don't buy it. Gerald Ford was supposedly the great healer. I don't buy it. He united the nation again, brought dignity back to the White House and healed the nation from its wounds. He even called his White House memoir, A Time To Heal. To heal what? What wounds? What healing? Time marches on and everyone goes on with the cycles of their lives. The history of sixties and seventies is full of so much dramatic over-analysis. It’s an industry to write these grandiose assertions. I was there. Nice try. America didn't need to heal. All these incidents, the war, the assassinations, the moon, and this spin that it all was so turbulent, how people were all shook up, how it was all a special time. I don't buy it and I was there.
People watched events on the news from their homes. Their lives went on just as if there were no wounds and no need for healing. Those who actually lost a loved one in Vietnam or who served, or fled to Canada to dodge the draft were the real deal. The rest of the nation was not traumatized. Jimmy Madden across the street from em went to Vietnam went to Vietnam. He was traumatized. He wasn’t the same when he came back. He wouldn’t talk to any of the old crowd. Jimmy Madden was traumatized by the sixties. Him and his mom Kaye. No one else in the neighborhood was. And writers do use that word to describe whole Vietnam era from JFK to Ford, like 180 million Americans were staring at the ceiling all night every night worrying about justice and changes and the looming threat of assassinations. Everyone went on with their personal lives just the same way they do today. The cycles of life were remarkably similar for almost everyone, yet everyone from that generation wants to take all the credit for the traumas that only one percent suffered in fact.
American ego that created the myth that the forced resignation of a President created a national wound that had to be healed. Maybe it felt that way to millions of Americans at the time, but it was really an exaggerated wound based on a naïve condescending standard of perfection in government. England, France, and a dozen other nations could handle a Watergate scandal leading to the resignation of a Prime Minister and his or her entire cabinet, and feel no sense that the nation had a giant wound pouring pain and blood, a horrible wound that desperately needed healing with the the arrival of a real nice guy who was above scandal, and only such a man would be appropriate for the country's well-being at this time. But that is exactly the myth of the greatness of Gerald Ford. He was the one man who could heal America’s wounds after his own Party leader had been the problem. If another US president has to resign someday, it won't be such a trauma because the country now has once experienced it. Almost all panic comes from experiencing things for the first time and having no guidebook. I'm less nervous in front of a crummy crowd at a familiar old club, than I am in front of a great crowd in a new room.
Presidential resignation was more of a stain on the national ego than on the national honor. Nixon did the bad things, not me or my next door neighbor. No one on my street was in the South as a civil rights worker when they heard that MLK got shot in Memphis. But everyone takes the credit for somehow making it through this trauma.
All right, you could make a case that the one area where the nation did need healing was Vietnam, but Ford did emphatically little or nothing to make that wound heal. If anything he made it worse. He stuck America's head in the sand while the Communists won total victory in Southeast Asia long-sought, and turned 55,000 KIA's into victims of a defeat, rather than heroes of victory. Some healer. I was embarrassed to have him as my President, just as much as Nixon. GF was too meek to try to resume the fight in Vietnam, and too Republican conservative to do anything bold in true progressivism. Jerry Ford was like a Democratic hawk, an oxymoron, and good luck trying to pull it off. He was the peacemaker Republican who followed the mood of the country and told cheering college kids that the war in Vietnam is over forever as far as America was concerned. Some Republican conservative this guy was. He and Carter both created the void that Reagan filled in 1981. Both were doves, but only the Dem really saw one in the mirror. The other was a hawk who was afraid to fly and even had his claws removed to please the mainstream currents. Nixon at least had the courage to hate the hippies. Ford kissed their sandals.
The triumph of Communism in Southeast Asia was the great event of the Ford years. Millions of lefties to this day have never taken the fall of Southeast Asia and its murderous aftermath into any fair consideration whatsoever. There has never been an attempt to even consider readjustments in political thinking, nor even historical thinking. This is the number one reason I turned conservative.
Why no adjustment? I still don’t understand the accepted orthodox view that all of the protesters were 100% right and those who prosecuted the Vietnam War for the USA were 100% evil. It made sense until the spring of 75. Then it didn't. John Kerry was still milking orthodox liberal history when he ran for President in 2004. He ran as both the brave Vietnam War hero and leader of the Vietnam Veteran Against the War. JFK didn't talk openly about that second part but it was part of his presidential appeal in ‘04. That's how hip it still is to say the VW was bad and wrong and that's all there is to it. This guy could run for President after making a great showing of throwing his medals over a wall as the hippies cheered (and it turned out they were someone else’s medals, btw.)
I was on Kerry’s anti-war side then and I was only 15 or 16. But did the events of 1975 prove this cheering to be a little bit heady, misguided and naive? To me they did. We all enjoyed the movie The Killing Fields, but the nation (and the tone of the film) never absorbed the obvious lesson, that the people that Sam was fighting in Vietnam were the bad guys. I think genocide qualifies as “bad.” Obviously the war was a failure and maybe the United States never had a chance. But the massacre at My Lai was not a normal procedure for US policy in Nam. To the Cong it was. The systematic assassination of village leaders and all intellectuals throughout South Vietnam by the Viet Cong in the early 1960’s was the beginning of a long book of enemy Communist atrocities and cruelties and the Cambodian genocide in the latter 1970' s finished the tale.
Gerald Ford presided over an absolutely horrible economy. Inflation and unemployment were serious bad. The Republicans have to own up on this when they point to the economic “stagflation” mess under Jimmy Carter. It started under Ford. I was living in New York City and at the lowliest fast food places you would see signs in the window, angrily warning that,
“We are not accepting job applications!”
Ford is certainly the only “obscure” president in my lifetime; a man who a hundred years from now may be the punch line in some joke about obscure presidents, the way Millard Fillmore of Chester Alan Arthur can be employed today.
Leo Durocher wouldn’t have voted for Gerald Ford. Durocher was the man who said,
“Nice guys finish last.”
SOURCES
The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, by William A. Degregorio – c) 2002 Barnes and Noble
Jerry Ford smoked 8 pipe-fulls of Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco a day. This book has all the most important stuff.
Decent Interval, An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the CIA's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam, by Frank Snepp – c) 1977
This might be the longest subtitle in book history. DI is really good book. I have a long way to go in it.
A Ford Not a Lincoln, by Rich Reeves
RR is one fine writer. He’s rough on Ford.
Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency, by Jerald F. terHorst, c)1974
J. F. terHorst had just resigned as Ford’s Press Secretary over the Nixon pardon when he published this insider book. He is not bitter towards his former employer.
In Confidence, by Anatoly Dobrynin
“Dobie” was the Soviet Ambassador to the United States in the Ford years and well beyond. Most Americans who dealt with Dobrynin genuinely liked him. Part of it was how much they had all disliked Gromyko by comparison.
It Sure Looks Different From the Inside, by Ron Nessen
Ford's press secretary was a household name in 75. This memoir tells some juicy stories and is a little better than simply anecdotal in its contributing to the study of the Ford controversies like the Nixon Pardon and the fall of Southeast Asia.
The National Experience – Part Two A History of the United States Since 1865 – by John Blum, Eddie Morgan, Willie Rose, Art Schlesinger, Ken Stampp, and Vano Woodward – c) 1981 – HBJ NY
Three are from Yale, the other three are high school dropouts. Just kidding. This is a great book. It gets bogged down on economics, but that’s because it is especially strong on economics.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs New Jersey
This is the big fat modern general history cited earlier.
The authors do not seem to have space for any more details of the international Mayaguez crisis, fair or unfair, but they can always find space for vital info like this scintillating paragraph about pop music trends just previous to OM coverage on Mayaguez,
"Popular music expressed and reinforced these trends.
The songs of community and hope common in the
late 1960s gave way to songs of despair or nihilism.
Bruce Springsteen, whose lyrics lamented the
disappearance of the white working class, became the
class, decade’s most popular new rock artist. At the
same time, heavy metal bands such as KISS as well as
as "punk" and "new wave" artists underscored themes
of decadence and drew crowds of mainly young whites.
At the other end of the popular music scale, Country
and Western music hit its peak with best selling
"crossover" hits, charismatic stars, and numerous new
all-C&W radio stations. Willie Nelson, invited to perform
at the White House by President Carter, sang melodic
refrains reeking of loneliness or nostalgia and appealing
to older, white, working class Americans."
‘Reeking of loneliness?’ You call this American history? I call it self-indulgent pop fluff. The fly that landed on my desk a few minutes ago and then flew away is as significant as the information contained in this paragraph, and only slightly less annoying.
Two pages previous to this there is an entire section, 98 words and a large photograph, dedicated to the 1970's situation comedy All In the Family. But the Mayaguez incident, an international incident involving the United States with major political implications and repercussions both domestic and international gets 47 words and no pictures, or, about one word for each dead Marine. What a world. We get no detail on a battle that cost 41 Marines their lives. There is deliberate non-mention of the fact that America was blazing headlines euphoric about the way it handled the Mayaguez. Worse, the facts of the case are twisted unfairly, as if Ford made a ridiculous blunder.
On the other hand we are treated to the information that young white men usually went to rock concerts performed by young white men, older white people for some crazy reason listened to music by an older white guy, and Bruce Springsteen wrote one song about working class white people; all this extrapolated into the idea that this was the great motif of his career. Try to imagine the size of the damn that I do not give. Bet the house that one of the authors is a huge Springsteen fan.
Palace Politics, An Inside Account of the Ford Years, by Robert T. Hartmann – c) 1980 – This is a relatively obscure book but shouldn’t be. Hartmann was a Ford speechwriter when Jerry was VP, and became Counsel the President after Nixon quit. It easily one of the top primary popular sources any student can read on the Ford era.
President Ford: The Man and His Record, Congressional Quarterly, August 1974
Presidential Campaigns, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. of Texas Christian University - c) 1984 – Oxford University Press.
Carter had a 33 point lead in July and, by making it close, Boller suggests that the 76 Ford drive might have been the greatest comeback in one campaign year ever.
A Time To Heal, by Gerald Ford, c) 1979 –
His White House memoirs, a fine book.
Without Honor, Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia, by Arnold Isaacs, c) 1983
This is a major work by a minor player, a really good book. And minor player is not an insult. To be a player at all is something the rest of us “political junkies” and “history buffs” only dream of.
Years of Renewal, by Henry Kissinger
This is the third of his White House memoirs, and is the thickest source available on the Ford years. This book makes Ford’s memoir look like a pamphlet.
VIDEO
The Killing Fields - This blockbuster movie is informative for beginners and misleading for beginners at the same time. The way it ends up making it seem like America should feel guilty about the crimes of the Khmer Rouge is just not right.
The Ten Thousand Day War - The fall of Saigon is told in dry unemotional tones, avoiding any pov on it after the previous 14 one our volumes were loaded with pov. Pov stands for point of view.
There is a History Channel documentary on the Mayaguez that I have watched twice. I don;t know the title. It is one of the best things they ever made. But the primary sources for my Mayaguez account are the Ford memoir and the Kissinger White House memoir (his third of three giant volumes.) I also have an original copy of the New York Post newspapers from several days in the Mayaguez affair.
COMEDIANS
I borrowed and switched up a line from my old roomie DJ Hazard.
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