I believe the government-media complex quite likes when an old ex-president dies of natural causes. Short of an attack on our soil, nothing gives the power-worshipers such an opportunity to feed the public big doses of the secular religion we call statism. No matter how big a mediocrity a man (and perhaps soon a woman) may have been, if he has occupied the office of President of the United States, even if only for 2 1/2 years as the result of appointment by cronies, he becomes bigger than life, worthy of having his life examined as a Man of History.

In the case of Gerald Ford, a man who spent most of his adult life"reaching across the aisle" to impose laws on other people and taxing and spending their money, isn't it almost uncanny how destiny happened along and picked just the right man exactly when he was needed? And isn't it remarkable that in hindsight his decision to pardon Criminal-in-Chief Nixon (whose offenses, domestic and foreign, were endless) was the wise decision after all? (Why couldn't we see it back then?!)

I feel so secure knowing the locomotive of history is always on the right track, even when it doesn't appear that way. We can count on the government-media complex to be there to remind us just when we need reminding.

Cross-posted at Free Association.

E. Simon - 12/29/2006

I would note how silly it is that you choose to note Ford's passing - (a man whose humility, incidentally, stood in marked contrast to a maniacally paranoid predecessor who will forever be remembered for committing the greatest criminal abuses of power of any president) - with little more than an opportunity to bash his less-than-libertarian political actions, but then again, I've read your stuff before.

Leave it to an ideologue to underestimate the damage of a real divisiveness that Ford wisely assuaged. How quickly I forget that civil strife is an abstraction to people who think their rights are better preserved in a vaccuum where political considerations magically don't exist.

Kevin Carson - 12/28/2006

Well, I like it better when a SITTING president dies of NON-natural causes. But to each his own, I guess.

M.D. Fulwiler - 12/28/2006

I suppose there is some justice in the fact that his Nixon pardon probably cost him the 1976 election.

Robert Higgs - 12/28/2006

Gerald Ford had the good fortune (for him, not us) to claw his way into the Power Elite. Even better (for him, not us), he had the confidence of even more powerful men, who trusted him to represent their interests faithfully while he occupied the presidency. He did not disappoint them, and now the mainstream media, who also represent them, are not disappointing them, either. Interesting how things hang together.