LAT, Chait: Ford's '76 defeat among worst things to happen to American liberalism

[DeepModem Mom]

Jonathan Chait:
When Ford lost, so did Dems
Gerald Ford's 1976 defeat may have been among the worst things ever to happen to American liberalism.
December 31, 2006

ONE OF THE funny things about politics is that people often have a very poor sense of which elections are important and which aren't. This fact hit me a few years ago when I was watching a "Saturday Night Live" episode from 1976. Jane Curtin was on as the host of "Weekend Update," and the joke was that SNL's feelings about the upcoming election could be summed up with a photo of Gerald Ford, defaced with horns and a mustache.

I was only 4 years old in 1976. Seeing this sketch more than 20 years after it first aired, what struck me was the overwhelming strangeness of it. Why would anybody work up a hatred of Ford? And when I thought about it further, it seemed to me that Ford's defeat in the 1976 presidential race may have been one of the worst things that ever happened to American liberalism.

Liberals, of course, detested Ford for his pardon of Richard Nixon, and indeed the pardon was a pretty rotten act. In the light of history, however, Ford comes through as a far more innocuous figure. By the standard of his day, he was a conservative. But by the standard of our times, he's a raging moderate.

In Ford's time, to be a conservative meant to be cautious and prudent. Ford opposed deficits, and he vetoed spending hikes and tax cuts alike. His recently released comments criticizing the Iraq war (made in a 2004 interview but embargoed until after his death) show how alien he found the current president's reckless foreign policy. In his post-presidential career, Ford emerged as a critic of the religious right and an advocate of political reforms, both of which placed him far to the left of today's GOP.

It was Ford's narrow loss to Jimmy Carter in 1976 that enabled the subsequent radicalization of the Republican Party. Carter was a mediocre president, and he came into office under terrible conditions — stagflation, an energy crisis, the wake of a losing war — under which no president could have succeeded. His inevitable failure paved the way for Americans to elect Ronald Reagan. And after Reagan, a new orthodoxy took hold in the Republican Party that celebrated deficit-financed tax cuts, ultra-nationalistic foreign policy and a cynical culture war....

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-chait31dec31,0,3319623.column?track=mostemailedlink

[BuelahWitch]

1. I was saying something like this the other day

If Ford would have won in '76, we likely would not have had the Reagan/Bush debacles.

[MN ChimpH8R]

2. Bingo

I've been saying this for twenty years. Had the problems of Carter's presidency, most of which could not have been averted, taken place with a Repub in office, there would have been no Reagan and the detestable Bush family would have never insinuated its evil tentacles in to the government.

Chait hit a homer with this piece

:kick: & R

[sendero]

3. I think a lot of folks forget..

...that "demonizing" did not start or end with "liberals". In the 70s, "our" side was as good as going over-the-top to smear our collective opponents as the Repukes are now. And the media was on "our" side, and it was all so easy.

I did not and still do not agree with Ford's decision to pardon. But there is little question in my mind that Ford was an honorable and decent man, who did what he thought was best for America, not the Republican party necessarily. You sure can't say that about many of the leaders who have come since him, with the exception of Carter.

[Gman]

4. The point of the article is that...

"So the 2000 election that so many people thought didn't matter turned out to be the most important election of our lifetime. And the next presidential election, which many said was the most important election of our lifetime, barely mattered at all, and may even have had negative importance — for the Republicans. I guess I ought to be thankful to Kerry for being such an awful candidate. If only Gerald Ford had been a slightly better politician…."

I read the entire article because I was turned off immediately by the pronouncement that the writer was 4 years old in 1976. However, the writer seems to have put history into perspective rather well. I've said for years that no president could have survived reelection in 1980 because there were so many things wrong that Carter, at the time, had no control over and were not of his making.

Yes, the 2000 election may well have been the most important election of our lives. Funny how you never really know these things until many years later. Judging by what happened to Carter, Ralph Nader may well have done us all a favor in the long run. Problem is it will take the rest of my life to fix it.

[last1standing]

5. What bullshit!

I have nothing against Ford, in fact, for a repub I always thought of him as a good guy, but when the idiot in this editorial starts attacking Carter while praising Ford's ability I have to say something.

"Carter was a mediocre president, and he came into office under terrible conditions — stagflation, an energy crisis, the wake of a losing war — under which no president could have succeeded."

Does no one see how ridiculous that statement is? Here Chait is calling Ford a great moderate and Carter mediocre in one breath, then admitting that Nixon/Ford left Carter a situation that was fucked up beyond belief. If Chait had bothered to look at the actual facts, he would have found that Carter put into place most of the policies that Reagan took credit for later. It was Carter who brought the budget deficit down, which in turn helped ease stagflation. Carter had dealt with the energy crisis before Reagan ever set foot in the oval office, and it was Carter who took the initial necessary steps to rebuild a broken and war torn military.

Gerald Ford was a good man who can't take the blame for the ruin that Nixon's policies caused, but he didn't do much to fix them, either. Give the man credit for holding office at one of the most difficult times in history, but don't tear down another good man to make him look better by comparison.

[unblock]

6. carter also appointed volker as the fed chair, who brought inflation under control

ford's solution to the inflation problem was 'win' buttons....

:wtf:

[unblock]

7. and the demonization of carter continues....

how nuts. nixon/agnew screwed up the economy in a major way. vietnam expenditures had something to do with this, but typical republican negligence and corruption also did. then came the oil shocks under nixon and ford. again, the republican solution was basically to do nothing.

carter needed more than one miracle to have led the nation out of the rotten situation it was in. and the fact of the matter is, he did do quite a bit. it's not his fault the military botched a rescue attempt of the hostages. and it's not his fault the reagan/bush team undermined his diplomatic agreement to end the hostage situation.

[Rabrrrrrr]

8. Precisely why I want a Republican to win in 2008.

Whoever wins is gonna inherit a shitstorm, like Carter did. I'd rather that shitstorm be inherited by a Republican, so that the dems can come out like saviors in 2012 like Reagan did in 1980.

Whoever wins in 2008, unless they're practically a messiah, is gonna be a one-termer, ridiculed, hated, and take all the crap that's been building up since Reagan, and especially through this administration.

It sounds weird, I know, but the only way to truly kill the current style of Jesus Crispy radical violent hatebased Republicanism is to give them one more term.

[pretzel4gore]

9. lying bastards talk too much...

this mediawhore hasn't got a clue. bush wasn't elected in 2000, President Gore was. period. And Carter lost in 1980 because pigmedia wanted goofy to win (he did) FYI, Carter ran a $58 billion dollar deficit in his last budget...chaits co-whores screamed bloody murder: it was front page outrage for weeks - Carter was ruining the economy, digging debt that blah blah blah....a couple years later regan ran 1st of 200 billion deficits and the pigmedia went hohum, on the back financial pages too. Just that action alone tells this generation EVERYTHING it needs to know about US politics back in Carter era. When President Carter left office, US national debt was ONE TRILLION $; when regan left it was TWO POINT SIX TRILLION! Today it's pushing 8 trillion, or whateverr the liars will admit to...SO this chait punk is one of the enemy, because he's a liar who misinforms his readers about things he must know are not true. That's where bush came from, LIES endlessly promoted to offset quiet truth, not any failure of 'liberalism'
Check out KAL 007 if you want more evidence. chait was 11 years old in 1983, so he'd have heard of it. And being a skeptic regards government, he must have wondered how an ultra modern passenger jet flown by KAL's top pilot could wonder 300 miles off course over several hours into the most dangerous airspace on earth, w/out the Japanese noticing, or the Americans at Alaska ATC, or 1/2 dozen other other aitrcraft, or THE RUSSIANS THEMSELVES!
get the fukk outta here with this chait, he is a criminal and a enemy of usa/canada, the entire world...
(btw in the autumn of 2003 the pigmedia simply never noticed that it was 20th anniversay of the KAL 007 shootdown. Almost 300 people died. The US and USSR put nuke forces on Red alert, the highest danger since Cuba crisis of 1962. A Congressman died on the jet, a freeper named ronald macdonald -jesse helms missed the flight when someone apparently suggested it not a good idea there boy, nudge wink! Strange that such a terrible news event could go past unnoticed by pigmedia, isn't it, after all, that was the evil ussr that did it! But nope, noone remebered KAL 007 in 2003, and noone EVER WILL!)