When we think of Gerald Ford today, we think of the late former President with fondness.
We don't think of what he was in 1967. (That's him to the right. Notice who is applauding him.)
In 1967 Ford was the House Minority Leader. He was a good foot soldier for the cause, albeit a bit stolid. Few people by that time remembered the Michigan center or the male model. He was the gentleman from Grand Rapids, as solid a Republican seat as you could have, comfortable in his own skin and comfortable in Washington, D.C. (This is not an easy trick.)
With the 1966 election in their rear-view mirror, conservatives felt they had, if not a real majority, at least a working majority on a host of issues. By combining the votes of southern Democrats with their own Republican troops, movement conservatives felt, they could at least stop Democratic advances, the War on Poverty, the Great Society, the Civil Rights laws.
But they couldn't. Somehow. Liberal justices like Thurgood Marshall were confirmed. Deficit-laden budgets offering both guns and butter were passed with ease. Ford, conservatives felt, was one of the chief enablers.
He was. By 1967 he had been in the House for nearly 20 years. He had been a member of the majority for just two of those years, under Speaker Joe Martin. Martin's majority was killed in the anti-McCarthy election of 1954, and Ford learned a lesson from that. Don't challenge Democrats directly. Lean against their assumptions. Moderate them. Be the anti-thesis. It worked for Eisenhower, and Ford became loyal to Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon.
So who's Gerald Ford now?
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