President Gerald Ford

President Ford has now been dead for almost 50 days now and the time for compulsory statements of praise is about to end and it is time for his legacy to begin to be detailed.

My own feelings were and still are that he was a generally decent man and that it was ironic he would become the unelected president to preside over the 200th anniversary of the American nation. Of course he was effective in dealing with congress, having so much experience over in the House. But there is only one thing with remains in my mind from his work in the oval office and that is the pardon of Nixon.

I wrote on that day: "The Ford pardon of Nixon is a catastrophe for the United States. The entire question of Watergate concerned the answers to these two questions: 1) Are presidents accountable for their actions while in office? 2) Are presidents subject to the laws of the United States? I continued: "I am afraid that our system of government is now irretreivably doomed for it cannot exist when the president is independent of the laws of the country and is subject only to his conscience. we have today found out just how deeply the power of the presidency goes and we have been informed that we arenot a nation of free people but that we are subject the the whims of our soverign."

The result of the Watergate investigation and the removal from office of Nixon indicated that the nation had survived its great crisis. Ford's pardon though, made all presidents from now on independent of the laws of the country and subject only to what they hear from God."

Since then we have seen other presidents who obeyed the dictates of their conscience instead of the laws of the nation: Reagan in his Arms-Contra, Clinton with his use of the power of his office to obtain sexual favors from women who worked for the United States government, and now George Bush who calls himself "The Decider", one who makes decisions according to his own conscience and without regard to law.

Gerry Ford spent too much of his time in Washington in apparent awe of presidents, and now he has given to us a legacy that the president will be the one to decide when to enforce the constitution, and when his conscience tells him that the constitution should not be used.

© John Womack, 2007. All rights reserved.

Articulate, bright, clean and a nice-looking guy!

I know what Joe Biden was trying to say, I grew up in Mississippi a long, long time ago. Folks back then referred to a black person who possessed those four characteristics as being "a credit to his race." That comment is right on the mark, and Barack Obama definitely is that, indeed. Too bad we can't say the same thing about poor old Joe.

Actually Obama may very well be elected the first black to serve in the White House, but many people will vote against him because of his color. Right now the problem with his color is not that he is too black but that he is seen by many as being too green.

© John Womack, 2007. All rights reserved.