(This
entry continues my American Presidential
Series, which I have returned to, in commemoration of the Election week. A large portion of this
series was posted on my blog in June 2011, and earlier on January 18, 2011.)
From
President Nixon’s Watergate to President Reagan’s “Evil Empire.” In between
were two solid, decent men: Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, who were both dealt
an awful hand of cards each, but, unfortunately for them, did not have the luxury
to pass on them, and as a result ended up with less than two presidential terms
combined between them.
History
was nice to them, however, as their decency paid off to extricate them from
their failed presidencies, and rewarded them for extra-presidential merits such
as personal character and humanitarian volunteerism. Good for them, although
definitely disingenuous.
Do
not expect me to dig into their biographies, or to engage myself in a detailed
analysis of their day-to-day little achievements and great failings in office.
I am only interested in a few, definitely subjective highlights of their lives
as America’s Presidents, and in some other idiosyncratic things, which I intend
to touch upon. There is no reason for me however to give either of them a
separate entry, despite the fact that both used to be in the focus of my
professional attention at the Institute of USA and Canada in Moscow for seven
of the nine years that I was a Fellow of that estimable institution.
Ironically,
Gerald Ford’s most outstanding achievement has also been perceived as his
greatest failing. I am talking about his pardon of Richard Nixon, which thus
spared the already bruised country a long, agonizing, and deeply humiliating
process of condemning her by now ex-President for a petty political crime
routinely committed by powerful politicians and by other “very important
persons” against their opponents and rivals, yet, in Nixon’s case, his accusers
had thrown the whole book at him, determined to throw him out of office in a
concerted and more than slightly disingenuous effort. It may be said that
Nixon was incredibly helpful in his own self-destruction, which only proves
that he was not taking Watergate seriously enough, seeing it, until too late,
only as a minor inconvenience, rather than as a well-orchestrated offensive
against him.
A
less remembered action, which was however equally designed by Ford to heal the
nation, was his initiation of pardon proceedings for the opponents of America’s
war in Vietnam, including “conscientious objectors,” draft dodgers, fugitives
to foreign countries, and such. Ford’s offer of national reconciliation was also
a noble gesture, but it could not win him conservative votes, as it effectively
admitted America’s mistake in conducting that war in the first place.
Considering that the Fall of Saigon in 1975 happened on his watch as well, his
political legacy was in a freefall practically from his first day in office.
In
his relationship with the Russians, Ford was unjustly plagued by President
Nixon’s Watergate. As I said before, in the wake of Nixon’s downfall, Moscow
basically gave up on the possibility to build up a positive long-term
relationship with American presidents. Through no fault of his, Ford was
painted as a nonentity, and this attitude showed. The regular annual US-Soviet
summitry, initiated by Nixon (and Henry Kissinger, to be fair!), continued in
late 1974 mainly by inertia. Ford did have his superpower summit moment as
well, but not in Moscow, where it ought to have been held, in conformity to the
by then established superpower theatrics. This time it was a rather low-key
event, whose locale was downgraded from the Soviet capital to the faraway
Pacific outpost of Vladivostok. The summit semi-reluctantly and almost
nostalgically wrapped up some unfinished Nixon-Brezhnev business, and then
ended, not to resume the next year, or the next, and was in fact left for dead in
its previously resplendent pageantry-filled regular form, never to return.
There
was another foreign policy event, though, which is no longer remembered,
although it was a seminal event with major long-reaching consequences. It
resulted from President Ford’s personal negativity toward the State of Israel,
whom Ford accused of deliberately dragging its feet with regard to the peace
process in the Middle East, and specifically with the Egyptians. (Anwar Sadat
was already making his desperate overtures toward Washington, but the Israelis
were still skeptical and refused to play ball.) At one point, Ford decided to
stop American aid to Israel, for which he was instantly confronted by the already
predominantly pro-Israel US Congress. Ford was genuinely shocked by the letter
signed by most US Senators, which was effectively challenging the Ford foreign
policy, and, in his bitter estimation, deprived him of the best means of giving
a meaningful boost to the peace process in the Middle East... Needless to say,
Ford lost his battle with the Congress over Israel, and the aid package was
resumed after a suspension of six months in 1975. I have a strong hunch that
Ford’s chances to be elected as President in his own right, in 1976 ( if he had
any), had been brought to nil by his stand on Israel, discomforting for the
American Jewish Lobby and for every beneficiary of the Jewish money and vote in
the US Congress, who were a great many, to say the least.
(This
is the end of Part I. Part II: Jimmy
Carter will be posted tomorrow.)
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