Greenspan Is Right ... About Gerry Ford

You can tell how really influential a book in and about Washington really is by how aggressively and immediately individuals mentioned in that book seek to advertise or rebut what has been written about them. By this standard, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's autobiographical "The Age of Turbulence" is profoundly influential.

Consider first the reaction of the Bush White House, which has almost uniformly refused to comment on books criticizing the president or his administration with the same one-size-fits-all wisecrack, "We don't do book reviews."

Not this time, however. Vice President Dick Cheney wrote an essay in The Wall Street Journal seeking to refute Greenspan's charges that the Bush-Cheney policies had abandoned fiscal discipline and embraced runaway federal spending.

On the other side of the street, supporters of North Dakota Democrat and Senate budget committee chairman Kent Conrad were quick to circulate Greenspan's praise of the accurate predictions made by Conrad and then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin that President George W. Bush's 2001 tax cuts, to which Greenspan had effectively given a congressional green light, would totally dismantle years of bipartisan fiscal discipline and, after consuming the federal budget surplus, permanently doom the U.S. budget to annual deficit.

"It turns out," Greenspan — almost naively — writes, "that Conrad and Rubin were right. The tax-cut testimony proved to be politically explosive. ... I saw that while politics had not been my intent, I'd misjudged the emotions of the moment."

Those praised will generally praise Greenspan, while those criticize will criticize him.

But with one of Greenspan's political and historical assessments concerning President Gerald R. Ford ("He always understood what he knew and what he didn't know. ... Ford was secure in himself — probably one of those rare people who score normal in psychological tests.") I want to express my complete agreement.

Gerald Ford may well have been the most emotionally healthy man to sit in the Oval Office. An All-American center on the University of Michigan's national championship football team who, upon graduation, was drafted by two National Football League teams, Gerry Ford never resorted to bluster or swagger to prove his manliness or earn his varsity letter.

Maybe because of his service as a naval officer, where he earned 10 battle stars, the Silver Star and four Bronze Stars, Gerry Ford never had to talk about or prove his toughness in public or in public office.

An admirer, the late Democratic House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, told me of his friend from Michigan, "Gerry Ford is a beautiful human being." Recalling that Ford in his congressional confirmation hearings to be vice president had said, "I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln," O'Neill added in words that today would risk the ire of the secular left: "God has been very good to our country. ... During the Civil War, He gave us Abraham Lincoln. And at the time of Watergate, He gave us Gerry Ford, the right man at the right time."

Jim Cannon was an exceptionally respected journalist who had not personally known the president when he went to work in the Ford White House. Cannon observed: "He knew who he was, and he was very comfortable with who he was. There was not a trace of insecurity about him. He knew what he knew, and he was not embarrassed about what he didn't know."

Cannon remembered Ford one day asking National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, "What does UNESCO do?" and then thanking him for the answer.

In making the most controversial and most courageous decision of his presidency — to pardon Richard Nixon — Gerry Ford did not have to ask anybody for the right answer. On Sunday, Sept. 8, 1974, when Ford called the Democratic leader at home to tell him of the pardon he was about to grant, Tip O'Neill recalled telling his friend: "You're crazy. I'm telling you right now this will cost you the election."

The pardon probably did cost Gerry Ford the 1976 election, but it never cost him his piece of mind. He bravely saved the nation from probably two years of anguish and division, while Richard Nixon was probably convicted and, quite possibly, imprisoned.

Let us hope and pray that, in 2009, the nation once again is blessed with a president who — like Gerald Ford — knows who he (or she) is, is comfortable with himself (or herself) and doesn't ever have to prove his (or her) toughness in foreign conflicts.

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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COPYRIGHT 2007 MARK SHIELDS