Former President Ford’s Death Marks End of Political Era

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• RAY SUAREZ:

  And to the analysis of Shields and Lowry, syndicated columnist Mark Shields and National Review editor Rich Lowry. David Brooks is off.

  And, Mark, this week the death of a man who aspired to be speaker of the House and never knew what hit him, it seemed.

• MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist:

  Well, he's an amazing man. I do believe that; I don't use the term loosely.

  It was said of another Midwesterner who became — and quintessential Midwesterner, who became an accidental president, Harry Truman. He was comfortable being Jerry Ford. He liked being Jerry Ford. He never thought of being anybody else but Jerry Ford.

  Upon reflection, that's probably a pretty good litmus test for anybody who seeks to sit in the Oval Office.

  I always thought he was the most emotionally healthy former president, if not president, I ever met or covered, in the sense that most presidents, Ray, spend an extraordinary amount of time — Bill Clinton probably began in the third grade around recess, I think — thinking about becoming president.

  But they devote so much of themselves and their time, when they do leave that office, eventually, there's a gaping hole in their psyche. And with Jerry Ford, that wasn't the case. He did want to be speaker of the House.

  When the Republicans didn't win a majority in the 1972 Nixon landslide, he confided to his friend, Tip O'Neill, across the — he told Betty that he was going to serve until '76 and then he was out of there. And it was O'Neill and Mansfield and Carl Albert who told Richard Nixon he was the most confirmable of all the possibilities to succeed Spiro Agnew, who, of course, had resigned in disgrace.

  And I just think that history will be enormously kind to him, because, after Watergate and Vietnam and the incredible tensions and ugliness in this country, I mean Jerry Ford did — he did heal the wounds of the nation.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  Rich Lowry, is the Jerry Ford-type of Republican still very much in evidence on the national scene?

• RICH LOWRY, Editor, National Review:

  No. You know, Jerry Ford was a transitional figure, and he won that primary battle in 1976 against Ronald Reagan technically, but he really lost it, because the center of gravity of American conservatism in the Republican Party was steadily moving out of the Midwest, you know, to points further south and further west.

  And as a colleague of mine pointed out this week, if you look at the primaries that Reagan won, with the exception of California, the primaries he won in 1976, they're all the so-called red states now. And Reagan did well in those states where there are a lot of new Republicans.

  And even in that convention…

• RAY SUAREZ:

  And a lot of new people, because the population axis of the country…

• RICH LOWRY:

  Were growing, right, which…

• RAY SUAREZ:

  … is swinging that way, too.

• RICH LOWRY:

  … which helped give the Republican Party such an advantage in recent presidential politics. But even in that convention that year, Ford's people thought Jerry Ford gave one of the best speeches of his life.

  But he graciously and spontaneously asked Reagan to come up to the podium, and Reagan eclipsed him. And there's a feeling in the hall, "Jeez, we nominated the wrong guy." And, of course, Reagan would get it in 1980.