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Saturday, December 30, 2006
View of GOP as buffoons a fabrication
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In retrospect, it’s hard to imagine that President Gerald R. Ford ever came to be viewed as a klutz or as a man of modest intelligence.
He was neither. As reporter Bob Dart noted in Ford’s obituary, he was probably the most accomplished athlete ever in the White House. After being named Most Valuable Player on his 1934 University of Michigan football team, he was offered professional contracts by both the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions.
His athletic prowess in football carried over to golf, skiing and swimming. JFK may have effected athleticism for the newsreels, but Ford was the genuine article.
And yet, it’s Ford who, in Dart’s words, “gained a comical reputation for clumsiness while in the White House.” Considerable assistance came from comedian Chevy Chase, who often portrayed Ford stumbling or falling on “Saturday Night Live.” Here’s what Chase said last week about the routine, as reported by Reuters news service:
“He had never been elected, period, so I never felt he deserved to be there to begin with. This was just the way I felt then, as a young man and as a writer and a liberal.”
While Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon for Watergate no doubt contributed significantly to his loss to Jimmy Carter, his depiction by the media and entertainment industry as a nice, well-meaning bumbler of modest intelligence conditioned the country to believe him inferior to the challenge.
But as his speechwriter, James C. Humes, wrote after his death, Ford’s “dean’s list grades at the University of Michigan were enough to earn him a scholarship to Yale Law School. In his rankings there, he topped fellow classmates Cyrus Vance and Sargent Shriver.”
Oft quoted was the LBJ crack that “Jerry Ford is a nice fellow, but he played too much football without a helmet.”
This genial dunce theme recurs in media treatment of Republican leaders, with some exceptions. Nixon was smart but evil. George H.W. Bush was genial, but intellectually inferior to Bill Clinton. Ronald Reagan was dumb and George W. Bush is too, while the Democrats they defeated — Carter, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry — were all intellectually superior.
The basis for that misperception about most conservatives and Republicans is that by and large they come from places unfamiliar to the New York-Washington media establishment. And it is that establishment, until the rise of the blogosphere, talk radio and cable television, that owned the business of deciding what’s news. They owned, too, the franchise on determining who in the political arena has substance, who’s serious and who’s not.
Conservatives were always disadvantaged in that milieu, and still are, because their constituents by and large were made up of what Ford affectionately called “the ordinary, the straight, the square [the quality] that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation.” It is, he said, “a quality to be proud of … a quality that many people seem to have neglected.”
That’s not Washington, nor is it the pressure groups demanding more government, nor is it the political industry that defines the nation’s problems in ways that make them the solution. It is therefore alien to everyday experience in the centers of opinion and government so, well, Grand Rapids and comfortable and straight.
It’s a mind-set like that of Chevy Chase that makes those “in the know,” in politics, academia, entertainment and the media, quite comfortable in dismissing Ford, Reagan or Bush as somebody who didn’t “deserve to be there to begin with” because they were the choice of the uniformed, misguided, self-interested, complacent and those lacking in compassion and kindness — in essence, the ordinary people who lived in places like Grand Rapids.
When liberal entertainers speak today of Bush, it’s with that same smug dismissive certainty that devalues his intelligence, his moral authority or his claim to the Oval Office.
Often with conservatives, it’s because the critics can’t comprehend their ideas, values or agendas — and therefore either assume they have none or that the ones they have lack merit. But in Ford’s day, a relative few news, opinion and entertainment figures in New York, Washington and Hollywood could turn an athlete into a national klutz and a Yale Law School graduate into an intellectual dullard.
That world passed, though, before the president did.
• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
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When tyrants tremble…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Robert Lowry, a professor of literature and later chancellor at Bucknell University, was also a Baptist minister who wrote about 500 gospel songs. A revised version of one of those, “How Can I Keep from Singing?,” was popularized on the folk music circuit by singer Pete Seeger in the 60s. His version is done soothingly and beautifully by Irish singer Enya, one of the world’s most popular female artists. The first time I heard her sing it, I stopped in my tracks to listen. The original lyrics are as beautiful as her voice.
It springs to mind today after reading news accounts of the execution of Saddam Hussein. Here are the relevant lyrics, as sung by Seeger and Enya:
“When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
And hear their death-knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near,
How can I keep from singing?”
I much prefer the Lowry version, written in 1860:
My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far off hymn
That hails a new creation:
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?
What though my joys and comforts die?
The Lord my Savior liveth;
What though the darkness gather round!
Songs in the night He giveth:
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that refuge clinging;
Since Christ is Lord of Heav’n and earth,
How can I keep from singing?
I lift mine eyes; the cloud grows thin;
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smoothes
Since first I learned to love it:
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
A fountain ever springing:
All things are mine since I am His—
How can I keep from singing?
This is the secular version sung by Seeger and Enya:
My life goes on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear it’s music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?
While though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
And though the darkness ‘round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm,
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?
When tyrants tremble in their fear
And hear their death knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?
In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging,
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?
The execution of Saddam was essential, for his victims, for Iraq and as a message to other tyrants. While an execution is not an occasion for glee, the world can rejoice that an evil is past — and for that, how can I keep from singing?
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