Ford's legacy of healing

WHEN I interviewed Gerald Ford in 2004 for my book "Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House," I asked him how he wished to be remembered. "That's easy, Mark," was his quick reply. "I was a healer and a builder. And if I am remembered that way, I would be most grateful."

The healing Ford offered in the form of the presidential pardon of Richard Nixon and the limited pardon of Vietnam War draft dodgers was acutely unpopular at the time, and the pardon of Nixon almost certainly cost him the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. But he never doubted then or later that it was the right thing to do. Ford thought that those pardons were the price the divided country -- and ultimately he -- needed to pay in order to put the past behind and move forward.

Over the years, historians and the public began to appreciate the wisdom of those decisions, and the political selflessness it took to make them. Only a third of Americans approved of the pardon of Nixon when it was granted in September 1974, a number that grew to 54 percent just 10 years later. Indeed, the honor Ford was most proud of in his post-presidency was the "Profiles in Courage Award" given to him under the auspices of the John F. Kennedy Library in 2001, by a committee composed of historians and Kennedy family members, including Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg. "You can't beat that," he told me with some pride in the same interview.

But while he lived long enough to see his most controversial decisions vindicated, he also grew increasingly dismayed by the "poisonous" political atmosphere in Washington. He recalled fondly the times when he would battle Democratic opponents like Tip O'Neill in the House of Representatives on a typical day, then go hoist beers together after hours.

When the House threatened the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, he counseled Republicans out for blood to censure Clinton instead, sending a strong message to the president but stopping short of a draconian measure driven largely by bitter partisanship. They ignored his advice to their detriment. In more recent years, he became concerned about zealous Democrats and their anti-Bush tactics, even as he worried that President George W. Bush had made the wrong decision to invade Iraq under the guise that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

As we move forward after his death, I believe Ford, defined as a president and as a man by his inherent decency, would want politicians in Washington and across America to make decisions based on right or wrong, and not by partisan boundaries; he would want rabid Republicans on the right and passionate Bush-haters on the left to moderate their tones, and be more respectful toward one another; he would want Americans to stop seeing our country as a divided patchwork of blue and red states and start defining it by the values we share at its core. And I believe if we were to honor his memory in that way, Gerald Ford would be most grateful.

Mark K. Updegrove is author of "Second Acts: Presidential Lives and Legacies After the White House."