Ford’s funeral: the hollow pomp of a corrupt and crisis-ridden establishment

The death of a 93-year-old man who served as the country’s unelected chief executive 30 years ago—lasting less than 29 months in office—and who is a virtual unknown to the majority of the country’s population today offers little to work with for those trying to revive flagging national spirits and obscure the grim and unrelenting news from the Iraqi fiasco.

The brutal truth is that Ford—who allowed his personal opposition to the launching of the Iraq war and the policies of the Republican Party’s “hard right” to be made public only after his death—has more than a passing connection to the current criminal catastrophe presided over by the Bush administration.

If he will be remembered for anything, it is for his decision, one month after taking office, to issue an unprecedented pardon to his predecessor Richard Nixon “for all offenses against the United States which he . . . has committed or may have committed or taken part in” during his more than five-and-a-half years in the White House.

(Less well-remembered, but highly significant in understanding the role played by Ford in the affairs of the American state, was his service on the Warren Commission, where he became one of the most steadfast defenders of the “lone gunman” theory, a thesis designed to cover up the political divisions and conspiracies that lay behind the Kennedy assassination.)

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/ford-j03.shtml