The Importance of Gerald Ford

At a conference in London, where everyone — from their limbs to their backbones to their hearts — centered on the question mark above the East, I was asked, “When will we become a just state, and when will we become good citizens?” I answered, “When we have citizens like Gerald Ford and a president like Gerald Ford.” No one understood what I meant, so I explained. Gerald Ford was voted in as vice president and became president after Richard Nixon’s resignation. The American people didn’t re-elect him because they preferred Jimmy Carter from the peanut fields or George W. Bush in his cowboy boots.

Gerald Ford wasn’t a genius, he wasn’t sophisticated and he wasn’t politically astute. He was greater than this by far. He was human, moral and well-intentioned. He inspired less admiration than he did amusement. He tripped on the stairs of a plane, and he told a joke that offended the Poles, who cared about that kind of foolishness. But he was a good man who sought peace without and prosperity within.

Gerald Ford didn’t give any historic speeches, like the famous inaugural addresses studied in political and literary curricula around the world, and he made no political achievements during the short time he spent in the White House. After he left, he preferred solitude; he didn’t travel around the world giving lectures or acting as an envoy for his country, like George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter.

From time to time, he gave an interview here and an interview there. One time he was asked what current issue most worried him — he didn’t think long. He said, “My grandson is a child now, and when he reaches college age, the cost will be more than $100,000. I believe his family will be able to cover the cost, but how many others his age will?”*

I said to my colleagues listening, “We’re used to public officials being concerned only with themselves — ‘After me, the flood,’ as Louis IV said. But the true leader is the one whose heart is with the future of his grandchildren. He is the simple 80-year-old farmer who, when asked for whom he planted the pines, said, ‘They planted it so we may eat, and we plant it so they may eat.’”

The Arab president doesn’t care at all about his grandson’s generation. With deep apologies, I would like to ask: How many universities have been built in the Arab world in the last quarter century? And I would also like to ask whether there are any better universities than the American Universities in Beirut and Cairo, more than a century after their establishment.

When the leader (or the citizen) begins to think like Gerald Ford, we may start down the path toward the nation and citizenship. As for cooperation with a state, even when there’s a good chance to be either purified or destroyed, we have only what is in front of us: citizens sleeping for 40 years until they forget their rights and a leader neglecting the country for 40 years until he forgets when to leave.

It is foolishness when some of our “historic” presidents realize the importance of a political “legacy,” which is their duty to leave for those who come after them — this is what they insist on when they refuse to leave their countries until they’re wastelands or divided Sudans.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.