A VOTE FOR FORD
Kirk, Russell
A VOTE FOR FORD RUSSELL KIRK The best possible president was not nominated this year Mr. Gerald Ford is not a brilliant man, nor a very lively campaigner; and his consort is overly loquacious....
...Here I agree with Professor Rene1 de Visme Williamson, of Louisiana State University, who argues that religious reverence is the foundation of tolerable political order...
...Second, Mr...
...In short, I expect that Mr...
...Prevailing opinions," Disraeli said, "generally are the opinions of the generation which is passing...
...Carter, however, will give us that...
...Carter subscribes...
...It is to his credit as an honest politician that he has not agreed to support the sweeping "pro-life" amendment which would put an absolute federal prohibition upon abortion anywhere, forever...
...I do not contend that President Ford would lead us to Zion, or that he would lead us to any new destination...
...I do not believe that Mr...
...Such being my intuitions, I am willing to put Mr...
...His associates and advisers are decent and sometimes talented people...
...Carter, not unlike Lyndon Johnson in his rhetoric, might lead us into foreign and domestic blunders comparable to Mr...
...Logically, he is correct in this: under a federal political structure, control of such concerns should remain part of the police powers of the several states...
...But the best possible president, whoever he may be, was not nominated by any party this year...
...It is not that I object to the fearing and loving of God by presidents...
...It has been said that the American people do not elect a president: they defeat his opponent...
...Carter is politically candid...
...Jimmy Carter ought to be defeated...
...Carter is a liberal when he speaks in one city and a conservative when he speaks in the next...
...Carter is a different persuasion of Christian and he does make a political fuss about it...
...It might be like Huey Long's Zion, or like Lyndon Johnson's Zion...
...President Ford is a Christian, but he does not make a political fuss about it...
...As for Dr...
...Ford is the best possible president for this country...
...We can foresee what Mr...
...I doubt whether a Carter administration would contain people so hard-working and versatile as Secretary Richardson and Secretary Simon...
...He has enjoyed some success in checking inflation...
...Although Secretary Kissinger's undertakings have not been conspicuously successful in recent months, that is the fault mainly of an uncooperative and sometimes irresponsible Congress...
...Politics being the art of the possible, presidential elections offer us limited choices...
...I think, for instance, of a certain senator, now deceased, who used to declare proudly, "God always has his arm around my shoulder"-the while he was pork-barreling for the benefit of his state and his privy purse...
...He has been familiar with all the federal legislation for the past quarter of a century...
...Indeed, the Democratic platform of 1976 is almost undiluted "ritualistic liberalism" of yesteryear-the very infatuation with centralization, meddling, and fussy supercilious materialism which, paradoxically, Representative Barbara Jordan so effectively denounced in her keynote address at the Democratic convention: more extravagant expenditures, more regulation, more layers of bureaucracy, more empty slogans...
...Ford possesses discernible political principles, if not much imagination...
...Ford subscribes, that it is a commonsensical document, capable of being developed into later platforms and programs fit for the dawning age of chastened politics...
...au contraire...
...Carter seems amiable, sometimes ominous...
...Were you and I to vote only for candidates who should perfectly express your and my private ideals-why, we never would vote at all...
...Ours is a time of political transition, and, God willing, some public men of high moral imagination and right reason may make their appearance in both major parties during the next decade or two...
...This controversy leads us into the perplexed realm of religion-in-politics...
...Third, Mr...
...We cannot foresee what Mr...
...King told the convention and the television audience so...
...I am satisfied that Mr...
...Ford nor Mr...
...He was unsmirched by the Watergate Scandals and untouched by the current Waterbed Scandals...
...Nobody doubts his honesty...
...When one has written that, one has set down nearly all of Mr...
...The Pharisees had their virtues, but the union of Pharisee and demagogue would be oppressive...
...and should he be elected, his triumph would come from an uneasy and incongruous coalition which later he might ignore with impunity...
...Carter be president...
...I prefer that prospect to the possibility of an equestrian presidency, just now: for an equestrian is a man on horseback...
...and, the erratic present Congress considered, he has contrived fairly well in foreign affairs...
...Ford has taken a sound stand on what may be the decisive issue of this year's campaign- abortion...
...Ford is a conservative, if not so systematically conservative as Mr...
...I find myself uncomfortable, always, with political candidates who proclaim loudly how God-fearing and God-loving they are...
...I do believe that he would conduct a second prudent caretaker administration, bridging the uneasy passage from Vietnam and Watergate to a future reformation of parties and a future rein-vigoration of America's political imagination...
...It can be said for the Republican platform, to which Mr...
...Just so...
...However that may be, surely Ford is preferable to Carter on the abortion issue...
...Let them fear and love God privately, applying Christian teaching to their conduct of office...
...I fear that Mr...
...Ford's performance for four more years of office would be pedestrian...
...Yet presidents are not prophets nor high priests, nor should they aspire to be...
...Ford, a caretaker president, practically is our best hope for this era of transition...
...Plodding it might be, but the American people are in the mood to welcome some healthy routine, by way of contrast with the adventures, delusory promises and disgraces of the past dozen years...
...I am not arguing here that Mr...
...They are secular magistrates in a pluralistic society...
...Carter might do: he has settled for an archaic and silly platform which clearly cannot govern his administration...
...And as a political realist, Mr...
...I suspect that it might be a shabby and shoddy Zion, with plenty of Dead Sea fruits to bestow among deserving good old boys...
...No one hates Gerald Ford...
...Ford's election would ensure continuity of foreign policy...
...but sanctity...
...Ford's deficiencies as President of these United States...
...Neither Mr...
...A president who really should believe that let them spare us extravagant professions of their he possessed a private "pipeline to God" (like a former governor of Michigan, who popularized the phrase) would be a nuisance, a curse, a peril...
...Kissinger-why, at least Mr...
...meanwhile Mr...
...His course is predictable, and it would not be a reckless course...
...Yet I am not anti-Carter merely...
...Meanwhile we do the best we can with what we have...
...the Reverend Mr...
...Johnson's...
...First, Mr...
...in truth, no man living possesses-why, the American Constitution, including the first clause of the First Amendment, does not contemplate the accession to power of such a one...
...He has the advantage of many years' experience in the House of Representatives, giving him skill in the management of Congress...
...I do not find him fitter to be president than was Huey Long...
...Ford is aware that although a "states' rights" abortion amendment conceivably might get through Congress and the requisite number of states for ratification, the absolute federal prohibition almost certainly would be rejected by Congress, or by a good many states...
...Ford back into office...
...Reagan's friends might wish...
...Probably his chief achievement has been the restoring of good repute to the presidency...
...In so troublous times as ours, we cannot afford to let Mr...
...An imaginative and reforming conservatism is a real need in American politics just now, I fancy, quite as an imaginative and reforming liberalism might be our need in a different era...
...Ford has an able cabinet, by and large...
...I do not dread him as do some observers, but I suspect that he is merely a familiar type of Southern politician, not overly scrupulous about what he says and does, eager for power, and patronage, wondrously ignorant of foreign policy and thoroughly inexperienced in governing the federal colossus-which he alternately promises to reduce drastically and to enlarge through grand new functions...
...Carter does march to Zion, and the elder Martin Luther King went up to Heaven and obtained divine sanction for the coming Caesar...
...Perhaps the Democratic delegates will have acquired vision by 1980...
...I believe that a second Ford administration would have positive advantages, and below I set down a few of them...
...Carter seems pleased enough to stand by the Democratic platform, if only because Washington is well worth- not a mass, but a mouthing of tired phrases in which perhaps nobody but Senator Mondale believes any longer...
...I do not think he has much of any notion of what he might do as president, except for appointing cronies to high places...
...Yet I do not think that you and I would be idyllically happy in Mr...
...Ronald Reagan would have been a more colorful and vigorous Republican candidate...
...If I do not hanker after a self-righteous religionist in executive power, neither do I yearn for an ideologue...
...I am uneasy about what he might do in any large crisis...
...President Ford's merits, on the other hand, are substantial...
...Both the Christian faith and the national interest are enhanced by the presence of dedicated Christians in public office...
...either Secretary Elliot Richardson or Secretary William Simon would have been an abler manager of the federal apparatus and probably a man of more vision, but they stood no chance for the Republican nomination of 1976...
...I do not believe we can afford that risk...
...Ford would do: he has committed himself to certain general courses, and genuinely represents the sentiments of his party...
...Far from being ideologues, both of them seem deficient in ideas...
...I am not satisfied that Mr...
...Yet a chief magistrate and commander-in-chief of the forces who should confound his private judgments and prejudices with divine decree, or who should profess a perfect personal righteousness which...
...Sometimes Mr...
...Carter might not conceivably reveal such self-righteousness, once established in the White House...
...Williamson writes, "of decent and civilized dissent, of being a member of an opposition which is loyal and constructive instead of destructive or subversive, of regarding nature as God's handiwork to be tended and preserved rather than something to be exploited and desecrated...
...Carter's Zion...
...It is my contention that reverence is the root of obedience to and respect for constituted authority," Dr...
...I am endorsing President Ford because Mr...
...That mild praise cannot be extended to the Democratic platform, to which Mr...
...Ford never would advance such pretensions, though his frame of mind is Christian...
...He has committed himself to work for a constitutional amendment that would restore the status quo ante helium: that is, a "states' rights" amendment which would take abortion out of federal politics, into which that grisly business ought never to have been dragged...
Vol. 103 • October 1976 • No. 22
