Some cynical 
pundits may have been surprised at the outpouring of grief associated with the passing of Gerald R. Ford, the 38th President of the US, who died of natural causes at the age of 93.
Ford had been an ex-President longer
than than any one except Herbert Hoover, and had survived two
assassination attempts. So some people may have just assumed that he
was one of the handful of Yale Law graduates who are truly immortal,
and were shocked to discover the truth.
However, the pundits would be correct to point out that Ford was not high on the standard roster of reknowned US Presidents.
To begin with, of course, he was never actually elected President. His Presidency was the product of our felicitous criminal justice system. He ascended to the Vice Presidency in 1973 by replacing one felon, and then to the Presidency in 1974 by agreeing to pardon another one.
There were also, to be sure, relatively few truly memorable positive acts by President Gerald Ford -- and many of those are best forgotten, as we'll see below.
Despite these concerns, we believe that a very
strong case can be made for the proposition that Gerald R. Ford was one
of our finest -- if not the finest - recent Presidents. This is not so
much because of what he did, as what he did not do -- especially in comparison with other, much better-known post-war US Presidents.