Recently in History Category
Whilst chatting with Jeremy this evening the subject of Gerald Ford's funeral came up.
In case you haven't the news in the last few days he died. And had a funeral. And NPR played the music from his funeral a thousand times today while reminding us that he died, had a funeral, and powerful people attended and said big things about him. Really big things. Disproportionate things. Disrespectfully disproportionate things.
What I mean by this is that when someone does some great things but otherwise not much that's OK to admit when he or she dies. Good guy, smart, decent but not amazing. That's not an insult. It's called being honest.
The thing Jeremy pointed out that I remembered thinking about when Reagan died was that not that many people have lain in state in the U.S. Capitol. In fact, only thirty-two people have ever had the honor granted to them, a list that includes Warren Harding and J. Edgar Hoover for what it's worth.
Only eleven have been Presidents. Jeremy noted that every President who died after the Kennedy assignation has been granted the honor save for Truman and Nixon. Before that neither Roosevelt received this honor, nor did Wilson. So what does this say about how these decisions are made and what they mean?
Roosevelt was a truly great President but I don't know if you can say this about Ford. This is not to disrespect him, it is simply to put his legacy in context. Here's an example: Harding was a terrrible President, George W. Bush is a terrible President, Ford was an average President.
But why Ford and not Truman?
One similarity between Truman and Ford is that they both made a difficult decision that they believed to be for the good of the nation; Truman ordered that the atomic bomb be used against civilians and Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. In a way I have more trouble with Truman's decision but that is another matter.
The best thing about Ford, as Daniel Schorr pointed out in a rare show of perspective amid today's pomp, was his executive order banning political assassinations. That he had the character to end the disgusting tradition, under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, of trying to murder the leaders of other (smaller and weaker) countries is a rare high point of the Cold War. The era of secret killings, of spying on American dissenters, and of deceiving the American people was a great tragedy that he helped to stunt temporarily.
This is his legacy, not the puffed up words of Dick Cheney, the shallow jokes of George H. W. Bush, or the pomp and circumstance of today's event.
Truman also had his moments of greatness and easily makes the list of the ten greatest Presidents. The Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the Truman Doctrine that set the stage for containment, his support for democracy and civil society, the Berlin Airlift, and desegregating the military stand out.
I'm not sure why Truman wasn't given a state funeral and I'm not sure why Ford was honored this way.
Just because a state funeral looks good on TV doesn't mean that every President should be granted the honor or that choosing to do so is necessarily respectful to the memory of the deceased. Ford should be honored, remembered for what he did as President and that should be the end of it.
Lately I've thinking quite a bit about the ideas that Jared Diamond articulated in Guns, Germ, and Steel and Collapse. His ideas are infectious in the best way possible and inform my daily interpretation of current events and history more than any other thinker I have read since college.
However, last night I found myself reading Philip Meggs' History of Graphic Design and started thinking about those few civilizations whose imagery and mythology survive conquest. What got me thinking was a little reminder about the complete unoriginality and general lameness of the ancient civilization that gave birth to my religion.
Who is this guy?
