It began with and ended with the now much quoted first line of Carter's inaugural speech in 1977, " For myself and for my nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land". In a time period when Bush 43's presidency was nearly universally disliked due to it's handling of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and partisan tenses starting to flair up as a result of both a recent wave election that gave the Democratic Party control of both houses of congress and the sudden early start of the 2008 presidential election with John Edwards announcement in New Orleans on Dec. 28, 2006. It was both heart warming and comforting to see just how well the
nation's former presidents had been behaving with one another, which was on full display as Jimmy Carter spend much of the eulogy fighting back tears for much of his time at the alter( It should also be noted that at this time both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were traveling around the country for Katrina relief and around the world for the tsunami relief which was much lauded at the time).
Who would have watched the debates between the two men and thought for one moment that they ever would have been anything more then civil or respectful to one another. But, in the 30 years after the 1976 election, the democratic and Republican parties candidates had become so close, that during the white house's 200th anniversary dinner party, historians told carter and ford that there friendship was the closest of any former modern day presidents. It didn't happen over night, even with the respect Carter gave to Ford and his advice during his term of office. Every month then President Carter would send his national security advisor to Ford's home in Rancho Mirage, California and brief him. The Briefing were filled with as much information as possible and were exceedingly more detailed than the Briefing Carter would receive under the Reagan administration, wish he received only after insisting on it.
That great show of respect Carter showed Former president and Ford's support for the New administration's controversial Panama Canal Treaty did much to help calm things down between them. But it wasn't until 1981 on a trip to Cairo where Ford, Carter and President Nixon represented the country for the state funeral on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, that the two finally started to bridge the gap. The subject that started it all was funding for Carter's Presidential library. Shortly after his defeat in the 1980 election, Carter told the White House Press Corp that he wouldn't use his fame as a president to any form of commercial benefit. Four Years early Gerald Ford had made many lucrative deals with fortune 500 companies to sit on the boards and speech for them across the country. But Carter wanted to take a leaf from his ideal Harry S. Truman and deal with the burdensome task of finding the financing for his library some other way. The Presidential library would have to house nearly 25 million official documents, photos, papers, and mountains of film and other mementos, and with Carter having the image of a failed president the millions he would need to raise was going to be both a humiliating and argued to say the least.
Ford was already an expert in the area and was more then welling to help Carter with information from putting together a staff, mission statement, and future fundraising.
Once the Carter Center was built the two presidents traveled back and forth between their libraries and gave symposiums on each other's presidency. In time Ford would help Carter on several Goodwill trips for The Carter center from conferences with congressional leaders on peace in the middle east to Nuclear arms control talks at Emory University. There were moments during the Clinton Administration were the friendship waned a bit. Mainly due to Ford feeling that Carter was getting too involved with the North Korean Peace Talks and felt he was undermining Clinton's foreign policy. But such claims about Carter's Diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Carter Center have been made by other presidents as well, not just Ford. The Bushes in particular never got along with the Georgian Democrat, and Carter spoke more openly against the Bush 43 presidency then any other political figure.
But around 2000 a funny thing started to take shape in Gerald Ford. He had for years grown ever uncomfortable about the more of his party towards the extreme right. He hated attending the National Convention in 1992 when Pat Buchanan made comments like "lets take back our country" as if in Ford's mind they were making the claim that it was un-american to be a Democrat. He still deeply regretted giving into the demands of the party's right in 1975 and dropping Rockafeller from the ticket. And he still felt that Ronald Reagan's Primary Challenge had damaged 1976 campaign severely maybe even fatally. And he broke with conservative members of the Republican party in October 2001, by stating that gay and lesbian couples "ought to be treated equally. Period.". This comment made him still the highest ranking Member of the GOP to embrace equal rights for Homosexuals and lesbians. He also would also become a member of the Republican Unity Coalition and group of well known Republicans who's sole mission was to broaden the party's tent and make Gay rights a non issue
He would even state in several interviews released after his death that he was both pro choice and disagreed strongly with the Bush Administration's policy in Iraq. Calling the war a big mistake and claiming that it was never justified. Saying that his former chief of staff now turned Vice president Dick Cheney and then Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served also as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief had along with Bush 43 made a big mistake in putting the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction and never publicly saying they were wrong. He even claimed that both Bush 41 and Barabara Bush had been like Ford and his wife Pro choice for years. Something that he said they had privately told him and that Bush would later disclaim in the Newsweek issue realized after Ford's passing.
So both former presidents could be outspoken critics, each in there own ways and in there own time, and they were far from always at an agreement with one another.
But at the end of the day they were close friends bound together by love of country and their service to it. Betty and Rosylann were very close to one another and the families got along great as well. Carter was always a hard man for some people to befriend, but Ford wasn't and his easy nature won over in the long run. In many ways their differences in personality counter balanced one another. Ford was a drinker, smoker, deal maker, Midwestern, all american main street, clumsy athlete. Carter was a one drink at dinner parties, beer after church, hard working, non smoking, nuclear scientist, baptist, southern born know it all. Together they made up a marvelous kaleidoscope of Americana.
The two former presidents co-authored a 1983 Reader's Digest article criticizing Israel, a 1988 governing blueprint for President George H.W. Bush and a 1998 New York Times op-ed piece urging Congress to censure former President Bill Clinton. They lobbied for the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 and against initiatives in 1996 to legalize drugs in Arizona and California.
They had both also come along way in how the public persevered them. Ford went from a historical footnote and SNL punching bag to an elder statesmen and recipient of the medal of freedom. It was during the award's reception in the east room in 1999, that President Clinton said what many in the democratic party had being saying for years, that Ford was "right about pardoning Nixon and that he (Clinton then a candidate for congress in 1974)was wrong". History had by that time been very good to our 38th president and had come to see his pardoning Nixon as a selfless act of political courage and foresight.
Carter had gonna from the image of a weak failure, to the most powerful and positive force for peace in the world. His post presidency poll numbers had risen sharply over the years and he had been rewarded more then any other former president for his humanitarian and peace keeping efforts. Every kind of honor and accolade you can imagion he had received, from the medal of freedom to the Albert Schweitzer Prize. From the Liberty medal to nearly twenty honorary scholarships. Then in 2003 Jimmy Carter became the first former us president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
The following year he would give a keynote speech against both the Iraq War and the re-election of George W. Bush. This was a striking contrast to how he was treated for years within the Democratic party,even ignored by some. In 1992 when comparisons were made between Clinton and Carter, Clinton went out of his way to distance himself from the political weak former president. Now like Ford, everyone was clamoring for face time with the Nobel laureate.
The two would continue to make speeches and public appearances, mainly at one another's libraries or at the state funeral of Ronald Reagan. But in 2005, at 91 doctor's orders had began to limit ford's travel. Carter was forced to attend the opening of the Clinton library without his usual limo partner. Ford was also invited too, but did not attend the second inaugural of Bush 43. And when both Carter and Ford did not attend the funeral of John Paul II in the summer of 2005, it seemed to only compound the image that Carter had a distant relationship with the two other former presidents and the current president(all three of whom did go) and the notion that Ford was in fact ailing.
By the early 2006 Ford's health was on the decline. In early January he was hospitalized at Eisenhower Medical Center near his home in Rancho Mirage for pneumonia and was released till the following week. In mid-December of the following year, Ford underwent routine tests at Eisenhower and was hospitalized overnight because of a chest cold.
President Bush payed Ford and Betty a visit to there California home on the 23rd of April. Holding a cain and visibly weak and pale, but with a smile on his face, he made his last known public appearance along side the president. Wearing a socked in yellow shirt and holding onto Bush 43's hand, he addressed questions to the press and posed for pictures out in front of his house on his driveway. In July Ford was admitted at Vail Valley Medical Center for shortness of breath. Ford had celebrated his birthday (his 93rd) there in Vail on July 14 and Betty was hoping that they would spend the summer there. Once he was realized the ford family enjoyed the former president's final summer together till he was admitted to St. Mary's Hospital of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for testing and evaluation on the 15th of August. It was then reported on August 21st that he had been fitted with a pacemaker. Four days later President Ford underwent an angioplasty procedure at the Mayo Clinic.
On November 12, 2006, upon surpassing Ronald Reagan's lifespan, Ford released his last public statement:
The length of one's days matters less than the love of one's family and friends. I thank God for the gift of every sunrise and, even more, for all the years He has blessed me with Betty and the children; with our extended family and the friends of a lifetime. That includes countless Americans who, in recent months, have remembered me in their prayers. Your kindness touches me deeply. May God bless you all and may God bless America.
This short and humble statement would be the last one the former president would ever release to the press.
It was around that time in November 2006 that Jimmy Carter was getting ready for the release of his new book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" and the title alone was creating a firestorm of controversy. Carter had always had a very difficult relationship with the american Jewish community and now the new book was being preconceived as something of an admission of his lifelong antisemitism That he was speaking in favor of Palestine and terrorist movements within the holy land. This was in fact not true, and even though Carter has always been supportive of a Palestine state and friendly towards Arab leaders. He has always been a friend of Israel and desired peace in the holy land. Yet his book frankly spokes out against Israel's policies toward Palestine as being in his eyes a system of apartheid. All throughout the winter of 2006 and fall of 2007 carter would be on his national book tour promoting the book. At every city Jewish leaders would confront Carter, in Arizona a protest of several hundred lined the book store while Carter was inside signing copies. At another book signing a woman told he needed to be tried for treason. Brandeis University invited Carter to debate Alan Dershowitz on the merits of the book. There were claims from other authors that Carter had plagiarized material and maps from their books and used them as un-cited support material in his own. Other critics simply just called Carter a liar and one Carter center fellow even resigned.
Filmmaker Jonathan Demme followed Carter during his national book tour promoting the book, and it would eventually be the 2007 documentary "Man from Plains". But during the middle of the film there is a gap between filming from December 2006 and early January 2007. This was unfortunately due to the death and then state funeral of Gerald R. Ford.
Ford died at the age of 93 on Dec. 26 at his home in Rancho Mirage. He had been sinking fast and his finally Christmas had been spent bedridden except when the family priest arrived a day or so earlier for Christmas mass. The former president was then removed from his bed, dressed and taken to the living room in a wheelchair for the private service. He had been failing for some time and it was to no one's surprise when he passed on, but everyone was saddened by it. Former first lady Betty Ford and the ford family released a statement following his death,
"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age. His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."
Moments later CNN confirmed his passing and President Bush released a statement from the White House speaking like every other statement released by the former presidents, u.s. senator, governors, congressmen, and news outlets in the days following his death. Speaking about a nation's loss and a man's service.
The body of former was flown to Washington D.C. and In keeping with Mr. Ford's wishes to keep his funeral simple, there was no horse-drawn caisson, no riderless horse, no procession but a motorcade. His Service was nearly half the length of Ronald Reagan's from two years earlier.
The state funeral began with a service at Washington National Cathedral, then moved to Grand Rapids for Ford's final homecoming. The marching band from the University of Michigan, the school where he played football, greeted the White House jet carrying his casket, members of his family and others in the funeral party. The service in Washington unfolded in the spirit of one of its musical selections — "Fanfare for the Common Man". The song was followed by a eulogy from Bush 41 who, called Ford a "Norman Rockwell painting come to life" and then made jokes about Ford and his sometimes very erratic golfing. President Bush escorted his widow, Betty Ford, down the aisle of the great stone cathedral, past nearly 3, 000 mourners. Tom Brokaw was the next to eulogize Ford. Followed by Henry Kissinger and then finally Jimmy Carter.
Following the funeral Carter engaged Secretary of State Rice in an animated conversation while waiting for the funeral party. Rice also chatted with Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and at one point the three ex-presidents shook hands.
The body of former President Gerald R. Ford has spent the past two days before lying in state in the capital rotunda, while thousands of visitors came by to pay there last respects and given funeral cards by capital staffers. At one Point a chair was placed in the middle of the giant room and from a corridor soon emerged Betty ford. She sat down on the chair with her family behind her and just stared at the flag draped coffin.
After the funeral service in Washington the body was taken to the grounds of the Ford Museum in Grand Rapids where it was finally laid to rest. While the body was in transit between Washington and Michigan, two figures gathered with the ford family in the cabin of Air force one, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. It was the last leg of a brilliant american political story and the final destination of a touching and sincere friendship between two former opponents that began 30 years prior. When
a nation celebrated it's bicentenary and a one term governor challenged an accidental incumbent president.
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