After all it was a great big world

When I was a fifteen-year-old cellist of negligible talents I was part of the orchestra at Kalamazoo Michigan’s Loy Norrix High School. (Side note: just before the 2020 election the NYT did a story on graduates of my high school from my sister’s time there — she is six and a half years younger than I am, so early 1980s — and their feelings about Donald Trump. You should read my post about that as I think it captures something very fundamental about the whole center-liberal delusion that Democrats and Republicans in America today share essentially similar values but just disagree about how to best pursue those values).

The orchestra and choir made a record album to celebrate the approaching bicentennial, and apparently a member of Congress named Garry Brown was a good enough friend with Gerald Ford — Ford was from Grand Rapids, which is 40 miles north of Kalamazoo — that an invitation was wrangled for us to visit the White House to present the president with our opus. Here is part of Ford’s remarks, which he made in the Rose Garden:

AS SOME OF YOU KNOW, WHEN I ATTENDED HIGH SCHOOL IN
GRAND RAPIDS, I WENT OUT FOR THE FOOTBALL TEAM — BUT I ALWAYS
HAD A HEALTHY RESPECT FOR THE GOOD SENSE SHOWN BY STUDENTS WHO
BECAME MUSICIANS. AT LEAST, WHEN THE BAND MARCHED DOWN THE
FIELD — THERE WASN’T ANOTHER BAND ON THE OTHER SIDE TRYING TO
STOP THEM. . . . YOUR GROUP REPRESENTS THE REAL
SPIRIT OF WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO ACHIEVE WITH THE BICENTENNIAL:
TO MAKE IT A GENUINE REFLECTION OF AMERICAN LIFE — AND TO BRING
TOGETHER, VOWNTARILY, GROUPS AND INDIVIDUALS FROM ALL WALKS OF
LIFE AND ALL PARTS OF THE COUNTRY WHO HAVE SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE. IT1
S A LONG WAY FROM KALAMAZOO TO WASHINGTON~ BUT
I THINK YOU WILL FIND THAT MOST OF THE PEOPLE HERE SHARE YOUR LOVE
OF MUS lC — AND LOVE OF COUNTRY. AND MANY OF THEMI Ll KE
YOU 1 ARE VISITORS WHO HAVE COME TO SEE THIS GREAT CITY THAT HOUSES
SO MUCH OF OUR NATIONAL HERITAGE. AN IMPORTANT PART OF THAT HERITAGE lS THE MUSIC — AND THE TEAMWORK — THAT YOUR GROUP REPRESENTS.
I’M VERY HAPPY THAT YOU COULD STOP BY THE WHITE HOUSE.
lT1 IS REALLY A BEAUTIFUL PLACE1 lSN’T lT — ESPECIALLY AT THIS TIME OF
YEAR. AND IT BELONGS TO EACH OF YOU, AS AMERICANS. IT’S YOUR HOUSE,
YOU KNOW. BETTY AND I ARE JUST TEMPORARY RES I DENTS —
ALTHOUGH WE HOPE TO RENEW OUR LEASE IN 1976 FOR ANOTHER FOUR YEARS.

Gerald Ford as a particularly accidental president, who will probably always have a unique distinction in ascending to the office without ever being a candidate in a presidential election. He made a horrendous mistake that set a horrible precedent when he pardoned Richard Nixon. But . . . he was a normal human being, not a narcissistic sociopath. Reading these reassuringly banal remarks that I heard in person 51 years ago, I’m struck how inconceivable it is that Ford would have used his office to enrich himself to the tune of billions of dollars, or would have torn down the part of the White House we were standing in to put up a ballroom that would look like something out of “Notes on Camp,” or would turn the following year’s bicentennial celebration into an off-brand Nuremberg rally intended to cater to Nazi Morons For Jesus, as opposed to Americans in general.

Here’s an idle speculation for you: Ford lost an extremely close election to Carter in 1976, after nearly being defeated for the Republican nomination by the sudden emergence of Ronald Reagan as the avatar of the American right wing. What if Ford had won? Would Reagan have won in 1980 anyway? (Ford would not have been eligible for re-election). Would America have ended up with six or seven straight Republican presidencies? Carter was the only Democrat elected between 1964 and 1992, which is something that all the people who love to wail about how Clinton’s centrist DLC presidency was a betrayal of the spirit of FDR ought to keep in mind — at the time it seemed like it was becoming almost impossible for even a moderate Democrat to get elected to the White House.

I have a fairly vivid memory of the bicentennial, and it was pretty cool, actually. Especially in comparison to the current travesty.

Recorded on July 4th, 1976: