This week, America lost a true giant who brought us together and made us all feel good about ourselves…but enough about The Godfather of Soul.

Much has been made of Ford’s role in Cheney and Rumsfeld’s rise to power. Jon Wiener properly calls Rumsfeld and Cheney Ford’s legacy. However, Wiener should have included Alan Greenspan in the list of Ford’s legacies, since it was Ford who first brought Greenspan to national prominence by naming him as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.

Anthony, while Ford was not a champion of limited-government, I don’t believe he bears sole (or even primary) responsibility for the explosion of social spending during his administration. Spending skyrocketed because of a left-wing Democratic Congress elected as a result of the public’s Watergate-inspired disgust with the GOP. Ford, a “balanced-budget” Republican, was actually the last President of either party to use the veto to attempt to reign in government spending.

Ford played a major role in the development of my attitude toward the state as it was listening to my beloved Taft Republican grandfather mock “stumbling Jerry,” that I first learned that is was the duty of every decent, freedom-loving American to heap scorn and ridicule on our “leaders.”