Besides turning Curly Lambeau down for a spot on the Green Bay Packers of 1935, former President Gerald Ford is remembered in Wisconsin for his other career. The late Gerald Ford may be best known for giving Richard Nixon a presidential pardon, but UW political scientist Charles Franklin says it's really how Gerald Ford led the nation post-Watergate that will be his legacy.
Franklin says Ford will be looked on as an ordinary guy in a tough position who made some right and wrong decisions. Those wrong decisions include his Whip-Inflation-Now campaign to help a sagging economy that was not of his doing. The right moves include the Helsinki Accords that brought about human rights monitoring in Soviet influenced Eastern Europe. It also led to an ill fated statement in a presidential debate that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination.
Franklin points out that despite being put into some impossible situations, such as being lampooned by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live as a stumbler and a bumbler, history will look on Gerald Ford favorably as a President and as a human being. For died Tuesday night at the aged of 93.