Just breaking now, former President Gerald Ford has died at 93.

Former President Gerald Ford dies at 93

Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th president and the only one never elected to nationwide office, has died. He was 93.

"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," former first lady Betty Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.

Ford was a very special president in many ways.  Entering the vice presidency as a replacement to Spiro Agnew, and then ascending to the presidency when President Nixon resigned, he is the only sitting president who was never elected.

He also stood in a strange dichotomy:  Being the last link to the Nixon era, by proxy anyway, he was both the symbol of the failures of corruption and a kind of healing to move forward.

He lost reelection (election really) to Jimmy Carter, so his presidency was short and to many uninspiring.  But in fairness, he was left in an unadmireable position.  Being appointed to replaced a resigned VP and then a resigned President, both under the shroud of scandal, he had large shoes to fill, and a lot of public opinion against him both by association and for his pardon of Nixon.  I think in retrospect he was never really given a chance to show us what he could do.  He was one of the good ones who we let slip away.

He was often mocked, particularly on SNL  by Chevy Chase, but despite that, he always impressed me with his dignity and sense of humor.

He will not be remembered as the greatest, the worst, the most inspiring or the most uninspiring, but despite his relative ambiguity, and almost obscurity, he will always be remembered, and that is a greater legacy in its own right.

RIP Mr President.

Here are links to his official White House Bio and his Wikipedia entry.

Michelle Malkin (a good round up), Hot Air, PunditGuy, Blue Crab Boulevard, Gun Toting Liberal ™, The Political Pit Bull, Outside The Beltway  and Riehl World View have more.

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