Remember Betty
by digby
Perlstein on Betty Ford in the NY Times:
Though she was never an elected official, industry titan or religious leader, few Americans changed people’s lives so dramatically for the better. I learned it for myself in the most unlikely of places: a Ford family estate sale in 2007.
Some historical background: in August 1975 Betty Ford went on “60 Minutes” and said that if her 18-year-old daughter had an affair, she would not necessarily object. Soon after, she volunteered in McCall’s that she had sex with her husband “as often as possible.”
Those comments were widely reported. Less well known is what happened next.
Experts considered her a political liability. A syndicated humor columnist imagined aides seeking her resignation — before it was too late: “The networks and women’s magazines … are making incredible offers to get the First Lady to sit down and openly discuss adultery, drinking, homosexuality and a proposed postal rate hike.”
Bad joke. Two months later a Harris poll found that 64 percent of Americans supported what Mrs. Ford had said on “60 Minutes.” By then she was known for her self-assuredness before the media: she had already announced that she had breast cancer, then let herself be photographed in her hospital room after her mastectomy — at a time when respectable people only whispered the word “cancer.”
Then, a year and a half after leaving the White House, she famously owned up to her alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs, even as her husband was quietly putting himself forward as a 1980 presidential possibility. Once more the public embraced her, voting her ahead of the first lady, Rosalynn Carter, no slouch in the popularity department herself, on Good Housekeeping’s list of the country’s “Most Admired Women.”
No one would have predicted this. America had been a nation of shame-faced secrecy in so many of its intimate domestic affairs. The 1970s was when that began to change. Betty Ford was that transformation’s Joan of Arc.
Read on to find out about that estate sale.
Betty Ford was my favorite first lady and probably contributed greatly to my first presidential vote going to a Republican. (The contrast between her and the extremely religious Carter meant something to my youthful self.)
When Jerry Ford died a few years back, it happened to be right after the 2006 election, which you’ll recall was a Democratic rout. The press had been determined to downplay any ideological significance in the win and began to assert that people had voted in the previous November to return to the alleged bipartisan halcyon days of the Ford administration. This was my impression at the time:
Fox News Watch:
Eric Burns: Grandma Pelosi goes to Washington. Don’t you think the handlers have to back off just a little bit?
Neal Gabler: yeah, perhaps. I mean the themes of this week were really moderation and bipartisanship, not being grandma. We saw that in Ford’s funeral and we saw that with the celebration.
Burns: Celebration meaning?
Neal Gabler: Moderation meaning, we’ve had … and this is a slap clearly at the Bush administration — “we’ve had six years of hyperpartisanship” …. and what we’re looking at in Gerald Ford is a model of bipartisanship and moderation and what we’re looking for in terms of the new congress is the hopefulness of bipartisanship and moderation.
That pretty much covers it all in one muddled, hangover stew. Evidently, the brainless punditocrisy does believe that people voted for the Democrats last November because they were yearning for 1974 and wanted the Democrats to act like Jerry Ford. These people have decided that the Democrats are supposed to “pardon” President Bush in order to heal the nation.
I don’t think so.
60 Minutes last night reminded us of what it was really like back in the good old days when Betty Ford was in the White House being excoriated for her courageous decision to act like a normal human being instead of a robot:
Betty wouldn’t step back. In fact, her outspokenness was such a trademark that there are several exhibits about her candor at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Michigan.
For one, the Fords abandoned the notion of separate bedrooms. At the time, people were shocked by this.
“We had always shared a bedroom, and I thought there was no reason we had to change our lifestyle if I wasn’t gonna give him up entirely,” Mrs. Ford told Stahl.
But if that shocked the country, it was nothing compared to Betty’s interview with Morley Safer in 1975. All hell broke loose. She said that if she were a teenager, she probably would try marijuana, that she’d seen a psychiatrist, and that she was pro-choice. And then there was the question about her 18-year-old daughter.
“Well, what if Susan Ford came to you and said, ‘Mother… I’m having an affair’?” Safer asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. I would think she’s a perfectly normal human being, like all young girls,” the first lady replied.
Historians consider the interview so important, it runs perpetually at the Ford Museum. At first, two-thirds of the mail and phone calls were negative. Editorials criticized her for being too candid and too liberal, potentially an enormous problem for Jerry Ford.
Asked if her husband was upset with her, Ford told Stahl, “When he saw it, he said, ‘Well, honey, there goes about 20 million votes, but we’ll make it.'”
But other people were outraged. “There were people who actually demonstrated in front of the White House and said I was a embarrassment as a first lady,” she remembered.
She went on to become extremely popular because, shocking as it was, she was actually like the vast majority of the country. Her views were not out of the mainstream — she was just one of the few people in public life who had the courage to not be a hypocrite.
If everyone wants the Democrats to emulate the Ford era, being independent, outspoken and broadminded like Betty would be the right way to go about it. People were sick and tired of mushmouthed platitudes and insulting deception after all the years of lies. After Bush, I have a feeling people might just be looking for a little of that same Betty Ford straightforward honesty and clarity.
Yeah well, it was a nice thought.
I’m guessing that if you are under the age of 35 you can’t even imagine what it was like when there were Republicans like her.
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