'Unpardonable' for Ford to Not Share Disagreement with Iraq War --1/2/2007

Brent Baker

January 2, 2007 - 1:00am

1. 'Unpardonable' for Ford to Not Share Disagreement with Iraq War
On Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Time magazine Washington Bureau Chief Jay Carney called "unpardonable" the late President Gerald Ford's failure to share with the nation, as well as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld -- who worked for him as Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense, respectfully -- his discomfort with the decision to go to war in Iraq. "Had he spoke out at the time," Carney sighed, "it would have had an impact." This Week opened the roundtable with audio of Gerald Ford in a 2004 interview with Bob Woodward: "I don't think I would have ordered the Iraqi war. I can understand the theory of wanting to free people. I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people unless it is directly related to our own national security." Carney's wife, ABC's Claire Shipman, echoed what she expressed on Thursday's Good Morning America as she scolded Ford for cowardice since "he could have made a real difference" if he had spoken out: "If this was a man who was unafraid to take the hit on something like the pardon [of Nixon], this was a man who had the experience of Vietnam, presiding over the end of the Vietnam war, he clearly felt strongly about what was happening in Iraq, he could have made a real difference if he had decided to speak out."

2. Fineman Can't Resist Raising Ford's Critical View of Iraq War
Journalists just can't resist highlighting how the late President Gerald Ford expressed disagreement with President George W. Bush's Iraq policy and with Vice President Dick Cheney's adamant pursuit of it. Barely two minutes into MSNBC's Saturday coverage of Ford's funeral, Newsweek political reporter Howard Fineman ruminated about how "the interesting thing is that Gerald Ford himself, toward the end of his life, in conversations with Bob Woodward...said basically I disagreed with the idea of going to war in Iraq and he wondered about Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld," who "were known for their probity and caution and for their lack of ideology, for their realistic view of the world. How was it, Ford wondered toward the end of his life, that those two guys, part of that all-star team of realists, had gotten hooked up in what Ford regarded as a mistaken war?"

3. Third Runners-Up Quotes in MRC's Awards for the Worst Reporting
The third and fourth runners-up quotes in the MRC's "Best Notable Quotables of 2006: The Nineteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting."

4. Rocky Mountain News and New York Post Run Pieces on Best of NQ
Two major media appearances, in the Rocky Mountain News and the New York Post, for the MRC's "Best Notable Quotables of 2006: The Nineteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting."

'Unpardonable' for Ford to Not Share Disagreement with Iraq War

On Sunday's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Time magazine Washington Bureau Chief Jay Carney called "unpardonable" the late President Gerald Ford's failure to share with the nation, as well as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld -- who worked for him as Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense, respectfully -- his discomfort with the decision to go to war in Iraq. "Had he spoke out at the time," Carney sighed, "it would have had an impact." This Week opened the roundtable with audio of Gerald Ford in a 2004 interview with Bob Woodward: "I don't think I would have ordered the Iraqi war. I can understand the theory of wanting to free people. I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people unless it is directly related to our own national security."

Carney's wife, ABC's Claire Shipman, echoed what she expressed on Thursday's Good Morning America (see link below to December 29 CyberAlert) as she scolded Ford for cowardice since "he could have made a real difference" if he had spoken out: "If this was a man who was unafraid to take the hit on something like the pardon [of Nixon], this was a man who had the experience of Vietnam, presiding over the end of the Vietnam war, he clearly felt strongly about what was happening in Iraq, he could have made a real difference if he had decided to speak out."

[This item was posted Sunday on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org [1] ]

I didn't catch anything about Ford and Iraq on NBC's Meet the Press, Fox News Sunday briefly touched the subject during its panel segment and CBS's Bob Schieffer raised it in his very first question on Face the Nation. He posed it to Tom DeFrank of the New York Daily News, who repeated his reporting that Ford had always been supportive of the war in interviews through eight months ago:

Bob Schieffer: "I want to ask you, because Bob Woodward really surprised a lot of people last week when he said Mr. Ford had told him back in 2004 that he was very opposed to the war in Iraq. He thought it was not justified, according to Bob Woodward, and he had some tough things, also, to say about former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney, who both worked for President Ford as young men. Were you surprised at that? And did he talk to you about that?"
Tom DeFrank: "Well, I was very surprised about it, Bob, because I had four interviews with Gerald Ford after the war in Iraq began: '03, '04, '05, and then May of '06, as you mentioned. And in every one of those interviews, he told me he supported the war in Iraq. Now, the one, the one instance where my reporting and Bob Woodward's reporting intersects is the question of weapons of mass destruction. President Ford told me in May that he thought it was a big mistake for President Bush to have pegged the invasion of Iraq to the WMD issue. He thought that was a serious mistake. But he never said that he was opposed to the war. Quite the contrary in four different interviews."
Schieffer: "Did he, what did he say about Vice President Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld?"
DeFrank: "Well, he was very defensive about them, curiously or not. Now, in previous interviews, he, every once in awhile, would shake his head on a couple of things. But he was very supportive, very defensive. As a matter of fact, I asked him whether the famous op-ed piece that he wrote about Rumsfeld after the generals had said Rumsfeld should resign, I asked him whether anybody had asked him to write that article defending Rumsfeld. And I thought he was going to get out of his chair and grab me by the throat. He said, 'Nobody has to tell me to defend Rummy.' So he was very, very supportive of both of them. And I'm such, one of the reasons why I was surprised at what Bob got from him."

Back to ABC's This Week: Following the audio clip at the start of the December 31 roundtable, the panelists, which in addition to Carney and Shipman included Donna Brazille and Dan Senor, discussed Ford's pardon of President Richard Nixon.

Claire Shipman then observed:
"I guess what I find interesting, George, is the footnote to Ford's career that we saw in his conversations with Bob Woodward, because initially I thought well that seems like classic Ford and he must have felt some sort of pressure in terms of presidential protocol, if you will, not to criticize a sitting President. But at the same time, if this was a man who was unafraid to take the hit on something like the pardon, this was a man who had the experience of Vietnam, presiding over the end of the Vietnam war, he clearly felt strongly about what was happening in Iraq, he could have made a real difference if he had decided to speak out."

After some comments from Senor about the lack of impact of the revelation of Ford's anti-war view because Ford didn't have the affection conservatives felt for Ronald Reagan, Stephanopoulos prompted Carney to pick up on his wife's point:
"I want to go to Jay to pick up on Claire's point. What struck me about Ford is not only did he not speak up, but according to Woodward, at least, he never spoke to Cheney or Rumsfeld or the President even privately about this."
Jay Carney: "That is unpardonable and it reminds me also that there were figures -- because had Gerald Ford, whether or not movement conservatives respected him -- had he spoke out at the time, it would have had an impact. There are a number of figures, some of them who were serving in the government at the time who we now learn had serious reservations, Colin Powell comes to mind. You know, the White House was in total fear of Colin Powell. They knew there was one person in the administration who had more rock star popularity even than the President at the time of his highest popularity, if Powell signaled in any way the reservations that we now all know he had, it might have made a difference."

The broadcast networks on Thursday and Friday, especially ABC and NBC, focused on the comments Ford made to Woodward in 2004 but not published until Thursday, after his death, in a Washington Post article headlined "Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq." See: www.washingtonpost.com [2]

For the December 29 CyberAlert item on Thursday morning and evening coverage, "Nets Rush to Tout Ford's Denunciation of the Iraq War," go to: www.mrc.org [3]

Fineman Can't Resist Raising Ford's Critical
View of Iraq War

Journalists just can't resist highlighting how the late President Gerald Ford expressed disagreement with President George W. Bush's Iraq policy and with Vice President Dick Cheney's adamant pursuit of it. Barely two minutes into MSNBC's Saturday coverage of Ford's funeral, Newsweek political reporter Howard Fineman ruminated about how "the interesting thing is that Gerald Ford himself, toward the end of his life, in conversations with Bob Woodward...said basically I disagreed with the idea of going to war in Iraq and he wondered about Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld," who "were known for their probity and caution and for their lack of ideology, for their realistic view of the world. How was it, Ford wondered toward the end of his life, that those two guys, part of that all-star team of realists, had gotten hooked up in what Ford regarded as a mistaken war?"

[This item was posted Saturday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org: newsbusters.org [4] ]

The broadcast networks on Thursday and Friday, especially ABC and NBC, focused on the comments Ford made to Woodward in 2004 but not published until Thursday, after his death, in an article headlined "Ford Disagreed With Bush About Invading Iraq." MRC CyberAlert item on Thursday morning and evening coverage: www.mrc.org [3]

MSNBC began its funeral coverage at 5pm EST, shortly before the arrival at Andrews Air Force base of the plane carrying Ford's body, with Chris Matthews as anchor. Within a couple of minutes, Matthews read the names of some of the planned pall-bearers for the service at the U.S. Capitol, prompting this response from Fineman:

"That's the all-stars of what I would call managerial Republicanism. But the interesting thing is that Gerald Ford himself, toward the end of his life, in conversations with Bob Woodward, the journalist of the Washington Post that have now become public, said basically I disagreed with the idea of going to war in Iraq and he wondered about Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld who had been his chiefs of staff in the White House in the 70s. Men who were known for their probity and caution and for their lack of ideology, for their realistic view of the world. How was it, Ford wondered toward the end of his life, that those two guys, part of that all-star team of realists, had gotten hooked up in what Ford regarded as a mistaken war?"
Matthews: "It may be that Gerry Ford got them wrong, not that they changed."
Fineman: "It could be, it could be."
Matthews: "That they were always people of pugnacity, which is a word he used in that interview with Bob Woodward, and he didn't see it."

Third Runners-Up Quotes in MRC's Awards
for the Worst Reporting

Wednesday's CyberAlert listed the winners, Thursday's the first runners-up and Friday's the second runners-up, and so today the third runners-up quotes in the MRC's "Best Notable Quotables of 2006: The Nineteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting."

The Media Research Center's annual awards issue provides a compilation of the most outrageous and/or humorous news media quotes from 2006 (December 2005 through November 2006). To determine this year's winners, a panel of 58 radio talk show hosts, magazine editors, columnists, editorial writers and media observers each selected their choices for the first, second and third best quote from a slate of five to eight quotes in each category. First place selections were awarded three points, second place choices two points, with one point for the third place selections. Point totals are listed in the brackets at the end of the attribution for each quote. Each judge was also asked to choose a "Quote of the Year" denoting the most outrageous quote of 2006.

Last Wednesday and Friday's CyberAlerts lists the judges. The direct address for the names of the judges as part of the online posting of the awards, with links to their Web pages: www.mrc.org [5]

The MRC's Brent Baker and Rich Noyes, along with Tim Graham and Geoff Dickens, selected the quotes for the ballot. Michelle Humphrey, Karen Hanna and Kristine Looney distributed and counted the ballots and then produced the numerous audio and video clips that accompany the Web-posted version. Rich Noyes assembled this issue and Michael Gibbons posted the entire package on the MRC's Web site where it appears with RealPlayer and Windows Media video, as well as MP3 audio, for all the quotes from television shows: www.mrc.org [6]

This year, MS Word and Corel WordPerfect files of the entire text of the issue, are also available at the above link.

For an Adobe Acrobat PDF that matches the eight-page hard copy version: www.mrc.org [7]

Now, the third runners-up quotes in the nine of the 17 award categories which had a third runner-up:

Tin Foil Hat Award for Crazy Conspiracy Theories [third runner-up]

"Late in the same week that an NSA whistleblower suggests the illicit tapping of American phones is thousands of times larger and thousands of times less focused than the President claims, suddenly we have FBI sources linking stories about Middle Easterners trying to buy vast quantities of untraceable, disposable American cell phones from K-Marts and Target stores. Which, if true, makes the wiretapping look

[8] | [9] | [10]

like a good idea and its leakers look like they've already helped terrorists outsmart the eavesdropping. Boy, you can't buy timing like that. I mean it. I'm asking seriously, you can't buy timing like that, right?...We'll never know for sure if that is or is not just an amazing coincidence that it falls right after the whole NSA whistleblower issue comes up but, as we had pointed out here before, the administration sure gets a lot of these breaks."

-- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann to Time reporter Mike Allen on the January 13 Countdown. [39]

Blue State Brigade Award for Campaign Reporting [third runner-up]

Hotline's Chuck Todd: "Our line here is about 25 or 30 House seats [for the Democrats]. If it gets over 25 or 30 House seats, you're going to see six Senate seats...." MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "Well, that'll be fantastic news. It'll be huge news, I should say, because if that happens, then we have a government run by the	[11] \| [12] \| [13]
Democrats, and an executive branch run by the Republicans, President George W. Bush, having to actually negotiate every aspect of national policy, including the war in Iraq." -- Exchange at about 7:36pm EST during MSNBC's election night coverage, November 7. [53]

Madness of King George Award for Bush Bashing [third runner-up]

"The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war on the false premise that it had something to do with 9/11 is 'lying by implication.' The impolite phrase is 'impeachable offense.'...When those who dissent are told time and time again -- as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus" that he is preserving our freedom, but

[14] | [15] | [16]

that if we use any of that freedom, we are somehow un-American; when we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have 'forgotten the lessons of 9/11;' look into this empty space behind me and the bipartisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me this: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you."

-- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on September 11, ending his Countdown with a commentary delivered from the site of the World Trade Center. [34]

Bring Back the Iron Curtain Award [third runner-up]

"Until the beginning of the reform period in the early 1980s, China's socialized medical system, with 'barefoot doctors' at its core, worked public health wonders....Since then, in one of the great policy reversals of modern times, China has dissolved its rural communes, privatized vast swaths of the economy and shifted public health resources away from rural areas and toward the cities."

-- New York Times reporter Howard French, January 14. According to a new biography of Mao, the communist dictator who ruled China from 1949 to 1976 "was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader." [52]

Drowning Polar Bear Award for Promoting Gore's Inconvenient "Truth" [third runner-up]

"He's [Gore is] campaigning to awaken the political leadership to the threat of global warming, but it's a campaign that can easily turn into a campaign for himself if he sees an opening. And he's following the Nixonian play book, the Nixonian in a very good way. Just as Richard Nixon was edged out of the presidency very narrowly in 1960 and then came back after eight years to win....There's some

[17] | [18] | [19]

regret, even among the media, that Al Gore was mocked and ridiculed in 2000, and he didn't deserve it. And we're ready for a serious politician."

-- Newsweek contributing editor Eleanor Clift on the May 27 McLaughlin Group. [29]

Pain at the Pump Award for Bashing "Big Oil" [third runner-up]

"The estimates are that the six large U.S. [oil] companies will have a total of $135 billion in profits for the year 2006. Don't consumers have a right to be angry?"

"The public looks at a total of $135 billion over the year, that's larger than the gross domestic product of Israel, and says isn't that an obscene amount?"

[20] | [21] | [22]

-- Co-host Charles Gibson to ConocoPhillips Chairman James Mulva on ABC's Good Morning America, May 8. [50]

Media Hero Award [third runner-up]

"You know you are the equivalent of a rock star in politics....Many people, afterwards [after Obama's 2004 Democratic convention speech], they weren't sure how to pronounce your name but they were moved by you. People were crying. You tapped into something. You touched people. What did you tap into that, that was missing?...If your party says to you, 'We need you,' and, and there's

[23] | [24] | [25]

already a drumbeat out there, will you respond?"

-- Some of co-host Meredith Vieira's questions to Senator Barack Obama on NBC's Today, October 19. [45]

Good Morning Morons Award [third runner-up]

"Think global warming isn't real? Ask Manny the Mammoth, Diego the Tiger or Sid the Sloth....The herd's 88 happy minutes will melt away your out-of-theater cares while attesting that global warming is no snow job."

-- NBC movie critic Gene Shalit reviewing the cartoon movie Ice Age: The Meltdown, March 29 Today. [45]

[26] | [27] | [28]

Cranky Dinosaur Award for Trashing the New Media [third runner-up]

"The kind of hateful speech that we have seen, on the floor of the United States Congress and in a lot of the blogosphere, is what seems to dominate. And I do think it goes back, in my own experience, to 1989 when the talk radio shows went crazy about the congressional pay raise which was supported by Common Cause and some other groups in Washington who felt there needed to be a higher-paid

[29] | [30] | [31]

salary....The anti-Washington, anti-bureaucrat bias that was built into that debate was then taken up by cable talk hosts as well and that became the kind of really combative conversation that displaced reasoned discussions about controversial issues."

-- NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell appearing on PBS's Washington Week, July 7. [36]

# That's it for "Best of NQ" award quotes until the end of 2007.

Rocky Mountain News and New York Post
Run Pieces on Best of NQ

Two major media appearances, in the Rocky Mountain News and the New York Post, for the MRC's "Best Notable Quotables of 2006: The Nineteenth Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting."

Friday's Rocky Mountain News in Denver carried a column by Mike Rosen, one of our judges for the quotes, "Liberal lowlights of 2006." See: www.rockymountainnews.com [32]
Saturday's New York Post was scheduled to devote the entire editorial column to "HOIST ON THEIR OWN PETARD," a compilation of the favorite "Best of NQ" quotes of the Post's editorial writers, but it was bumped from all but the earliest editions by an editorial tied to the execution of Saddam Hussein. It was, however, posted online:
www.nypost.com [33]

-- Brent Baker