Americans mourn passing of a statesman

History has a strange way of elucidating reality. How the present seems while we are &#8220in the moment” often bears little resemblance to how it looks through the sharp focus of the lens of time.

Today, as a nation, we mourn the loss of President Gerald Ford, a man whose important legacy was not realized until long after he left the White House. At a Capitol funeral service on Saturday, former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert summed it up best when he observed that it's not always great events that make a great man.

On paper, there was little remarkable about Ford's short tenure as commander in chief. He ascended to office after the resignation of Richard Nixon in August 1974 and served until voters turned him out of office a mere two years and three months later.

Ironically, the single decision that likely cost him an electoral victory - pardoning the disgraced Nixon - is also the one that, through time, came to be viewed as bold, courageous and even visionary. Indeed, it became the cornerstone of his legacy.

At the time, a brief month after being sworn into office, Ford defended the pardon as necessary to a nation wounded and staggered by the violation of public trust in the Watergate years. In the bitterly divided capital, where Nixon detractors wanted blood, Ford faced a vicious torrent of criticism. Among Americans, his approval rating plummeted.

Today, even Ford's harshest critics concede that he did the right thing. The pardon allowed the nation to move on, to heal. In the wake of that healing, public trust was restored.

As memorials are conducted and eulogies are offered, it is Ford's role as a healer that is most often remembered. At Saturday's D.C. memorial, Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as Ford's chief of staff, put it this way: &#8220In the summer of 1974, Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there could be no healing without pardon. The criticism was fierce, but President Ford had larger concerns at heart, and it is far from the worst fate that a man should be remembered for his willingness to forgive.”

It has been said that a politician looks only to the next election, while a statesman looks to the next generation. On this national day of mourning, there is no doubt that Americans have lost a great statesman.

But in the passing of Gerald Ford, an unassuming, hard-working, honest and decent man from Michigan, we should also take hope and comfort in the example he set - and in the endless possibilities for greatness that don't always require great events.