its been exactly forty years since Friday, August 9th 1974. Hmmm... Kind of a slow news day... Gerald R. Ford is sworn in as the nation’s president. All assessments of Ford in Congress, in the media and on the streets, is universally positive. The new president is open. Competent. Reliable. Trustworthy. Flexible. Moderate. Brave. Clean. Reverent. Mostly, he doesn’t stink of Watergate. The American mood is looking up. The 38th President enjoys a long list of firsts. He is the first president from Michigan. He is the first president never to be elected either as president or as vice-president. He is the first president to assume office upon the resignation of a president. He is the first president to take office under the succession provisions of the 25th Amendment. He is the first president to have been divorced. Born Leslie Lynch King Jr., he is the first president to have undergone a complete name change. He is the first Eagle Scout to become president. He is the first president whose first presidential appointment, press secretary Jerry terHorst, has a name that looks like a typo. He is the first sitting president to have a son attending Utah State University. (Jack lived in the house on the corner of 4th North and 7th East, immediately across the street from Old Main Hill.) And - curiously enough - Gerald Ford is our nation’s first ever 38th President. Among policies the new president favors are increased military spending, amnesty for draft evaders, a tax increase coupled with reduced federal spending to help curb the nation’s first double-digit inflation since the 1940s, and a single-payer national health insurance administered by the federal government. Governor Calvin Rampton as chairman of the National Governor’s Conference, San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and Davis County commissioner Stanley M. Smoot as president of the National Association of Counties, sent a joint letter to President Ford pledging the “fullest cooperation and assistance” of the nation’s governors, mayors and local governments.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 23:30:19 +0000
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