Nothing common

What's special about the office is not the man who holds it | John R. Erickson

For days, the national media have told us that Gerald Ford was a common man, a man of the people; that he saved the nation from collapse after Watergate and we were lucky to have him at that moment in history.

That may be true, but isn't there more?

First, common men don't get buried like pharaohs.

They don't stop traffic for four days and they don't leave every scribbled note, letter, and scrap of paper to be warehoused in a presidential library.

Gerald Ford may have been a common man when he lived in Grand Rapids, but after he'd spent several decades in Washington, D.C., something happened. It has happened to every president of the past half-century.

They all come to town as average Joes and leave in imperial splendor, with their names plastered all over freeways and buildings they didn't buy, build, or pay for.