GERALD FORD AND GEORGE W BUSH

The death of Ronald Reagan in 2004 served to humiliate the Democrats in the midst of a crucial election year: an outpouring of eulogies to Reagan was a reminder that another "crusading," tax-cutting president, despised by liberals and the media at the time, with an embarrassingly binary view of good and evil, had been vindicated by history to the extent that even his erstwhile enemies dared not jeopardize their political futures by criticizing his memory. The subtext to voters: take the MSM's contempt for George W. Bush with a grain of salt. They did, and re-elected him to the presidency.

Similarly, the death of Gerald Ford is now a useful warning against the impeach-Bush fanatics: Ford, despised at the time for pardoning Nixon, is now remembered fondly as a man who sacrificed his political interests for the sake of national healing.

[When] Ford issued a full pardon to Richard Nixon ... This city [Washington] went berserk. Ford was savaged day after day in the press, night after night on the network news. His approval rating sank 40 points. The air was poisonous, with accusations of a "deal" by which Ford got the presidency in return for Nixon getting the pardon.

In an address to Congress on Aug. 12, Ford had said, "I don't want a honeymoon with you, I want a good, long marriage."

But a Congress that had been denied, by Nixon's resignation, the pleasure of impeaching, convicting and expelling him from the White House was in no mood for romance. Nor was this city, which had just been robbed of a delicious year-long public trial of the disgraced former president.

A House Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice directed Ford to appear on Capitol Hill to explain the circumstances of the pardon. Had anything fishy turned up, Congress would have tried to impeach Ford, so rancid was the atmosphere in this city.

Partly because of the pardon, the GOP suffered a loss of 48 House seats that November. In January 1975, a radical Congress was sworn in, determined to end all aid to our allies in Southeast Asia, bring about their defeat, then tear apart the CIA and FBI.

In April, Hanoi, with massive Soviet aid, launched an invasion of South Vietnam. Ford went to Congress to beg for assistance to our embattled Saigon allies. His request was rebuffed. Two Democrats walked out of the chamber.

Within weeks, South Vietnam and Cambodia had fallen, and Pol Pot's holocaust had begun. By summer, tens of thousands of Vietnamese had been executed, scores of thousands put into "re-education camps," and the first of hundreds of thousands had pushed off into the South China Sea, where many drowned and others met their fate at the hands of Thai pirates.

Who is the author of these lines? PAT BUCHANAN! I'm confused. Doesn't Buchanan realize that his condemnation of the post-Watergate Democrats applies a fortiori to himself, today?