President Ford did honor to the bicentennial while our 250th anniversary is a Trump travesty
By Megan Pickett
Megan is a former NASA scientist and a professor of physics at Lawrence University. This piece originally appeared on her substack page.
Fifty years ago, President Ford spent the 4th traveling 500 miles, giving speeches at NY Harbor for the Tall Ships celebration, Valley Forge, Philadelphia, onboard the USS Forrestal, and back to DC for the fireworks. He even fit in an hour of swimming between stops. Oh, and he opened the Air and Space Museum, and was standing by to congratulate the NASA Viking 1 team – touchdown was scheduled that day but delayed for better landing site selection.
Not once did he make it about himself – and he was running. In every speech, he spoke, kindly and with a gentle reverence few at the time realized, of how much we had improved because we had expanded voting and voting rights, and because exploring the Universe was worth it. He reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, abolishing literacy tests and introduced bilingual ballots in 1975. And he showed that admitting we were flawed but trying to improve was not a weakness, but the kind of strength that allows you to not wallow in nostalgia but launch to the future.
Look, the dude shouldn’t have pardoned Nixon. But there is something positively Bidenesque about his presidency. He was the small quiet moment after the hangover of a corrupt fascist criminal president. A decent man, who understood the assignment: the Bicentennial was a celebration for all of us.
If you weren’t there, I’m here to tell you as broken as the seventies were, we basically got the bicentennial right.
This is a monstrous travesty. It wouldn’t occur to a Jerry Ford that you needed to make America great again. You ought to continue the work to ever approach the greatness we were promised. And that greatness is not just measured by who we can intimidate, but who can help, including ourselves.
To hell with Trump for trashing what could have been lovely, even for us cynics. How dare he.
