Political elite snub Ford ceremonies so far.

America’s political elite are acting like arrogant pricks. They snubbed ceremonies for President Gerald Ford. The Idiot in Chief, George Bush “was too busy cutting wood and riding his bike” to attend. Stinging from criticism the White House says Bush will attend another ceremony.

Less than ten percent of the Congress bothered to show up. The Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid went off to visit Inca ruins in South America instead. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t show up. Only two members of the Presidential cabinet bothered to attend. No doubt such criticism will bring them out in droves for the end of the funeral on Tuesday. But there was no need for so many of them to absent themselves from the start of the ceremony when Ford's body was brought to the Rotunda of the Capitol Building.

The Washington Times reports that thousands of “ordinary people, dressed in NASCAR jackets, jeans or sneakers” “came to pay their respect”. Estimates were that 2,000 to 2,500 people per hour filed past the casket of the former president.

Is there a reason for the difference? Some have postulated that the Bushites have, for the most part, remained away because Ford was a critic of the blundering foreign policy of the interventionists in control of the White House. But I think it goes much further.

As I have said previously President Ford was a man who made no attempt to impose a grand vision on America. Since he was never elected to the office he felt he had no mandate to reshape the country. For the most part he did what a good president ought to do: administer and leave the country alone. As one mourner told the New York Times, Ford "did what the country needed, not what would further his political career. I don't think we have presidents that do that any more."

America’s political elite, Republican and Democrat, are made of egotistical SOBs who believe that their “grand vision” for the country is the “one” that will usher in the the Kingdom of God on Earth. In their hearts they are central planners who firmly believe they are endowed with the superior ability to take control of the lives of the hundreds of millions of people and mold them into better people.

The average politician at heart is a tyrant seeking to impose his or her will on others. They all play political games. They use deceit, distortion, and fear to manipulate the populace while accumulating power for themselves and stripping people of more and more freedom. Few have been so blatant in pursuing the politics of power as the inferior little minds that now control the Republican Party. But the Democrats are only faintly better. Hillary Clinton might be smarter than Bush (as if that takes much effort) but she is just as manipulative and power hungry. She is driven by the same overwhelming need to impose her plans on the rest of us as is King George.

And in the middle of the political circus, with second rate individuals lining up to grab the White House in the next election, Gerald Ford goes and dies. And his death focuses people’s attention on what it was that made him unique. It was his lack of a grand vision, his willingness to hold office instead of molding people that made him unique. Another mourner said: "He didn't ask to be president. He didn't have an agenda."

Of course the power hungry would shun such a man. His time in office was an indictment of their visions. He showed that one could be a good president without trying to run, and ruin, the lives of others. In other words his term in office was the antithesis of what America’s political elite dream about.