FORD ALMOST CAUGHT HOOVER. Gerald Ford's death got me to thinking about the power (and length) of recent post-presidencies. Because presidents are living longer after leaving office, there's increasingly more to say about them once they leave the White House but before they depart for the big sleep. When Ford took over the presidency after Richard Nixon's resignation, Nixon was the only living ex-president at the time -- and, for obvious reasons, not exactly somebody with whom Ford could much consult or consort (at least publicly). And although Nixon would be the next ex-president to die, he didn't until after Bill Clinton took office in 1993. Because Nixon, along with Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush were still alive, Clinton became only the second president inaugurated with five former presidents still around. Abraham Lincoln was the first and, as a testament to the increased longevity of presidents in the modern era, George W. Bush was the third. (Nixon died by the time of Bush 43's inauguration but, of course, Clinton was added to the list of the living ex-presidents; our forty-fourth president will, at most, have only four living predecessors on January 20, 2009.) Ford lived for almost 30 years beyond his service in the White House -- second, in terms of post-presidential lifespans, only to Herbert Hoover's 31 years and seven months. Two more years and Ford would have caught Hoover. And watch for Carter to best them all: He recently passed John Adams into third place all-time, and if Carter lives another four years from today he'll pass Ford into second on December 27, 2010. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, if Carter survives until August 2012, he�ll become the longest living ex-president to date. (I wonder if Carter himself has made this calculation.) Because Carter is considered one of if not the greatest ex-president, in terms of his policy accomplishments (not to mention his publishing proficiency) his longevity would be a particularly good thing for America. He and Ford worked on many projects together, especially in the area of voting rights and election monitoring; they developed a cross-partisan post-presidential relationship similar to the one that Clinton and his immediate predecessor now seem to be forming. For these reasons and others, I'm looking forward to hearing more of what Carter has to say about Ford's passing.
--Tom Schaller
