A nation’s flags trip and fall to half-mast

America's first accidental president has passed on, 93 years young at the time. This is the last thing in the world Chevy Chase needed to hear.

Though Ford will always be remembered for his pardon of Richard Nixon, he does not qualify for Dead Despot of the Week honors. I feel conflicted about this defining moment in the Ford administration. Watergate was such a taint on the nation that something dramatic was certainly necessary to return dignity and confidence to the presidency.

However, pardoning Tricky Dick had precisely the opposite effect on many Americans. The sense that Nixon got away with it all has always been a burr under my saddle. The fact that he never actually had to face the music has left me and many others feeling cheated. Even when Nixon resigned he was defiant. "I am not a crook." A conviction would have knocked the smugness out of him, even if a pardon saved him from jail.

Ford once joked that he knew he was going to hell over the pardon.

On the other hand, I believe Ford’s assertion that there was no trade-off made. There was no deal. I have also read recently that even Ted Kennedy believes, in retrospect, that the pardon was the right thing to do.

Perhaps this is a case where there was no perfect answer, and an honest man took the least objectionable course as he saw it.

But beyond the personal sadness his family feels now, there is additional tragedy in the passing of the 37th and a half president. The death of Gerald Ford has left Chevy Chase with even less to be funny about (unless he is a pallbearer at the funeral and does some of those hilarious pratfalls).

In addition, there is another victim here: Squeaky Froam.

Squeaky missed her one chance to be a famous presidential assassin, and will never get another shot at it. She won’t be a famous John Wilks Boothe or Lee Harvey Oswald, at best she will be a John Hinkley or one of the nuts who tried to bump off Clinton. She will go down in history, like so many others out there (myself included), for not killing Gerald Ford.

In the end, The Bard said it best: Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. For Gerald Ford it was none of these. However, when he took office, the country was boiling over and ready to pop. For all his perceived mediocrity, Ford managed to stem a lot of the bleeding. That won’t get him a lot of long lasting accolades, but perhaps he is owed some overdue respect.