Title: Oil Portrait of Elizabeth (Betty) Bloomer Ford, Felix De Cossio, 1977
Betty Ford’s death makes me sad in a history marching on kind of way, a kind of nostalgia for a time when political personalities tried to present a face to the public that wasn’t shrieking, moronic, ugly and loud. No Republican politician before W could pass the current standards for mean, stupid, and greedy, and it’s easy to forget there was ever a time when there were smart, classy, “nice” Republicans in public life. I for one sure miss the time when the silliest thing a Republican said is that there are no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe (even Gerald Ford apologized after he misspoke).
My mom (a Democrat), spoke reverently of Betty Ford. Pretty much everybody loved Betty Ford. She was the nice first lady between Nixon and Carter, during the 896 wonderful days of Gerald Ford’s presidency. Mrs Ford’s candid comments weren’t the usual kind of genteel, innocuous talk one would expect from a First Dame, far less a Republican one. Her unscripted comments (pointedly stating that she and the president shared a bed for example), sparked momentary squalls in the press and dismayed President Ford’s advisers, sensitive to the nation’s post Watergate psyche. But to the damaged, war-scarred, hippie-addled nation, Mrs Ford’s frankness was refreshing. And 1970s America loved her for it.
Betty Ford was a smart, sassy, dancing divorcee who talked about the 1970s as if she had actually lived through the 1960’s (at 20, Betty Bloomer lived in bohemian Greenwich Village, performing with Martha Graham’s dance company). She brought candor, wit, outspoken feminism and frank talk to the White House, as well as pills and booze, lots of pills and booze. Betty Ford was popping scrips while Cindy McCain was still in Skittles and mixing up moonshine while W was still on apple juice. She later wrote in her memoir, “I liked alcohol. It made me feel warm. And I loved pills. They took away my tension and my pain.” There is no other First Lady alive — potential, current, or former or future — who would ever admit to enjoying anything more illicit than ordering the Sand Dabs.
I am continually amazed at how young women so easily accept the privileges desperately fought for by women like Betty Ford, then assure all within hearing range that they are not a “feminist”. Mrs. Ford supported the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights (and told McCall’s magazine that the only thing she’d never been asked was how often she had sex with her husband), all while Phyllis Schafley was psychotically shrieking her insanity (“Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women” yadayadayada). She spoke favorably of psychiatric treatment, understandingly about marijuana use and premarital sex, and openly about sex, divorce, her kids, her cancer and her drinking/drug abuse. Like she was a human with actual wisdom to share. And it wasn’t just that she spoke openly, her husband did, too. She built an enduring legacy by opening up the toughest aspects of her life as a public example, in an era when cancer and mastectomy were still discussed in hushed tones and only after multiple Whiskey Sours. Mrs Ford shared the specifics of her breast cancer surgery, helping to bring the disease into the open and inspiring countless women to seek early treatment. All during a magical, long-ago time, when Republican people admitted “science” was legitimate. You know, forty years AGO.
Her public revelation of, and triumph over drug and alcohol addiction made Mrs Ford a beacon of hope for other addicts, and established her most lasting legacy. Betty Ford Center that to date has served more than 90,000 people.
There is not a man in government right now with the balls of Betty Ford.