Thoughts on Gerald Ford's Passing

Watching coverage of the various memorial services for Gerald Ford brings to mind a number of things:

• How grand of the current president to decline to cut his vacation short a day or two in order to be in D.C. when Ford's remains (and, more important, family) arrived. Yes, indeedy, a class act all the way. Goes to show how poorly the current occupant of the White House compares to his predecessors, especially the one who will be buried this week.
• Gerald Ford is the only Republican presidential candidate for whom I have ever voted (and unless the GOP changes mightily in the future, the only one). It was the first year I was eligible to vote. I felt (still do) that Ford had been handed the most unimaginable mess--war, inflation, Watergate, just about everything short of frogs and locusts--and had done an admirable job of dealing with it. I felt (still do) that he deserved "his own" term. I further felt (still do) that Jimmy Carter was simply not the right man for the job, and am among those who feel Carter is a better ex-president than president. My feeling 30 years ago was that Ford was an honorable man trying to pull the country back together, and nothing in the interim has caused me to change my mind.
• I read a comment on CNN.com from someone who felt that Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon is what defined Ford's presidency, and not for the better. I disagree. At the time, I was one of those who believed the fix was in and that the pardon only showed the bottomless corruption of the Nixon bunch and the GOP. With the passage of time, however, I came to believe that pardoning Nixon was perhaps the only way to get the country past Watergate. The fact that it was unpopular, that Ford must have known it would be unpopular, and that he probably realized it jeopardized any chance he may have had to be elected in his own right only serves to illustrate the character of Gerald Ford.
• What the hell has happened to the Republican Party that in a mere three decades it has gone from the likes of Gerald R. Ford (decent, honest, committed to the nation's best interests) to the likes of George W. Bush (duplicitous, deceitful, and committed only to his cronies' best interests)?