WS 2010/2011 exam translation (advanced) (Staatsexamen Herbst 2007) text #10
Call it the inverse law of US presidential obituaries:
the greater the acclaim for the president in his day, the harsher the
reappraisals of his record after his death. Ronald Reagan, so popular in office
that his supporters discussed repealing the 22nd amendment to the constitution
that limits presidents to serving two terms, received a downbeat, critical
farewell in June 2004 - the New York Times obituary quoted one historian as
saying: “He was too late, too little and too lame when it came to human rights
abuses at home and abroad [...] He was not willing to be a leader.”
Gerald Ford, who
died last week aged 93, was widely regarded as a weak, ineffectual president, an
accident of history. Yet the US media’s response to his death was to grant him
an indulgence*) it seldom showed during his presidency. To the Washington Post,
President Ford “reassured the people about the nature and quality of their
government”. A stream of columnists, bloggers and letter writers were quick to
re-evaluate Ford’s abrupt decision to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon,
for wrongdoing over Watergate - the Post saying that it was hard to see “how
an indictment and trial would have done the country much good”. The Wall
Street Journal also stressed Ford’s personal character, concluding that
“history dealt him a weak hand; he played it well”.
A weak hand is an
understatement: few US presidents have come into office overshadowed by the
burdens that Ford had to face immediately. He inherited an economy in the
mid-1970s that was sliding into recession and suffering from high inflation, as
the effects of Middle East oil price increases began to bite sharply. There was
the constitutional and political wreckage from Watergate and the Nixon
administration to be dealt with. And the embers of Vietnam were also still
smouldering. It was on Ford’s watch that the fall of Saigon took place with
that ignominious airlift evacuation from the roof of the US embassy**).
To have presided over any one of those national disasters would have
scarred any administration. No wonder that Ford's time in office should, rather
like that of John Major in Britain, have passed into the national conscience as
hapless. That view was not helped by some of Ford’s televised stumbles***),
such as his slip down wet steps when disembarking at Vienna airport, or his poor
performance during the 1976 election campaign when he insisted, bizarrely, that
Poland was not dominated by the Soviet Union. [...]
But as the nation’s obituarists were at pains to point out,
the received image of Ford as clumsy****) was wide off the mark.
From: Richard Adams: Ford: from dimwit to man of
integrity. In: The Guardian Weekly, January 5-11, 2007. (abridged)
*) Ford pardons Nixon a) video: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=eM9dGr8ArR0&feature=related b) text: www.watergate.info/ford/pardon.shtml
**)"ignominious
airlift evacuation from the roof of the American embassy": photo
***) video: Ford
stumbles: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=jlz0he9rtKw
****) HUMOUR:
"Dingbat"
Ford: X
sound: Big Game,Rich Little.mp3
text:
Big Game; Rich
Little
CARTOONS: http://cagle.com/news/GeraldFord/main.asp
OBITUARY:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/27/AR2006122700528.html
EXTRA (1): JFK, Inauguration: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLmiOEk59n8
EXTRA
(2): "Obama Special": a) video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjnygQ02aW4
b) text:
Obama,
victory speech JOKE:
"Yes, we can!"
c) Inauguration: text: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28751183/
video: (part 1) www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZKmo8Ihi08&NR=1 (part 2) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi1hkNkqHBc&feature=related
[plus: John McCain: a) video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bss6lTP8BJ8 b) text: McCain, concession speech]
American presidents: a) Ford to Clinton b) Richard Nixon to George W. Bush
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