The minute Gerald Ford's heart stopped beating, the MSM unrolled the obituaries that were obviously finished and in the can for some time, probably years. And they all followed the same theme: he was the last moderate Republican and he healed the nation by pardoning Nixon.

Christopher Hitchens and RJ Eskow give us reality, not myth.

Here's Hitchens:

One expects a certain amount of piety and hypocrisy when retired statesmen give up the ghost, but this doesn't excuse the astonishing number of omissions and misstatements that have characterized the sickly national farewell to Gerald Ford.

And here's RJ Eskow:

Gerald Ford's proper epitaph, had this interview not come to light, would have been: "He obstructed justice, but he was a nice guy." His Nixon pardon didn't "heal the nation," pundits notwithstanding. It outraged a nation that was hungry for justice after being lied to and manipulated. That's why he lost in 1976.

My sister put it succinctly: Ford was inconsequential. Or, to paraphrase H. L. Mencken, Ford had no ideas but was not a nuisance.