Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, October 10, 2005.

Grand Rapids, Michigan. Grand Rapids, Michigan. Grand Rapids, Michigan....

Ya know, for all intents and purposes I could be saying Kenosha, Wisconsin or Rockford, Illinois or Davenport, Iowa or Ft Wayne, Indiana or any number of mid-sized, Middle America, mid-West, middling, mediocre, easily-missed Midwestern industrial/agricultural cities. To those of us who live around these parts, it all just seems strikingly familiar -- Hey! You've got a boarded-up auto parts factory down the street from the mall that used to be a corn field, too! To those on the coasts, these cities are collectively BFE, which explains why federal tax dollars tend to flow out and trickle back.

Except! Grand Rapids happens to have its very own presidential museum. Ford. Gerald R. Ford, that's who. Ford might best be remembered as the only president to not actually have been elected. When Vice President Spiro Agnew went down in the flames of scandal, President Nixon tabbed the squeaky clean 12-term Republican House minority leader to step in. Then when similar flames consumed Nixon, Ford stepped up. He made difficult and sometimes wildly unpopular decisions, he was disparaged as a klutz and a doofus, and yet he still dang near got himself elected for real in 1976, losing to Jimmy Carter, which really didn't work out so well. (Please, America! Next election can we at least consider *not* electing a governor from a southern state?! I mean, seriously; the results are less than positive.)

I've been to the Ford Museum several times and would encourage others to go any time. It's only like $3 and they have some incredible traveling exhibits. (Right now they have one on Teddy Roosevelt.) But it's worth it just to see the permanent exhibits. One that has struck me the last few times is a blowup of a mock Newsweek magazine cover from 1975. It shows comic-book style US Army troops hitting the sand to secure some oil field in the Persian Gulf. It was intended as farce; how ridiculous that we would send our military to the Middle East to grab petroleum! Hmmmm...

So spelling out this week's comic:

* Then: Vietnam -- Now: Iraq
* Then: Nixon -- Now: Delay, Rove, Frist, Cheney -- take your pick
* Then: Oil crisis -- Now: Oil and Natural Gas crisis

And it made me wonder: When the heck is the next Gerald Ford gonna step in and step up? Somebody with experience and integrity and a willingness to make decisions that have to be made regardless of impact on the next election. Somebody who sees government as neither the solution for everything or an evil that must be destroyed, but as an instrument of the people, by the people, for the people that needs to be tamed and used properly. When oh when? Well, obviously, the first that needs to happen is for Cheney and Bush to resign. How can we get this rolling?