Let’s divide this column on the late Gerald Ford into three parts: First, Ford the man. Second, Ford as an historical memory. Third, Ford as a subject of manipulation in the media.

First, I always liked Ford -- who didn’t? He served his country in wartime, was married to the same woman for 58 years, raised four children. And amid all the obituary-ing, it’s hard to find anyone who has any criticism of him as a person. That’s rare enough for anybody, let alone someone who rose to the pinnacle of American politics.

Second, as a historical figure, Ford will be ranked as a minor president. Historians will remember Richard Nixon, who preceded him, and they will remember Ronald Reagan, who entered the White House in 1980, but Ford will be chronicled merely as the fellow who cleaned up the Oval Office after the Watergate scandal -- using the admittedly messy mechanism of pardoning Nixon.

Indeed, it seems to me that one of the reasons Ford’s passing has received so much attention is for reporters and pundits to enjoy once more the opportunity to "wallow in Watergate." Every time reporters emphasize how good Ford was they get a chance to throw in how bad Nixon was. And media types love doing that.

That is, Ford will be remembered more as a caretaker, who -- through little fault of his own, given his brief tenure in office -- presided over a low ebb for America. Overseas, the United States was defeated, finally, in Vietnam, even as Soviet military power was on the rise -- thus demonstrating to almost everyone that "détente" was an illusion. And on the home front Ford offered little more than slogans as an inflationary recession ravaged the economy and sent unemployment to the highest levels since the 1930s. Such "stagflation" signaled the final collapse of the Keynesian "tax and spend" fiscal model inherited from the New Deal, but Ford failed to see the implosion of an obsolete economic paradigm.

Unfortunately, the 38th president was not the transformative leader to resolve such deep problems. Their solution would have to wait for Reagan, who injected new ideas -- the Strategic Defense Initiative to flummox the Russians and tax-rate-cutting "supply-side" economics to revive savings and investment -- which dramatically changed the international and domestic equations, leading to the Soviet Union’s collapse and to America’s revival.

In other words, Ford’s brand of Republicanism was substantially repudiated by another Republican, Reagan. And so, as to our third point -- Ford as a subject of manipulation in the media by the living -- it’s interesting to note that Reagan’s widow, Nancy, has chosen to link herself so closely to the Ford family. She issued a eulogizing statement beginning with an assertion that is sweet but, strictly speaking, not true: "Ronnie and I always considered him a dear friend and close political ally."

It’s worth remembering that Ronald Reagan -- teamed, of course, with wife Nancy -- was a fierce critic of Ford’s policies, so fierce that in 1976 the Gipper tried to take the Republican nomination away from the incumbent president. That made them political enemies, not political allies.

So why is Nancy Reagan now saying all these nice things about Gerald Ford? Aside from the natural instinct to accentuate the positive at a time such as this, there’s another reason: Late in life, Ford supported Nancy on stem cell research, an issue that never arose when either the Fords, or the Reagans, were in the White House. As Nancy explained in her statement, "His early support of stem cell research has been important in getting the U.S. Congress to debate the potential lifesaving cures and treatments that may result." In other words, the political needs of today have wiped away bitter memories of battles 30 years ago.

That’s politics for you. And Ford, who was a good man but not a naïve man, would have understood that game perfectly.