{"id":2469,"date":"2016-06-10T05:34:04","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T09:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/?p=2469"},"modified":"2016-06-10T05:34:04","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T09:34:04","slug":"where-have-you-gone-gerald-r-ford-our-nation-turns-its-lonely-eyes-to-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=2469","title":{"rendered":"Where Have You Gone, Gerald R Ford? Our Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/?attachment_id=2470\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2470\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2470\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/JPA038.jpg\" alt=\"Where Have You Gone, Gerald R Ford? Our Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You.\" width=\"560\" height=\"420\" srcset=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/JPA038.jpg 560w, http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/JPA038-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gdata.com\/?art=\/2016\/06\/JPA038.jpg&amp;name=Where Have You Gone, Gerald R Ford? Our Nation Turns Its Lonely Eyes to You....\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/buy.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>People ask me all the time, &#8220;What <em><strong>are<\/strong> <\/em>you?&#8221; This can be disconcerting. But what they mean is, &#8220;As an editorial cartoonist, are you Republican or Democrat? Conservative or Liberal? Socialist or Capitalist? Left Wing or Right Wing?&#8221; And so on. My standard reply is that I am not strictly defined by any of those things \u2014 I am, if anything, a Contrarian.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s basically a smart alecky way of saying that I don&#8217;t believe in &#8220;sides.&#8221; I think it is a mistake for editorial cartoonists to declare any sort of allegiance. I reserve the right to make fun of politicians and parties without restriction. It&#8217;s only a matter of time until a person or group of people on any of these so-called sides do something stupid, and I want to keep my options open.<\/p>\n<p>But if I were forced to choose (given an ultimatum between, say, me picking or having to listen to cable TV pundits pick one for me), I would go with &#8220;Ford Republican.&#8221; Even though I was too young to have voted for Gerald Ford, I very much admire him as a politician, statesman, husband, and person. Ford has always struck me as the ideal for what you would want in a representative and a colleague. You can debate his effectiveness as president, but unlike many who have run for the office since, he was not driven by ideology \u2014 he was driven by good citizenship.<\/p>\n<p>This past week the Gerald R Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids was reopened after major renovations. I have been to the museum dozens of times \u2014 in 1986 I quite literally bumped into President Ford (the secret service were not amused). I&#8217;m looking forward to seeing the changes. (Admittedly, I am pro-museum. Is that a side?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People ask me all the time, &#8220;What are you?&#8221; This can be disconcerting. But what they mean is, &#8220;As an editorial cartoonist, are you Republican or Democrat? Conservative or Liberal? Socialist or Capitalist? Left Wing or Right Wing?&#8221; And so on. My standard reply is that I am not strictly defined by any of those [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrewheller-com","category-editorial-cartoon","category-michiganradio-org"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2471,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2469\/revisions\/2471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}