George Will:

Ford was an "accidental president,'' but there are reasons why accidents happen as they do. Call it the cunning of history, or an irony of American life, but this underestimated graduate of the Yale Law School served a purpose Nixon did not have in mind when he nominated him to replace the disgraced Vice President Spiro Agnew. Nixon probably hoped Ford's popularity in the House would enable him to rally House Republicans against impeachment. Instead, Ford's presence in the vice presidency probably made his former House colleagues less afraid of impeachment...

Henry Kissinger, who continued as secretary of state through the Ford years, wrote in 1999 a tribute to Ford, the "uncomplicated man'' who came to the presidency in perhaps the most complicated context since the Civil War -- in the aftermath of a disastrous war and as a result of a resignation. Kissinger understood that Ford, with his small-town, Midwestern aversion to histrionics, had perfect pitch for the needs of "a nation surfeited with upheavals.''

Kissinger noted a "curious paradox of contemporary democracy,'' that as political leaders become more abject in trying to conform to the public's preferences, respect for the political class plummets. Ford was different: He "was immune to the modern politician's chameleon-like search for ever-new identities, and to the emotional roller coaster this search creates.''

Surely subsequent presidential history has deepened the nation's appreciation of what it had for 29 months.