Americans of a certain age can remember where they were when Spiro Agnew resigned the vice presidency. They also remember the moment when Gerald Ford became vice president and when he subsequently became president upon the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Those were dark, demoralizing days. Ford summed up that era when he said – after taking the presidential oath – “Our long national nightmare is over.”

It is true of all peoples, but especially of Americans that we prize stability in government. Stability is what President Ford offered after a national roller coaster ride of some two years.

Gerald Ford’s sudden ascendance, from House Majority Leader to President, was a unique event. While he had spent his life in politics, Ford’s unaffected manner was refreshing in the wake of Nixonian royalist pretension, which included absurdly uniformed guards whose uniforms were seen no more after one appearance.

Ford did not have the blinding intellect of a Bill Clinton, the screen presence of a Ronald Reagan or the pedigree of a George W. Bush. He did not hide the fact that he worked exceedingly hard to master the demands of political leadership. He also had a clear understanding of what he was and what he was not. As he famously declared upon his swearing-in as vice president, “I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln.”

As America slogs through its third year of a misbegotten war, it is easy to look back nostalgically at leaders who offered more than we’ve got today. We shouldn’t forget that Ford came from a pragmatic time, preceding the obsession with ideology and religion that has come to dominate his Republican party. Like Mark Hatfield and so many other durable names from the past, a guy like Gerald Ford couldn’t be nominated by today’s GOP.