Statement of EU Ambassador John Bruton on the Passing of President Gerald Ford

"I am deeply saddened by the death of former President Gerald R. Ford. President Ford was a healing force in U.S. history. He was able to perform this role so well because he believed the best of other people. Early in his life he had written that people have 'more good qualities than bad.' He said in his autobiography, 'I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta.'

He first became active in politics in the Presidential campaign of Wendell Wilkie in 1940 and was himself first elected to Congress in 1948. He was a supporter of civil rights, when Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives during the Johnson Administration.

As President, he relied on experience and accumulated wisdom of years, rather than on ideology or theory. He began a process of deregulation of the American economy which formed the basis of its subsequent success.

I had the unusual privilege of meeting President Ford when he was still minority leader in the House of Representatives and when he probably had little or no expectation of ever being called upon to be President of his country. I had spent a day observing how his office worked.  He struck me then as a remarkably courteous and unaffected person, confident and comfortable in his work. He represented the very best qualities of American public service, as his subsequent career was to show."

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