HOWARD KURTZ ON GERALD FORD REVISIONISM: “Another way of putting that is that many journalists, three decades later, are admitting that they misjudged Ford and were wrong about the Nixon pardon.”
They said nice things about Reagan after he died, too, despite hating him in office, and they’re already gearing up to do the same thing with George H.W. Bush, who was treated quite unfairly during his term. (See, e.g., the supermarket scanner story). It’s as if the only good Republican President is a dead Republican President.

UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails:

The reason for the media praising dead republican presidents is to make the current Republican president look bad in comparison. This is a twofer — you show that you’re not prejudiced against republicans, and you paint the current president out to be a traitor to the better traditions of his party, even if those better traditions are only recognized posthumously.

Indeed.