Gerald Ford has passed away at the age of 93. Commentators everywhere have been chiming in on his merits and weaknesses as a president, commander-in-chief and politician. Some have noted his relatively pacifistic approach to the Cold War, contrasting him to the hawkish stance of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon before him, and even the comparatively more active militarism of Jimmy Carter, to say nothing of Ronald Reagan, after him.

Whenever a president dies, the media go to great lengths to shore up support for the presidency, and thus the American federal government with all its current domestic and international power. Back in 2004, they nearly elevated Reagan to the status of a deity in processions and an endless barrage of television reflections and montages. Even those whose political views were at total odds with what Reagan had actually done in the White House bent over backwards to praise him.

We can expect a little less hagiography for Gerald Ford, the man who pardoned Nixon and slowed down the Cold War. For the establishment, it is proper to see evil in the person of “Tricky Dick,” but to them, the basic morality of his bombings and imperial adventures abroad should not be questioned. Thus does Ford, the president who killed a tiny fraction of the innocents his predecessor did, get very few votes for being a great president.

The leftist columnist Alexander Cockburn, writing for Counterpunch, has called Gerald Ford “America’s Greatest President,” mainly because of Ford’s relatively noninterventionist foreign policy and also for the rise of social spending as a percentage of the budget under Ford. Cockburn’s analysis makes sense, since the Republican Ford was arguably much more to the left than Jimmy Carter (who championed deregulation) or Bill Clinton (who bombed Belgrade). Leftists who support increased domestic spending and much less war should find a good amount to admire in the Ford presidency.

From the point of view of liberty, very few presidents can be considered success stories. Martin Van Buren cut government and revived Jeffersonianism in national politics. Grover Cleveland vetoed many attempts to increase federal power, upheld the Constitution better than perhaps any other, and was humane to American Indians. Warren Harding shrank the state and released from prison the dissidents unconstitutionally jailed by Woodrow Wilson.

The presidents most admired by the pundit class, academia, big media and the government itself, however, are the ones who waged huge wars, dramatically increased the power of the presidency and the federal government, and treated civil liberties like garbage. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, censored hundreds of papers, detained thousands of peaceful dissidents and introduced conscription to the United States — and he is considered number one. Franklin Roosevelt prolonged the Great Depression with his monstrous New Deal, firebombed legions of innocent foreigners, put 110,000 innocent Japanese Americans into internment camps, and developed the first nuclear weapons — and he is considered number two.

Although Gerald Ford oversaw a rapid increase in domestic spending, surpassing the rates of social spending growth under Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, or Clinton, he probably did little to expand the power of the presidency, especially in foreign affairs, compared to most of these other presidents, and certainly compared to the worshipped administrations of Washington, Polk, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR and Truman. Years from now, Ford is much less likely to be considered a great president than the more ostensibly belligerent Reagan. Ford simply didn’t flex the muscles of the American empire enough to qualify.

It is a sorry sign for American politics that those who believe in limits on government power would regard someone like Ford, who was far from a consistent proponent of liberty and free markets, as perhaps one of the better presidents of the 20th Century. In today’s dismal world, maybe the best we can realistically hope for in the short term is to once again have a president who is too inactive and quiet to be considered “great” by the establishment.

Anthony Gregory is a writer and musician living in Berkeley, California. He is a research analyst at the Independent Institute, and a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.