Back in 1975, along with some other Michigan folks, I was invited to visit Jerry Ford at the White House. Those were the days when some of us in the media were still getting used to calling the regular guy we'd known as Jerry "President Ford." Even "Gerald Ford" seemed a bit formal and strange.

I had known Ford - slightly - when I had run the Washington office of another Michigan congressman in the mid-1960's. And by the time the '70's rolled around, I was the publisher of a bunch of newspapers.

Why was I invited? I always figured Jerald terHorst, the Detroit News political writer who was for a brief time Ford's press secretary, put me on the guest list. And I likely stayed on because, well, it's always prudent to be nice to newspaper publishers from your home state.

As we talked back and forth, I reflected that Ford as President was exactly as I had known him as a member of Congress. Solid. Direct. Straightforward. He was much brighter than the comedians made him out to be. He had perfected the masterful art of fiddling with his pipe to give him time to reflect on a question. I've met a fair number of Presidents over the years, but Ford's down-home demeanor in the White House was the least pompous of them all.

Ford's reputation as a President has steadily grown since the days when he sent his ratings plunging and made a lot of folks very angry when he granted a full pardon to former President Nixon, one month into his administration.

But what was castigated as a cynical political deal back then has come to be regarded in the fullness of time as a vital step in ending the long national nightmare of Watergate.

Make no mistake about it -- Ford was a Republican partisan. But he was a man who saw opponents as adversaries, not enemies. Richard Norton Smith, former head of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, put it this way:

"In contrast to today, certainly President Ford never confused compromise with surrender, or moderation with weakness. And while he had adversaries, he was convinced that he never had an enemy."

That quality -- one of sane moderation - and the profound lack of this essential quality in today's political environment - is, I am convinced, what lay behind the extraordinary outpouring of respect and affection that accompanied his death and funeral last week in Grand Rapids.

The ability to disagree respectfully is a quality that was once the core of our political system. And it's a quality that has been very sadly largely lost in the scorched-earth partisanship of today.

Few know this better than former congressman and state senator, Joe Schwarz, a moderate Republican from Battle Creek. "The outpouring of affection for Jerry Ford comes from the fact that the three-quarters of Americans who do not identify themselves as hard left or hard right are weary of the hyper-partisanship that has been the order of the day in Washington and in Michigan.

"Jerry Ford could take an idea and dispassionately evaluate it - whether it came from a Republican, Democratic or Independent - to see whether it worked. He didn't care about the ideology. He only cared about whether it worked," Schwarz told me.

"Both Jerry Ford and Bill Milliken (governor 1969-1983) two of our most effective political leaders over the past half century, would be toast today if they tried to run in a Republican primary election," he noted.

Today's Republicans hold everyone to a set of rigid litmus tests, Schwarz noted. What if someone concludes that they are in favor of any of these things:

"Affirmative action in university admissions. Embryonic stem cell research. Tolerance for gay couples.? What if a Republican is skeptical that abortion is always wrong? Then, Schwarz said, forget it.  "The Republican Party has concluded that each of these issues is an absolute disqualification in running for office, not trigger points for reasonable discussion."

And he added, "it's going to hurt the party if it has any hope of breaking out of the hard-right trap it's in."

Last November's turnout among moderates and Independents was enormous, a rejection of the kind of harsh partisanship that has infested our politics and, maybe, a yearning for something more sensible, for common ground.

And I think the ground may be shifting.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've talked with a fair number of political leaders in Lansing. The change in climate is remarkable. Governor Jennifer Granholm is thinking hard about working with the legislature to resolve the state's current budget crisis, recognizing she can't do it alone. New Speaker of the House Andy Dillon (D-Redford)  wants to discuss policy, not how to screw the opposition. And new Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R- Rochester) is excited about trying to find ways for "legislators who want to do the right thing actually to do it."

Hopefully, the healing quality President Ford represented during his life can inspire and nourish our politics after his death.

His memory - and we here today  - deserve no less.

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Phil Power is a longtime observer of politics, economics and education issues in Michigan. He would be pleased to hear from readers at ppower@hcnnet.com. Phil Power is president of the Center for Michigan. However, these opinions and others expressed in Phil Power's columns are individual opinions and do not in any way represent official policy positions of the Center for Michigan.