President Ford's death

Gerald Ford's death brought out all the weird pronouncements by just about every pundit and dried-out political hack around. There were two consistent observations people who "knew" him were making. One was that he was a "common man" who helped "heal" the nation by pardoning Nixon.
How common could the guy have been having attended the University of Michigan in what must have been the depths of the Great Depression, even if it was on a football scholarship?
And how come we're rewriting history to suggest that pardoning Nixon healed the nation. The first draft was that Ford was widely viewed as a puppet and the pardon was cut and dried before he was named President. A lot of people apparently thought that the pardon was just another ugly chapter in the Watergate story. And it was!