Gerald Ford

Source

• Born: 14 July 1913
• Birthplace: Omaha, Nebraska
• Died: 26 December 2006
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1974-77

Name at birth: Leslie Lynch King, Jr.

Gerald Ford became president of the United States after the Watergate scandal forced Richard Nixon from office in 1974. Though he served as president for only 29 months, Ford is now widely credited with restoring public faith in the office of the president after the scandals of the Nixon years. Ford graduated from the University of Michigan (1935) and the Yale University law school (1941) before serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was then a U.S. Congressman from Michigan from 1948-73. Known as a steady and loyal Republican, Ford was appointed vice president in 1973 when Nixon's previous vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned after pleading no contest to a tax evasion charge. Nixon himself resigned on 9 August 1974, and "Gerry" Ford took office the same day, telling Americans that "our long national nightmare is over." One month later Ford granted Nixon a full pardon for any crimes. Ford chose as his vice president Nelson Rockefeller, the former governor of New York and grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller. Ford ran for re-election in 1976, dropping Rockefeller as his running mate in favor of Bob Dole. They lost to the Democratic ticket of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, who took office in January of 1977. Ford's memoir A Time To Heal was published in 1979.

Ford was an Eagle Scout... His parents were divorced when he was an infant, and his mother later married paint salesman Gerald R. Ford. According to Ford's presidential library, "The Fords began calling her son Gerald R. Ford, Jr., although his name was not legally changed until December 3, 1935"... At 93+ years, Ford was the longest-lived president in U.S. history; the month before his death, he passed the previous record-holder, Ronald Reagan... Ford served on the Warren Commission, the government group with investigated the assassination of John Kennedy... Ford's wife Betty Ford is the founder of the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California... Gerald and Betty were married on 15 October 1948, and had four children: Michael (born 1950), John (also known as Jack, b. 1952), Steven (b. 1956) and Susan (b. 1957).

For more information on Gerald R. Ford, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Omaha, Nebraska, 14 July 1913) US; Vice-President 1973 – 4, President 1974 – 7 The son of Leslie Lynch King and Dorothy King, Ford was named at birth as Leslie Lynch King Jr. His parents divorced when he was 2 years old and his mother later married a paint salesman named Gerald Rudolf Ford. His name was changed to Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. when he was legally adopted by his stepfather. (He did not discover he was adopted until the age of 17.) He attended South High School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the University of Michigan, where he majored in economics. Coming from a modest background, he had to work part-time to maintain himself. He was a star football player and was voted the team's "most valuable player" in 1934. After graduating from Michigan in 1935, he went on to Yale law school, where he worked on the athletic staff while studying for a law degree, receiving his degree in 1941. He was admitted to the Michigan bar and set up law practice in Grand Rapids. He saw war service and spent four years in the navy aboard the USS Monterey. Returning to Grand Rapids, he resumed his law practice and, in 1948, married a divorcee, Betty Bloomer Warren. The same year his stepfather — active in local Republican politics — and the state's senior Republican Senator, Arthur Vandenberg, persuaded him to run for Congress in his home district against the incumbent, an isolationist in international affairs. Ford scored a surprise victory in the Republican primary and went on to win easily in the general election.

Ford served for twenty-five years in the House of Representatives. He was a hardworking member and was appointed to several committees. In 1950 he was given a Distinguished Service Award by the US Junior Chamber of Commerce as one of the ten outstanding young men in the United States. Attentive to the needs of Grand Rapids, he regularly won re-election. In 1963 he was appointed as a member of the Warren Commission, investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and in 1965 led a "young turks" movement against the Republican leadership in the House. Elected as minority leader, he spent much of his spare time campaigning and giving speeches for colleagues. Ford had a reputation for being approachable, willing always to help and working hard to master his duties. In his voting behaviour, he was a conservative. He had a particular dislike of the opinions of liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, and sought unsuccessfully to impeach him. He had little grounding in foreign affairs but supported President Richard Nixon in his policy of détente with China and the Soviet Union.

By the early 1970s, he was considering retiring from Congress. He had served almost a quarter of a century in the House. His wife was conscious that she saw little of him and was keen to return to Grand Rapids. His plans changed suddenly in 1973 when President Nixon nominated him, under the terms of the 25th Amendment to the US constitution, to succeed Spiro Agnew as Vice-President after Agnew's resignation. Ford was not Nixon's first but he was his safest choice. Ford was a popular figure in Congress and the members were content to approve one of their own as Vice-President. His nomination was confirmed by both chambers and he took the oath as Vice-President on 6 December 1973.

Ford was a loyalist by inclination and promptly proclaimed his faith in the innocence of Richard Nixon in the face of accusations levelled against him in the Watergate affair. He toured the country giving speeches and defending the President, doing so after it became clear that he would be well adivsed to adopt a more aloof stance. After the release of incriminating tape recordings, Richard Nixon announced his resignation as President on 8 August 1974. The following day, Ford and his wife waved goodbye to Nixon as he left the White House by helicopter. Then, at noon, in the East Room of the White House Ford was sworn in as the 38th President of the United States. He became the only President never to have been elected to either the presidential or vice-presidential office.

Ford had to contend with a worsening economic situation and a political environment that was increasingly hostile. A month after his inauguration, he pardoned Richard Nixon for any crimes he may have committed. The pardon was unpopular — Ford's own press secretary resigned in protest — and the President's ratings in the opinion polls plummeted. In November, the Democrats made sweeping gains in the mid-term congressional elections. There was an attempt by the elected Democrats to pursue their own agenda against that of an unelected President.

In domestic affairs, Ford sought initially to tackle inflation. He held a gathering of economic experts and then distributed "WIN" (Whip Inflation Now') badges. However, he soon changed course and made tackling unemployment the administration's priority. He clashed with Congress, which wanted to go further than he was prepared to go in funding public works projects. Ford used the veto extensively before being advised that it was politically unwise to use it so liberally. In his short term of office, he vetoed 66 measures. Of the 48 regular vetoes, 12 were overridden. He had the lowest average success rate of modern presidents in getting measures passed by Congress (57.6 per cent, compared with 67.2 per cent for Nixon). In his energy policy, Ford supported market pricing and attempted to lift controls on oil prices and to deregulate natural gas rates, but Congress rejected his measures.

Ford also clashed with Congress on foreign policy. Congress denied Ford's attempts to send increased military aid to Cambodia and Vietnam. (Ford subsequently blamed Congress for the fall of the regime in South Vietnam.) Congress also refused Ford's request for more substantial aid to the pro-western forces in Angola. Against Ford's wishes it also imposed an arms embargo on Turkey.

Ford nonetheless was able to claim some successes. He was able to use his veto to achieve some compromise on energy policy and on unemployment programmes. He achieved a ceiling on federal expenditure in return for his approval of a bill authorizing reductions in income tax. In foreign affairs, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger continued his shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East, achieving disengagement of forces in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights. Ford sent US marines to retake the American merchant ship, the Mayaguez, seized — according to American intelligence — by Cambodian forces in international waters. Though it later emerged that the Cambodians were about to release the crew (rendering unnecessary the American casualties sustained in the operation) the action was popular, and Ford's popularity ratings took a sudden, though temporary, upswing.

Ford's greatest contribution to the office, though, was in restoring a sense of stability. By the time of the 1976 presidential election campaign, he had established himself as a serious candidate. Though initially declaring he would not seek election in his own right, he changed his mind and sought the Republican nomination. He was challenged by the former Governor of California, Ronald Reagan. After a bruising contest, Ford won the nomination. In the general election, Ford did well in the first of two televised debates with his Democratic opponent Jimmy Carter, but then slipped in the second debate — on foreign policy — when he asserted that the countries of Eastern Europe were not under the domination of the Soviet Union. It took some days before Ford clarified what he meant (that the Soviets had no legal entitlement to dominate Eastern Europe) but the gaffe and the delay in rectifying it harmed his support. In the event, he lost narrowly to Carter, garnering 48 per cent of the popular vote to Carter's 50.1 per cent. Given the circumstances in which he came to the presidency, his performance was a highly creditable one. After his defeat, he retired from politics. A proposal that he become Ronald Reagan's running mate in 1980 was discussed but not pursued. He gave the occasional lecture but seemed at his happiest on the golf course.

Ford was extremely well liked as an individual. He was pleasant and open. His family circumstances aroused sympathy: his wife was rushed into hospital for major surgery shortly after the couple entered the White House and later received treatment for chronic alcoholism (she subsequently established the Betty Ford clinic). Ford was the subject of two assassination attempts; in one, in San Francisco, bullets were fired and just missed him — his life was saved by a bystander who knocked the arm of the woman firing the gun. The White House became more of a home than a fortress and Ford did much to restore the dignity of the office.

As President, though, Ford was not always taken that seriously. A knee injury — the result of his football playing days — left him prone to falling down steps occasionally. He was a master of the verbal gaffe. Much of the humour at his expense he took in good part. He once had to rebuke his own press secretary for appearing on a late-night television show and banging his head against the microphone, recognized by the audience as a take-off of his boss. He had an engaging way of making light of his own misfortunes. During one speech he was giving — not too well — he interrupted himself to announce, "I told Betty before I gave this speech that I knew it backwards — and that seems to be how I am delivering it." He was the antithesis of his predecessor. That was probably what the United States needed at the time.

(1913–), thirty‐eighth president of the United States

Born in 1913, a decorated veteran of the Pacific theater in World War II (serving in the U.S. Navy as an ensign aboard USS Monterey), Ford served twelve consecutive terms in the House of Representatives before he was chosen by Richard M. Nixon (1973) to be his vice president.

When Ford became president after Nixon's resignation in 1974, he found himself caught between two ideological camps on national security issues. Many Americans, tired of war, wanted Ford to reject any further obligations abroad. However, conservatives in both parties demanded that Ford demonstrate that the Vietnam War had not weakened American military resolve. Himself a conservative in military affairs, who had supported the American commitment in Korea and Vietnam, Ford nevertheless wanted to win his own term as president. As a result, he followed a policy path he hoped would satisfy both camps.

In the spring of 1975, Ford did little to help either Cambodia or South Vietnam as they faced the final Communist offensives against their regimes. The fall of Saigon, which led in April to the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy there, allowed Ford to announce that “[the] war is finished as far as America is concerned,” but it left him open to criticism by conservatives for abandoning an ally. They were more supportive of Ford's actions in the Mayaguez crisis that May, when he reacted to the seizure of an American merchant vessel by bombing the Cambodian mainland and launching a successful, though costly, rescue mission by the U.S. Marines. Nevertheless, conservatives broke with the administration over the SALT Treaties that they felt favored the Soviet Union, and with Ford's support of the 1975 Helsinki Accord, which acquiesced in Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.

While the conservatives, led by Ronald Reagan, were unable to wrest the Republican nomination from Ford in 1976, Democratic presidential nominee Jimmy Carter was more successful in painting Ford as showing ambiguity of purpose in the realm of military affairs.

Bibliography

• Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford, 1979.
• John Robert Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, 1995

Ford, Gerald Rudolph (1913?-) 38th president of the United States (1974-77) and decorated navy veteran of World War II. Born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., in Omaha, Nebraska, Ford was raised in Michigan and given the name of his adoptive father. Ford served in the South Pacific, attaining the rank of lieutenant commander. In 1948 he was elected to Congress as a Republican representative from Michigan; he served for twenty-five years, becoming minority leader of the House of Representatives in 1965. In 1973, following the forced resignation of Spiro T. Agnew, Ford was named vice president by Richard M. Nixon, and in 1974, following Nixon's resignation in the face of probable impeachment, Ford became president. His first official act was to pardon Nixon for his role in the Watergate affair. He also granted conditional amnesty to draft evaders and deserters of the Vietnam War. As president, Ford largely continued Nixon's policies. His attempts to battle inflation resulted in severe recession (1974-75), and he proved ineffective in working with the Democratic-controlled Congress. In 1975 he sent the U.S. Marines to retaliate for an attack on an American merchant vessel, the Mayaguez, by Cambodia. Ford received his party's nomination in 1976, but lost the election to Jimmy Carter, making him the first incumbent not reelected since Herbert Hoover in 1932. He retired from public life after leaving the White House.

Ford was the nation's only unelected chief executive.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Gerald Ford (born 1913) served as Republican leader in the House of Representatives before being selected by President Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew as vice president in 1973. A year later he replaced Nixon himself, who resigned due to the Watergate crisis. In the 1976 presidential election Ford lost to Jimmy Carter.

Gerald Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 14, 1913. Shortly afterward, his mother divorced and moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. After she remarried, he was adopted by and legally renamed for his stepfather, becoming Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr.

Ford's personality and career were clearly shaped by his family and community. Though not wealthy, the family was by Ford's later account "secure, orderly, and happy." His early years were rather ideal: handsome and popular, Gerald worked hard and graduated in the top five percent of his high school class. He also excelled in football, winning a full athletic scholarship to the University of Michigan, where he played center and, in his final year, was selected to participate in the Shrine College All-Star game. His football experiences, Ford later contended, helped instill in him a sense of fair play and obedience to rules.

Ford had a good formal education. After graduation from the University of Michigan, where he developed a strong interest in economics, he was admitted to Yale Law School. Here he graduated in the top quarter percent of the class (1941), which included such future luminaries as Potter Stewart and Cyrus Vance. Immediately after graduation, Ford joined with his college friend Philip Buchen in a law partnership in Grand Rapids; in early 1942 he enlisted in the Navy, serving throughout World War II and receiving his discharge as a lieutenant commander in February 1946.

Early Political Career

Ford was now ideally positioned to begin the political career which had always interested him. His stepfather was the Republican county chairman in 1944, which was certainly an advantage for Ford. A staunch admirer of Grand Rapids' conservative-but-internationalist senator Arthur Vandenberg, young Ford re-established himself in law practice and took on the Fifth District's isolationist congressman, Bartel Jonkman, in the 1948 primary for a seat in the House of Representatives. He won with 62 percent of the primary vote and repeated that generous margin of victory against his Democratic foe in the general election.

From the outset of his House career Gerald Ford displayed the qualities - and enjoyed the kind of help from others - which led to his rise to power in the lower house. His loyal adherence to the party line and cultivation of good will in his personal relations was soon rewarded with a seat on the prestigious Appropriations Committee. When Dwight Eisenhower gained the White House in 1952, Ford again found himself in an advantageous position since he had been one of 18 Republican congressmen who had initially written Eisenhower to urge him to seek the nomination.

Rise to House Leadership

During the 1950s Ford epitomized the so-called "Eisenhower wing" of the GOP ("Grand Old Party") in both his active support for internationalism in foreign policy (coupled with a nationalistic and patriotic tone) and his basic conservatism on domestic issues. He also developed close associations with other young GOP congressmen such as Robert Griffin of Michigan and Melvin Laird of Wisconsin who were rising to positions of influence in the House. Meanwhile, he continued to build his reputation as a solid party man with expertise on defense matters.

In 1963 he reaped the first tangible rewards of his party regularity, hard work, and good fellowship as he was elevated to the chairmanship of the House Republican Conference. Two years later, at the outset of the 89th Congress, a revolt led by his young, image-conscious party colleagues (prominent among them Griffin, Laird, Charles Goodell of New York, and Donald Rumsfeld of Illinois) propelled Ford into the post of minority leader.

Minority Leader

In a sense, Ford was fortunate to be in the minority party throughout his tenure as floor leader, for those years (1965-1973) - dominated by the Vietnam War and Watergate - presented nearly insurmountable obstacles to constructive policymaking. He tried to maintain a "positive" image for the GOP, initially supporting President Johnson's policies in Vietnam while attempting to pose responsible alternatives to Great Society measures. Gradually he broke from Johnson's Vietnam policy, calling for more aggressive pursuit of victory there.

During the Nixon years, Ford gained increasing visibility as symbol and spokesman for GOP policies. His party loyalty as minority leader made him a valuable asset to the Nixon administration. He was instrumental in securing passage of revenue-sharing, helped push the ill-fated Family Assistance (welfare reform) Plan, and took a pragmatic, essentially unsympathetic stance on civil rights issues - especially school bussing. He made perhaps his greatest public impact in these years when in 1970 - seemingly in retaliation for the Senate's rejection of two conservative Southerners nominated by Nixon for seats on the Supreme Court - he called for the impeachment of the liberal Justice William O. Douglas, claiming Douglas was guilty of corruption and inappropriate behavior. The impeachment effort was unsuccessful, and when the ailing Douglas eventually retired from the Court in 1975 Ford issued a laudatory public statement.

Ford also enhanced his reputation as a "hawk" on defense matters during these years. He was one of the few members of Congress who was kept informed by Nixon of the bombings of Cambodia before the controversial invasion of that country in the spring of 1970. Even after the Watergate scandal broke in 1973, Ford remained doggedly loyal long after many of his party colleagues had begun to distance themselves from President Nixon.

Ford retained his personal popularity with all elements of the GOP even while involving himself deeply in these controversial areas. His reputation for non-ideological practicality ("a Congressman's Congressman," he was sometimes labeled), coupled with personal qualities of openness, geniality, and candor, made him the most popular (and uncontroversial) of all possible choices for nomination by Nixon to the vice presidency in late 1973, under the terms of the 25th Amendment, to succeed the disgraced Spiro T. Agnew.

Loyal Vice President

The appropriate congressional committees conducted thorough hearings on even the well-liked Ford, but discovered no evidence linking him to Watergate. He was confirmed by votes of 92 to three in the Senate and 387 to 35 in the House, becoming the nation's first unelected vice president on December 6, 1973. At his swearing-in, Ford charmed a public sorely in need of discovering a lovable politician, stating with humility, "I am a Ford, not a Lincoln." He promised "to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right …, and … to do the very best that I can do for America."

Nixon and Ford were never personally close, but the latter proved to be a perfect choice for the job. His characteristic loyalty determined his course: during the eight-plus months he served as vice president, Ford made approximately 500 public appearances in 40 states, traveling over 100,000 miles to defend the president. He was faithful to Nixon to the end; even in early August of 1974, after the House Judiciary Committee had voted a first article of impeachment against the president, Ford continued to defend Nixon and condemned the committee action as "partisan."

Always a realist, however, Ford allowed aides to lay the groundwork for his possible transition to the White House. When Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, the unelected vice president was prepared to become the nation's first unelected president.

The White House Years

Once in the White House, Ford displayed a more consistently conservative ideology than ever before. While holding generally to the policies of the Nixon administration, he proved more unshakably committed than his predecessor to both a conservative, free market economic approach and strongly nationalistic defense and foreign policies. In attempting to translate his objectives into policy, however, President Ford was frequently blocked by a Democratic Congress intent on flexing its muscles in the wake of Watergate and Nixon's fall. The result was a running battle of vetoes and attempted overrides throughout the brief Ford presidency.

Ford made two quick tactical errors, whatever the merits of the two decisions. On September 8, 1974 he granted a full pardon to Richard Nixon, in advance, for any crimes he may have committed while in office, and a week later he announced a limited amnesty program for Vietnam-era deserters and draft evaders which angered the nationalistic right even while, in stark contrast to the pardon of Nixon, it seemed to many others not to go far enough in attempting to heal the wounds of the Vietnam War.

Gerald Ford governed the nation in a difficult period. Though president for only 895 days (the fifth shortest tenure in American history), he faced tremendous problems. After the furor surrounding the pardon subsided, the most important issues faced by Ford were inflation and unemployment, the continuing energy crisis, and the repercussions - both actual and psychological - from the final "loss" of South Vietnam in April 1975. Ford consistently championed legislative proposals to effect economic recovery by reducing taxes, spending, and the federal role in the national economy, but he got little from Congress except a temporary tax reduction. Federal spending continued to rise despite his call for a lowered spending ceiling. By late 1976 inflation, at least, had been checked somewhat; on the other hand, unemployment remained a major problem, and the 1976 election occurred in the midst of a recession. In energy matters, congressional Democrats consistently opposed Ford's proposals to tax imported oil and to deregulate domestic oil and natural gas. Eventually Congress approved only a very gradual decontrol measure.

Ford believed he was particularly hampered by Congress in foreign affairs. Having passed the War Powers Resolution in late 1973, the legislative branch first investigated, and then tried to impose restrictions on, the actions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In the area of war powers, Ford clearly bested his congressional adversaries. In the Mayaquez incident of May 1975 (involving the seizure of a U.S.-registered ship of that name by Cambodia), Ford retaliated with aerial attacks and a 175-marine assault without engaging the formal mechanisms required by the 1973 resolution. Although the actual success of this commando operation was debatable (39 crew members and the ship rescued, at a total cost of 41 other American lives), American honor had been vindicated and Ford's approval ratings rose sharply. Having succeeded in defying its provisions, Ford continued to speak out against the War Powers Resolution as unconstitutional even after he left the White House.

Ford basically continued Nixon's foreign policies, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was a dominant force in his administration as he had been under Nixon. Under increasing pressure from the nationalist right, Ford stopped using the word "detente," but he continued Nixon's efforts to negotiate a second SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty), and in 1975 he signed the Helsinki Accords, which recognized political arrangements in Eastern Europe which had been disputed for more than a generation.

The 1976 Election

Ford had originally stated he would not be a candidate on the national ticket in 1976, but he changed his mind. He faced a stiff challenge for the nomination, however; former Governor Ronald Reagan of California, champion of the Republican right, battled him through the 1976 primary season before succumbing narrowly at the convention. Running against Democrat Jimmy Carter of Georgia in November, Ford could not quite close the large gap by which he had trailed initially. He fell just short of victory. He received over 39 million popular votes to Carter's 40.8 million, winning 240 electoral votes to his opponent's 297. At the age of 63 he left public office - at the exact time he had earlier decided that he would retire.

Gerald Ford prospered as much after leaving the White House as any president had ever done. Moving their primary residence to near Palm Springs, California, he and his popular wife Betty (the former Elizabeth Warren, whom he married in 1948) also maintained homes in Vail, Colorado, and Los Angeles. Besides serving as a consultant to various businesses, by the mid-1980s Ford was on the boards of directors of several major companies, including Shearson/American Express, Beneficial Corporation of New Jersey, and Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation. Estimated to be earning $1 million per year, Ford shared a number of investments with millionaire Leonard Firestone and busied himself with numerous speaking engagements. Some criticized him for trading on his prestige for self-interest, but Ford remained clear of charges of wrongdoing and saw no reason to apologize for his success. Long a spokesman for free enterprise and individual initiative, it is somehow fitting that he became a millionaire in his post-presidential years.

In December, 1996 Business Week said that the former President had amassed a fortune of close to $300 million over the past two decades, largely from buying and selling U.S. banks and thrifts. Still, his fiscal success didn't diminish his concern over Congress's decision to cut off funds for all living former Presidents as of 1998. In July 1996 Ford paid a visit to several Congressmen, in the hope of urging a Congressional change of heart. Unfortunately for Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Ford, it appears that the Congressional decision is firm, especially in this era of scrutinizing every item in the Federal budget.

In 1997 Ford participated in "The Presidents' Summit on America's Future," along with former presidents Bush and Carter, and President Clinton, as well as General Colin Powell, and former first ladies Nancy Reagan and Lady Bird Johnson. The purpose of the gathering was to discuss volunteerism and community service, and marked the first occasion when living former presidents convened on a domestic policy.

Further Reading

Richard Reeves's A Ford Not a Lincoln (1975) and Jerald F. ter Horst's Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency (1974) provide interesting coverage of his pre-presidential years; the former is more critical than the latter. Ford's autobiography, A Time to Heal (1979), is the best source available on his early life, while Robert Hartmann's Palace Politics: An Inside Account of the Ford Years (1980) and Ron Nessen's It Sure Looks Different from the Inside (1978) give interesting glimpses of Ford as president. The most systematic treatment of Ford's presidency is in A. James Reichley, Conservatives in an Age of Change: The Nixon and Ford Administrations (1981). Also see Robert Hartman's Palace Politics: An Inside Account of the Ford Years (1990).

• Born: July 14, 1913, Omaha, Nebr.
• Political party: Republican
• Education: University of Michigan, B.A., 1935; Yale University Law School, LL.B., 1940
• Military service: U.S. Navy, 1942–45
• Previous government service: U.S. House of Representatives, 1949–73; House minority leader, 1965–73; Vice President, 1973–74
• Succeeded to Presidency, 1974; served, 1974–77

Gerald Ford was the first Vice President ever to serve without having been popularly elected (he was appointed under the provisions of the 25th Amendment), and he was the first to succeed a President who resigned from office. His pardon of Richard Nixon for all Watergate crimes and his weak performance in dealing with the economy contributed to his election defeat in 1976.

Ford was originally named Leslie King, Jr. When he was two years old, his parents divorced; he took the name of his stepfather, Gerald Rudolph Ford, when his mother remarried. He was an Eagle Scout and in high school was a star football player and member of the student council. While an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Ford played football, and after graduation he received offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers. Instead he went to Yale Law School and while there coached boxing, was the assistant football coach, and occasionally modeled for magazines. After receiving his law degree, Ford served as a lieutenant commander in the navy during World War II. He received 10 battle stars for action in the Pacific theater and almost lost his life when a typhoon hit the Third Fleet on December 18, 1944.

After the war Ford briefly practiced law, and in 1948 defeated an incumbent Republican and won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Grand Rapids, Michigan. During the campaign he married Betty Bloomer Warren. He served 12 terms in the House, never receiving less than 60 percent of the vote. In 1965, after the Republican party suffered a major defeat in the Presidential and congressional elections, House Republicans ousted Charles Halleck and elected the younger and more aggressive Gerald Ford as minority leader. Ford proved an aggressive and successful leader who helped his party regain much of its lost stature. Ford frequently sparred with President Lyndon Johnson, who once remarked that Ford had “played too much football with his helmet off.” Ford opposed most of Johnson's Great Society programs, including aid to education and Medicare for the elderly.

In 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew was convicted of accepting bribes and resigned from office. President Richard Nixon then appointed Ford as Vice President, both to rebuild the his administration's crumbling relations with Congress and because the Senate would be likely to confirm him. This was the first time that the 25th Amendment was used to fill a Vice Presidential vacancy. Ford was sworn in, after receiving congressional approval, on December 6, 1973.

When Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, Ford succeeded to the Presidency. “Our long national nightmare is over,” he told a nation numbed by the Watergate scandal. On September 8 he gave Nixon a “full, free and absolute” pardon for all Watergate crimes. “I do believe, with all my heart and mind and spirit, that I, not as President but as a humble servant of God, will receive justice without mercy if I fail to show mercy,” he told the American people in a televised address. Ford's popularity plummeted because of the pardon, and it never recovered. Many Americans believed there had been a secret deal, or at least an “understanding,” between Nixon and Ford, that Ford would issue a pardon if he were appointed Vice President and later succeeded Nixon in the White House.

Ford recommended to Congress that Nixon be paid $850,000 in transition expenses, which also upset public opinion. Congress allocated only $200,000 to Nixon. Ford appeared before a congressional committee to discuss the pardon, becoming the first President ever to appear before Congress for questioning. In September 1974 Ford offered Vietnam War deserters Presidential clemency if they participated in a work program. The contrast with the unconditional pardon given to Nixon seemed outrageous to many people.

Ford's domestic program was stalled by the Democratic Congress. As a result of the 1974 midterm elections, Democrats gained 43 House and 3 Senate seats to provide them with almost veto-proof margins. One-quarter of Ford's vetoes were overridden, a figure much higher than the 7 percent that other Presidents averaged. His anti-inflation effort, called Whip Inflation Now (WIN), was ignored, although the inflation rate dropped from 12 to 5 percent. His energy conservation program was derailed. Democrats passed their own education, public works, and housing measures. Ford vetoed many Democratic spending measures on domestic programs in 1976, but the vetoes were unpopular with Democrats and independent voters.

In foreign affairs, Ford's most notable achievements included an arms agreement with the Soviet Union on strategic weapons. In addition, the Helsinki Conference of 35 nations signed a pact in 1975 that recognized the borders of all states in Europe. It conferred legitimacy on Soviet expansionism after World War II but also required all nations to adhere to universal standards of human rights—provisions that eventually would make Soviet rule in Eastern Europe more difficult to sustain. In October 1975 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger helped put in place an interim peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in the Sinai Peninsula.

In 1975 the North Vietnamese army overran South Vietnam and put an end to the Vietnam War. President Ford ordered U.S. armed forces to evacuate Americans and South Vietnamese allies. Seven laws prohibited the use of the armed forces in Vietnam, and Ford went before a joint session of Congress to urge their repeal. After Congress deadlocked and did nothing, Ford ordered the evacuations anyway. He asked Congress to allocate almost half a billion dollars to settle 140,000 refugees from Indochina in the United States—one of his few legislative successes. Later, he sent the military to rescue crewmen of the merchant ship Mayaguez from Cambodian custody, losing 43 servicemen in the incident.

On September 22, 1975, Ford was almost assassinated by Sarah Jane Moore as he emerged from the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. The pistol was deflected by a bystander and Ford was not hit by the bullet.

In 1976 Ford was challenged by Ronald Reagan in the Republican primaries and barely defeated him for the nomination. The Republican platform, however, was written by conservatives and repudiated much of the Ford-Kissinger foreign policy of dtente, or relaxation of tensions with the Soviet Union. During the general election campaign, Ford made a major slip in a debate when he asserted that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” Although he seemed to have meant that the Soviets could not crush the Polish, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak peoples' longing for freedom, his poor choice of words gave the Democrats a chance to argue that Ford simply did not have the brains to be President. Ford was defeated by Jimmy Carter in a close election, receiving slightly less than 49 percent of the vote.

After retiring from the White House, Ford wrote his memoirs and saw to the construction of his Presidential library in Ann Arbor and museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 1980 there was an effort to put Ford on the Reagan ticket as Vice President, but Ford insisted on a virtual “co-Presidency” in which he would share Presidential powers, and the effort was aborted by the Reagan camp.

(1973–74)

See also Agnew, Spiro T.; Carter, Jimmy; Nixon, Richard M.; Pardon power; 25th Amendment; Watergate investigation

Sources

• Betty Ford with Chris Chase, The Times of My Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).
• Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford (New York: Harper & Row, 1979).
• Robert Hartmann, Palace Politics: An Inside Account of the Ford Years (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980).
• Jules Witcover, Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice Presidency (New York: Crown, 1992)

(1913- ), thirty-eighth president of the United States. Ford served in the House of Representatives from the Fifth District of Michigan beginning in 1949 and was elected minority leader in 1965. Under the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment, President Richard M. Nixon chose him in 1973 to be vice president following the resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. Upon the resignation of Nixon himself in the face of likely impeachment, Ford became president on August 9, 1974. He named as his vice president Nelson A. Rockefeller, former governor of New York, thus completing the only unelected presidential team in American history.

Ford had no clear-cut political agenda, pledging only to end the "long national nightmare" provoked by the Watergate affair. A month after becoming president, he startled the nation by granting Nixon an unconditional pardon for any offenses he may have committed against the United States. A storm of protest arose, amid cries that a deal had been struck. No one has made the allegation stick, although Ford and Nixon were in constant negotiations before and after Ford took the presidential oath. Ford, keenly sensitive to the lingering suspicions, has insisted that his sole aim was to help heal the wounds of the nation. With poor timing, he announced only a few days after the pardon his amnesty proposal for Vietnam draft resisters and evaders. Unlike Nixon, they would have to meet conditions.

Ford presided over the evacuation of U.S. personnel from Vietnam, which he ordered in April 1975. Because he was linked to this withdrawal, he was destined to have no notable strength in foreign affairs. Although he claimed credit for the Helsinki Accord in which the Soviet Union renounced its right to keep its satellite states in line by military intervention, the true effect was to recognize at last Soviet domination of the eastern bloc nations. Possibly, however, the Helsinki Accord helped restrain the Soviet Union from intervening when citizens in communist countries overthrew their governments in 1989.

In domestic affairs Ford's initiatives were few. A volunteer anti-inflation program, called by its acronym win (Whip Inflation Now), was widely derided as inadequate. When New York City fell into dire financial straits, Ford was unmoved. A now-famous headline in the New York Daily News--ford to city: drop dead-- helped underscore his apparent insensitivity to the national significance of the city's plight. In the presidential campaign of 1976, he aroused sympathy but not much support. In the election, his loss to Jimmy Carter was widely interpreted as completing the fall of the Nixon administration, for he had retained as his own staff most of Nixon's appointees.

Possessed of an open personality, Ford was perceived as a straight-shooter. He was "Mr. Nice Guy," unpretentious but unimaginative. A splendid athlete (he had been an outstanding college football player), he sometimes seemed more comfortable talking about sports than about the intricacies of public policy. He could never live down Lyndon B. Johnson's cruel quips, which stuck like Velcro (e.g., "The trouble with Jerry Ford is that he used to play football without a helmet").

Ford's wife, Betty, broke fresh ground for a First Lady by her forthrightness on controversial and personal matters. She championed abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment; expressed uncommon understanding for some of the new norms of young people's behavior, including premarital sex and the use of marijuana; and went public about her mastectomy, her drinking problem, and her entry into psychiatric treatment.

Ford was deeply pained that he could not vindicate his presidency at the polls. He must remain satisfied to be remembered as a congressional president whose historic role it was to mop up the dregs of the two most damaging episodes in the history of the modern White House, the Watergate affair and the Vietnam War.

Bibliography:

Betty Ford, with Chris Chase, The Times of My Life (1978); Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal (1979); Edward L. and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Gerald R. Ford's Date with Destiny: A Political Biography (1989).

Author:

Henry F. Graff

See also Elections: 1976; Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; Watergate Scandal.

A political leader of the twentieth century who served as president from 1974 to 1977. A prominent Republican in Congress, Ford was named vice president in 1973, after the resignation of Spiro Agnew. He succeeded to the presidency in 1974, when President Richard Nixon was forced to resign. Ford sought to pursue moderate policies and to communicate better with Congress and with the public than Nixon had. He refused approval, however, of a large number of bills passed by Congress, which was controlled by Democrats, saying they were too costly. He pardoned Nixon in a widely criticized effort to end division over the Watergate scandal. Ford lost the presidency to James Earl Carter in the 1976 election.

Without winning a single vote in a presidential election, Gerald Rudolph Ford became chief executive of the United States on August 9, 1974. The sixty-year-old Ford was the first person in the nation's history to be appointed to the presidency.

Ford's ascent to the White House began on October 12, 1973, when he was appointed by President Richard M. Nixon to succeed Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. Agnew left office on October 10, 1973, after pleading nolo contendere (I will not contest it) to felonious tax evasion. Ford was a popular Republican congressman from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Nixon administration was on the brink of collapse as evidence mounted of its criminal involvement in the Watergate break-in and cover-up. The scandal ultimately destroyed the Nixon White House, forcing the president to resign from office to avoid impeachment. As a result, on August 9, 1974, Ford was sworn in as the nation's thirty-eighth president—and the first chief executive to be appointed to office.

Named Leslie Lynch King, Jr., when born July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Ford spent most of his childhood in Grand Rapids, where his mother settled in 1914 after divorcing his father. When Ford was three years old, his mother remarried, and the future president was adopted by and renamed after his stepfather, Gerald Ford, Sr.

Ford was a gifted athlete in high school and a college all-star on championship football teams at the University of Michigan. After graduating from Michigan in 1935, he turned down offers to play professional football and instead coached football and boxing at Yale University for five years. Ford attended Yale Law School during this time, and graduated in 1941 in the top third of his class.

After briefly practicing law in Grand Rapids, he enlisted in 1942 for a four-year tour with the Navy during World War II. When the war ended, Ford returned to Grand Rapids and reestablished his law practice. He married Elizabeth ("Betty") Bloomer Warren in 1948, and by 1957, the couple had four children.

Ford was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Michigan's Fifth Congressional District in 1948. He served in the House for twenty-five years, consistently winning reelection in his home district by 60 percent or more of the vote. A domestic affairs moderate and a fiscal conservative, Ford was assigned to the Public Works Committee during his first term in Congress. In 1951, he managed to transfer committees, and subsequently served on the influential House Appropriations Committee until 1965. Ford supported large defense budgets and a strong foreign policy, and opposed federal spending for several domestic social programs.

After the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Ford was selected to serve on the Warren Commission, a bipartisan task force set up to investigate Kennedy's murder. Later, Ford coauthored a book supporting the Warren Commission's report that Kennedy was killed by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.

In 1963, Ford became chair of the House Republican Conference, and in 1964, he was named minority leader of the House of Representatives. At this stage in Ford's political career, his greatest ambition was to become Speaker of the House. However, because Congress was controlled by a majority of Democrats, Ford's goal was unattainable.

Ford was a GOP loyalist who campaigned tirelessly for other Republican candidates. An accomplished fund-raiser, he was given credit for helping elect forty-seven new Republicans to the House of Representatives in 1966. In addition to campaigning and performing his congressional duties, Ford served as permanent chair of both the 1968 and 1972 Republican National Conventions. After the GOP's victory in the 1968 presidential election, Ford could be counted on to support vigorously Nixon's foreign and domestic programs in Congress.

When it became clear in 1973 that Vice President Agnew's legal and ethical problems would force him out of the Nixon White House, the president turned to Ford as a logical replacement. The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows the president to nominate a vice president in the event of a vacancy. Ford was a plausible choice because of his solid track record in the House, his popularity with Congress and the public, and his loyalty to Nixon. After Agnew's resignation, Ford publicly accepted Nixon's offer and was confirmed by a majority vote of both houses of the U.S. Congress. He was sworn in during a joint session of Congress on December 6, 1973.

Ford knew that he was joining a doomed, scandal-plagued administration and that in all likelihood he would become president. For eight months, he performed his vice presidential duties and waited as the Watergate investigators closed in on Nixon. With Nixon's resignation inevitable, Ford prepared what he hoped would be a reassuring speech to his weary country. On August 9, 1974, the day Nixon resigned and Ford was sworn in, Ford spoke to the nation on television, telling citizens that the U.S. system worked and that "our long national nightmare is over."

At the beginning of Ford's term as president, members of Nixon's cabinet, including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, agreed to stay on in the interest of continuity. Ford appointed Nelson A. Rockefeller, former governor of New York, to serve as his vice president. As the transition from Nixon to Ford was made, key Nixon appointees departed, and the Ford administration floundered.

The nation's economy was a pressing problem, with both inflation and unemployment running high. To combat inflation, Ford proposed a voluntary program, Whip Inflation Now (WIN), which was neither an economic nor a popular success. Without mandatory controls to keep prices and wages in check, the program was ineffective. Although other measures introduced by Ford eventually helped stabilize the economy, unemployment remained high, reaching more than nine percent in May 1975.

Clearly the most damaging event during Ford's two-and-a-half years in office occurred about a month after he was sworn in. On September 8, 1974, Ford granted Nixon a full pardon for any possible crimes committed during the Watergate cover-up. Although Ford pardoned Nixon out of compassion and a desire to move the nation from its Watergate paralysis, he suffered tremendously in the public opinion polls for his action. Many U.S. citizens opposed special treatment for Nixon, believing that the former president should be fully prosecuted for the crimes that toppled his administration. Some historians believe that Ford's unconditional pardon of Nixon cost him the 1976 presidential election.

Another misstep was Ford's amnesty proposal for young men who had dodged the draft during the Vietnam War. Although the program did not offer automatic reentry into U.S. society—it did require two years of public service—it was unpopular with conservative groups and with the very men it was supposed to help. The amnesty program received applications from only 20 percent of eligible U.S. citizens and was discontinued after two years.

In foreign affairs, Ford continued Nixon's policies of détente with the Soviet Union and negotiations for a Middle East peace accord. Perhaps the most newsworthy event of international importance during Ford's term was the Mayaguez incident. When the U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez was seized off the coast of Cambodia in 1975, Ford sent in U.S. troops to retrieve the crew and ship. The operation was an unmitigated success for Ford because bloodshed was avoided and his leadership qualities were demonstrated in the international arena.

During his brief term, Ford made one U.S. Supreme Court appointment, nominating Justice John Paul Stevens, a moderate, to replace retiring Justice William O. Douglas in 1975. Ford became the first U.S. president to travel to Japan on an official visit, in 1974, and the first chief executive to survive two assassination attempts.

Initially, Ford considered himself an interim president. As he grew accustomed to the White House, he changed his mind and decided to run for his party's presidential nomination in 1976. Although Ford was opposed at the Republican convention by California governor Ronald Reagan, he managed to win the nomination on the first ballot. He selected Senator Bob Dole, of Kansas, as his running mate.

Jimmy Carter, governor of Georgia and the 1976 Democratic presidential nominee, made personal integrity and honesty in government the central themes of his campaign. Carter criticized Ford's association with the tainted Nixon administration and stressed his own reputation for moral rectitude. In a tight race, Carter and running mate Walter F. Mondale, from Minnesota, won the election, receiving half the popular votes and 297 electoral college votes.

After his defeat, Ford retired from public service. In 1980, he was asked to run as Reagan's vice presidential candidate; he declined.

Quotes:

"I have had a lot of adversaries in my political life, but no enemies that I can remember."

"I had a lot of experience with people smarter than I am."

"Truth is the glue that holds government together."

"Even though this is late in an election year, there is no way we can go forward except together and no way anybody can win except by serving the people's urgent needs. We cannot stand still or slip backwards. We must go forward now together."

"Our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws, not of men."

"The only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers [it] to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office."

See more famous quotes by Gerald R. Ford

• Born: Jul 14, 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska
• Died: Dec 26, 2006 in Rancho Mirage, California
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '70s-'90s
• Major Genres: Culture & Society, History
• Career Highlights: Nardwuar the Human Serviette: Welcome to My Castle!
• First Major Screen Credit: Nardwuar the Human Serviette: Welcome to My Castle! (2007)

Biography

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. -- the 38th president of the United States and the 40th vice president -- is, at least to date, the only individual ever to have held that office without direct election. Ford became vice president under the provisions of the 25th Amendment in 1973 when Spiro Agnew resigned, and ascended to the office of president following the resignation of Richard Milhous Nixon the next year. Ford's presidency spanned 1974 to 1977, when he ran for reelection as an incumbent candidate, roundly defeated by Jimmy Carter.

Cinematically, Ford only appeared in one fictional narrative -- an uncredited bit part as a politician in New World's inferior 1978 horror picture The Bees, directed by Alfredo Zacharias. More enduringly, Ford participated in several illuminating small-screen documentaries in which he reflects on the nature and role of the chief of state. These include Constitution: That Delicate Balance -- Executive Privilege and Delegation of Powers (1984), Constitution: That Delicate Balance -- War Powers and Covert Action (1984), The Presidency: A Personal Perspective (1996), and Powers of the President: Bureaucracy, Court, and Media (1996). The Modern Presidency (1989) is one of the only documentaries to feature Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan discussing the complexities of running the U.S. government. The majority of these programs were designed as educational videos for use in secondary schools and collegiate institutions.

Gerald R. Ford died on December 26, 2006, at 93 years old -- making him the longest-lived president in the history of the United States. He passed away in his home of Rancho Mirage, CA, and was survived by his wife, Betty, and his four grown children, Michael, John, Steven, and Susan. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

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