Former President Gerald Ford, an appointed Vice President and non-elected President who became President after Richard Nixon resigned due to the Watergate scandal — and who sacrificed his own political career by pardoning Nixon, in an effort to put the scandal behind the country — is dead at 93:
Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America’s history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93.
Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, California, about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.
Ford was an accidental president, Nixon’s hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straightforward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.
He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared “our long national nightmare is over.” But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: “Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned.” Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to “look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who also was forced from office by scandal.
He was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.
Gerald Ford had risen from obscurity to become Richard Nixon’s vice-president in 1973, when Spiro Agnew resigned amid corruption charges.
Mr Ford then succeeded to the top office when Nixon became embroiled in Watergate.
Mr Ford declared the “national nightmare” of the Nixon scandal over but soon after he granted his former boss a pardon for any crimes committed as president.
Analysts believe in the short term it may have cost him the 1976 election, but in the long term the decision was more praised.
Mr Ford was in office as the US accepted its defeat in the Vietnam War, with the fall of Saigon in April 1975.
He said it was time to “bind up the nation’s wounds”.
Ford told the country in a speech that Watergate was “an American tragedy.”
“It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it,” he said. “I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.”
While he was criticized at the time for undermining the inquiry into the Watergate burglary and its cover-up by issuing the pardon, his actions to overcome Watergate were later applauded.
Ford won the 2001 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for pardoning Nixon.
Moving to repair the damage of Nixon’s resignation, Ford replaced all but three members of Nixon’s Cabinet. In December 1974, congressional majorities backed his choice of former New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller as his vice president.
A self-described fiscal conservative, Ford proposed tax cuts and spending limits to deal with a budget deficit. He also pushed through Congress legislative proposals to deregulate the railroad and securities industries.
And, indeed, it’s hard for those who weren’t alive at the time to now grasp the importance of what Ford did — just by doing some simple things. And to grasp how quickly his political career unraveled. But, through it all, there was one constant: the country’s love for Betty Ford:
After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.
They liked her for speaking openly about problems of young people, including her own daughter; they admired her for not hiding that she had a mastectomy — in fact, her example caused thousands of women to seek breast examinations.
And she remained one of the country’s most admired women even after the Fords left the White House when she was hospitalized in 1978 and admitted to having become addicted to drugs and alcohol she took for painful arthritis and a pinched nerve in her neck. Four years later she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a substance abuse facility next to Eisenhower Medical Center.
But Ford himself is a figure who was pivotal in political drama and political tragedy:
People immediately liked his contrast with Richard Nixon. He began the process of making The Imperial Presidency less imperial. Those not alive at the time don’t realize it, but it was NATIONAL NEWS that Gerald Ford toasted his own muffins.
He had an image shift. Ford had come under fire from Democrats for being a staunch partisan in Congress when he was in Congress. Critics of the Warren Commission didn’t like his views on the Kennedy assassination. But Ford came across on television as a nice guy who you’d like to have as a neighbor versus Richard Nixon, who came across as the guy who’d sneak out and steal your morning newspaper. You could also tell from reporters stories that they liked Gerald Ford.
He became the first President whose image (which many felt was accurate) was sandbagged by satire and derisive conventional wisdom. Ford, a genuine athlete, would bang his head and it became big news. And then Saturday Night Live debuted — with a key segment becoming Chevy Chase’s portrayal of a pratfall-prone Ford. Ford’s image was never the same.
Hatred of Nixon among Democrats and Independents was rampant and disappointment among Republicans was deep. But Ford pardoned Nixon. This angered many voters and he never recovered from it. And, in retrospect, history has been kind to him.
He Was Defeated In A Close Election But Years Later Voters Had Some Voters’ Remorse. Just as President George W. Bush’s rocky administration caused a segment of Americans to think of the Clinton years with some nostalgia, the man who replaced Ford as President, Jimmy Carter, who ran on an “I would never lie to you” campaign promising efficient government, caused many to yearn for the days of Gerald Ford. Just as Ford was “fired” by voters after one term, Carter was “fired.” One difference: as an ex-President Ford didn’t make any waves, while Carter has proven to be a thorn in the side of Presidents of both parties since leaving office.
In a sense, Ford will likely be remembered as a President who gambled, won part of his bet and lost the other part. The country did move on quickly after Watergate with Nixon’s pardon — although some may argue that the lack of a trial may have made it easier for those who hold the office to repeat Nixon’s mistakes and violations. On the other hand, Nixon could well have gotten off or won on appeal. No one really KNOWS how a trial would have ended.
But, unquestionably, the country healed faster from the partisan tensions following Nixon’s resignation due to Ford’s action.
Ford left office not having won re-election but still being admired for being a truly nice guy….with a well-centered political soul.
A CROSS-SECTION OF OTHER VIEWS AND INFO ON GERALD FORD:
—Dylan’s Blog recounts an encounter with Ford:
During my short 32 years of life, I have had the privilege of meeting three Presidents, Clinton, Carter, and Ford. President Ford certainly left the best, and most personal impression of the three….He turned around and gave me a great big smile and said “Certainly young man.” He shook my hand with a firmer grip than I would have expected for someone so small and frail. He asked me my name and I told him and he asked if I was going to LA, which I responded in the affirmative.
I remember he waited in line behind two people to buy a New York Times and a Payday candy bar. He could have easily had one of his Secret-Service officers or secretarial aids wait in line for him, but he did it himself. I thought that was a humble gesture and it made a lasting impression on me. Even someone as important as an ex-president of the United States had the humilty to wait in line with everyone else.
–Michelle Malkin has some key info on Ford here.
—Territorial Bloggings: “President Ford was a good man. Not a great man, but a good one. At a time when this country desperately needed one. He may have been “the accidental President,â€? but thank God for accidents.”
—Todd: “I met him once in Nashville at a debate with former President Carter. He was quiet and kind. Well-mannered, tall and confident. He had a good family. He was a real American. He was what America was all about. Passed the day after Christmas.”
—Ed Morrissey as usual has a MUST-READ that must be read IN FULL. A tiny taste 4 U:
We can expect plenty of analysis of Ford’s impact on American politics, but to me he will always be the Accidental President. Plucked from near-obscurity to be Nixon’s VP in the wake of Spiro Agnew’s resignation, he never appeared at ease in the glare of presidential scrutiny. He soon garnered an undeserved reputation as a klutz, thanks to Chevy Chase, but in truth he was a star athlete. His was the first presidency to get defined by video bites and cheap shots, but unfortunately he was not the last…
…Gerald Ford may have been at the center of more than one controversy, but he left with his reputation as an honest man more or less intact. Unlike Jimmy Carter, he never felt the need to campaign for affection or respect; it came to him naturally. He did an admirable job leading the nation during one of the worst times in our history.
—Outside the Beltway’s Chris Lawrence: “Ford is probably most famous to my generation from Chevy Chase’s bumbling impression of him on Saturday Night Live, even though his role in history–restoring honor to a party and office tainted by the criminal acts of Nixon’s underlings and Nixon’s cover-up of the same–was a critical one.”
I always loved President Ford, not because of his ability to govern, but because I was still a child when my parents used to tune into Saturday Night Live as comedian Chevy Chase would portray him as a lovable, clumsy oaf who was always getting his arms stuck in the automatic windows of his limousines and tripping and falling; portrayed as such (as I would learn later) due to an unfortunate fall he once had on the steps of Air Force One. To those young eyes of mine, “Jerry� was famous man who always made me laugh, but in my adulthood, I realize he was quite an extraordinary patriot who gave the highest office in the land a “whirl�. May “Jerry� rest in peace with the angels.
—Talk Left underscores that Ford earned far from unanimous praise for his pardon of Nixon (which is after all why he lost re-election): “A courageous act? I don’t think so…” and gives readers a few things to read and decide for themselves.
To this observer who wasn’t even alive while Ford was in office (I’m not even old enough to remember first-hand Chevy Chase’s lampooning of him on Saturday Night Live), he always seemed like a nice man who got stuck cleaning up messes others had created. He was often criticized for pardoning Nixon (something that most historians agree cost him the Presidential election in 1976), but I always thought of that as a brave move. As much of a crook as Nixon was, and as much as he deserved to be held accountable for his actions, that pardon saved this country years heartache and controversy. Nixon was already gone by the time Ford was in office. Pardoning him and allowing the nation to move on was the right move, and Ford made it even though it probably cost him his career. He wasn’t my kind of conservative, but he seemed honest and straightforward, two qualities rare in politicians of any era.
—Dean Esmay: “Jerry Ford was the first President I clearly recognized as a child. In the last 35 years of my life I have struggled to find things to dislike about him. I think he was wrong about some things, but right about many others. The more I have learned about him, the more I have come to think that he is the very model of what a President of the United States should be.”
—Matthew Yglesias: “One gets the sense from time to time that George W. Bush has become such a horrible president largely out of a desire to avoid Gerald Ford’s fate; to avoid becoming someone who will go down in history most likely as the answer to a trivia question rather than remembered for dramatic events he initiated. Naturally, hundreds of presidential “ranking” systems in which only the ones who oversee something big manage to rate further encourage this line of thinking. Turns out to not actually work so well as a governing philosophy. There are worse fates than mediocrity.”
—Gay Patriot was inspired by Ford as a boy and tells us why. And he worked for his re-election:
I will always recall my first political campaign — and my first loss. I had worked so hard to reelect the president that I was sure he would prevail. I went to bed on Election Night 1976 not knowing its outcome. When I woke to learn the sad news, I was so upset that I could not go to school.
Today, while sad at the passing of this good man, I am proud that I worked so hard to keep him office. Now that thirty years have passed since his loss, the American people have become better able to recognize Gerald Ford’s accomplishments, his leadership and his courage. He may have served only for a short time, but he did serve us well and gave his very best for the country we all love.
—TBogg:
Gerald Ford always seemed like a nice guy who was dressed in somebody else’s suit; one that didn’t fit him quite right. Up until Ford, all of the presidents of my lifetime had been larger-than-life tragic figures from the doomed American Royalty of John F. Kennedy to that Texas-sized cowboy caricature Lyndon Johnson followed by the Double-Nutty Evil Ripple of Richard M. Nixon. After living through all of that, America needed a break and there was Gerald Ford, the bookmark president acting as a placeholder while we caught our breath and began to think about what type of country we wanted to be again. I’ve always believed that, from the moment he pardoned Richard Nixon, his own chance of actually being elected to the job was pretty much doomed, and so for several years he sort of became our beloved bumbling uncle who, for some reason, crazy ladies wanted to kill.
I just hope it is not lost on anyone that the man who once said “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.” died during a time when we are starting to wake up from yet another of our long national nightmares…
—Lobal Warming: “I still think Ford’s pardon of Nixon was a singularly brave political act, an act that cost Ford dearly. At the time, as a fifth-grader, I thought Ford a pig for giving Nixon a pardon. I think the opposite now. His backing of the Helsinki Accords (opposed by both Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, and criticized roundly at the time) remains — in my opinion — one of the critical acts of the Cold War era. The window for dissident criticism to flood from behind the iron curtain was opened, and was never shut afterwards. On the other hand, Ford appointed his chief of staff to be his Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld), and took on Dick Cheney as his new chief of staff. Sobering thoughts thirty years later.”
–Pajamas Media has a good roundup.
–Extreme Mortman remembers Ford with some great photos.
–The always-original The Talking Dog (one of TMV’s favorites) has an (as usual) interesting post which has this section:
Despite having officials around him that included Henry Kissinger (Secretary of State), George H.W. Bush (CIA Director), Dick Cheney (Chief of Staff) and Don Rumsfeld (Defense Secretary), all of whom had previously served Nixon in some capacity, Ford himself was (perhaps unbelievably) still a decent man who invariably tried to do the right thing, even if in his mind “the right thing” included pardoning Nixon. Ford believed that the gesture was a healing one for the nation (even if it set the unfortunate precedent that no matter how big a scumbag he is, once one gets elected President, he can get away with anything… and I’m not talking about blowjobs.) Still, the gesture managed to help cost him the 1976 election, which was won by Jimmy Carter (another by-and-large decent man who proved to be a less than fully effective President; the two men were actually life-long friends after Carter’s presidency ended.
—John Cole: “Still not sure if I agree with his pardon of Nixon (maybe some swift justice for Nixon would have nipped the cronyism, corruption, and lawlessness that seems pervasive on Capitol Hill), but by all accounts, Ford was a good man who tried to do the right things. RIP.”
—Right Wing Nut House has another MUST READ account of a PERSONAL ENCOUNTER with Ford (and there is a common theme of these — how nice a person he was). An excerpt:
Taking a short break, I wandered out into the hallway behind the hotel’s ballroom for a smoke when I saw a lone man walking toward me. There was something familiar about him that I couldn’t quite place. He was striding purposefully but the rest of his body language denoted utter exhaustion. His shoulders drooped. His face, sagged so that the wrinkles came out in bas relief. His eyes were half closed, the circles under them pronounced….
….He didn’t notice me until he was almost even with where I was standing against the wall. But when he saw me there with what must have been a dumbfounded look of disbelief on my face, he grinned and extended his hand. At that exact moment, his face lit up, the wrinkles disappeared, the eyes snapped open, and he drew himself up to his full height. It was like someone had thrown a switch. He clasped my hand firmly while all I could do was stutter out some meaningless platitude. I think I murmured “Thanks for comingâ€? or some such nonsense that he probably didn’t hear anyway. And then he was gone, striding down the hallway toward the front of the room where he was to be introduced.
—Bark Bark Woof Woof: “After Nixon and before the politics of personal destruction and character assassination became the accepted practice, Jerry Ford was a calm, modest, and healing force after Watergate; something we really needed then — and could use a dose of now. Personally, he was the last Republican candidate for president I ever considered voting for. As Archie Bunker once said, “He did a pretty good job for a guy nobody voted for.””
—Macsmind: “To be fair however, Watergate is part of the story, but not the only story. Ford did what had to be done at the time. A trial would have been a mockery at that point and the Nation had no stomach for it. Incidently, Nixon didn’t exactly jump at the idea himself. More important Ford did what he saw was right even though it would kill him in the polls.”
—Wonkette: “But even though Ford was respected by Democrats and Republicans back in the day, and even though he finally ended America’s pathetic horror in Vietnam, historians will remember Gerald Ford as the man who clumsily empowered America’s greatest villains: Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Oh, and he gave a complete pardon to Richard Nixon. Whip Inflation Now!!!”
—The Democratic Daily: “never cared much for politics in the days of Gerald Ford, I was simply relieved that Nixon was through, as so many were. Ford served a purpose… he was — “Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.â€?”
—Pam’s House Blend has a long post that must be read IN FULL. A key paragraph: “Ford was also a staunch pro-choice advocate as well as gay rights supporter. Where are the Republicans with integrity these days? Oh yeah, they’ve all been driven underground by fear of the religious right extremists in the party! Too bad.”
—Jonathan Singer: “As someone born after Gerald Ford’s presidency, my sense of his tenure is more shaped by history books than personal experience and memory. In hindsight, his decision to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon, appears to have been the right one, even if at the time it cost him politically. And although he was thoroughly a conservative, he seems to have been someone who treated his political adversaries with respect and genuinely fought to better America.”
—Andrew Olmsted: “Would that we all could rise to our circumstances as Gerald Ford did. Even knowing it would make him incredibly unpopular, Ford pardoned President Nixon, closing, as he put it, our long national nightmare and allowing the country to truly move on. The odds are pretty good that, had President Ford chosen not to pardon President Nixon, he would have been reelected in 1976, but pardoning Nixon was the right thing to do, so Ford did it. It is a shame that such willingness to do the right thing regardless of the cost is so clearly a thing of the past in today’s Washington.”
—Sundries Shack: “I think that historians will come to see Gerald Ford as perhaps the quintessential President – open, honest, ready to do battle with a hostile Congress, and as comfortable and gracious in retirement as he was in office. He could be the template or what a good President could be.”
–Barbara O’Brien at Crooks and Liars:
This might be a good time to re-evaluate the pardon of Nixon, because pardons of another former president and vice president may become a big issue in the next administration. In my life I’ve gone from being furious to thinking it was best for the nation and then changing my mind again. We need to look carefully at the long-term results of the pardon. How much of that terrible era went unexamined because of Nixon’s pardon? And did it matter?
But Gerald Ford was not, I think, a man who put schemes and party politics ahead of his country. He and his family were were a soothing balm of honesty and wholesomeness at a time the nation desperately needed honesty and wholesomeness.
—Hot Air: “Not much happened on his term, which in a grim decade of worldwide socialism, squalor, and chaos is quite an achievement. His was a thankless job, cleaning up after Nixon and then inevitably turning over the country to the tender mercies of Carter. He did it well, and we thank him for it. RIP.”
—Bill’s Bites: “I keep finding myself back in my car in a parking lot at Tinker Air Force Base listening to Nixon’s resignation speech, hoping for a quick hangin’. Then I find myself remembering WIN (Whip Inflation Now) buttons that hit the market at a nickel apiece and were up to a quarter six months later. Enough of that. Rest in peace, sir. At least after we voted you out of office (and I’m ashamed now to admit I voted against you) you had the decency not to spend the rest of your life running around making an ass of yourself like your successor.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.