The Passing of Gerald Ford

President Ford was handed a very difficult job at a very difficult time. 

Ford was able to laugh at himself and I liked his wife and family too.  For White House residents, they were very down-to-earth people.

I still can't quite decide if his decision to pardon Nixon was right or wrong.  In my reading this morning, I came across this quote from one of Ford's speech writers, James Hume:

Yet, as the president told this writer in Vail, Colo., in 1977 while working on his memoirs, "A Time to Heal," Ford said: "I did it not for Nixon but for the country. I knew at the time it would probably cost me my re-election, but President Nixon's legal team could advance constitutional arguments that could tie up the courts for years. The prospect that a former president could face jail time would divert the country's attention ... I had to turn the page and let the healing process begin."

Two decades later, the Kennedy Institute of Politics awarded Ford its Profile in Courage Award, confirming what historians now say.

From the Washington Post:

When he assumed office, Ford immediately made clear his intention to change what historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. called "the imperial presidency."

He was "acutely aware," he said in his inaugural address, that he had not been elected to the position he held, and he asked Americans "to confirm me as your president with your prayers." He said he had neither sought the presidency nor made any "secret promises" to attain it.

"In all my public and private acts as your president, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy at hand. . . .

"Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy.

"As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and hate."

A new spirit was soon evident in the nation's leadership. The Oval Office, long a fortress for an embittered president who frequently fled its confines to his homes in San Clemente, Calif., or Key Biscayne, Fla., was thrown open to members of Congress, old friends, public officials and reporters.

The president's approval rating reached 71 percent. He was photographed making his own breakfast. He was freely contradicted by his eldest son, and his aides said what was on their minds without waiting for official clearance. In the press office, he appointed Jerald F. terHorst, a respected Washington correspondent, as his chief spokesman.

This euphoric honeymoon lasted precisely one month.

On Sept. 8, Ford granted Nixon a full pardon for all federal crimes he had "committed or may have committed" when he was in the White House. The only acknowledgement he received in return was a six-paragraph statement from Nixon in San Clemente saying that "I can see clearly now . . . that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy."

Ford said the pardon was necessary to bring Watergate to a close, that he would have had to pardon Nixon sometime in any case and that it was easier to do it sooner than later.

The response was a tidal wave of criticism. Every opinion poll showed a large majority of Americans opposed the pardon. It was denounced in Congress, including by members of Ford's own party. Republican officials gloomily and accurately forecast that it had reintroduced the Watergate issue into the 1974 elections, which proved to be a Democratic landslide. TerHorst resigned in protest.

It was widely assumed that Ford had doomed his political career. By January 1975, his approval rating had plummeted to 36 percent. Not even two assassination attempts, both in California in 1975, generated significant popular support.

The consequences included a three-month delay in confirmation of Ford's choice of former governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York as vice president. In congressional hearings, it was disclosed that Rockefeller had made large private gifts to employees on the New York state payroll and that he had played a hidden role in financing a campaign book against Democratic gubernatorial nominee Arthur Goldberg. The disclosures undermined his ability to play an influential role in the Ford administration.

Many conservative Republicans in Congress joined Democrats in opposing Ford's programs. In mid-1975, Gov. Ronald Reagan of California, the darling of the right wing of the GOP, announced his intention to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 1976.

Ford beat back the Reagan challenge, but he narrowly lost the general election in November 1976 to the Democratic candidate, former governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia.

Asked in his 2004 interview with The Post whether the pardon had hurt him in the 1976 election, Ford replied, "It probably did. It was a close election, as you know. . . . There is a group of bitter people who never forgave me and probably voted against me, and the net result is that they probably helped that I didn't win."

Ford closed strongly against Carter after trailing by as much as 30 points in the polls but was damaged by asserting during a debate that Poland was not under Soviet domination.

Darn, I wish he'd won instead of Carter.

Comments

[soccerdad]

Darn, I wish he'd won instead of Carter.

Is that how you felt in 1976? (Though I couldn't yet vote, I know that I didn't feel that way. There was only one boy in my class who supported Ford.)

[Gail]

Oh no. Not at all. I was a sophomore in college, and had friends who actively worked on Carter's campaign. I didn't vote because politics disgusted me at the time, but if I had, I certainly would have voted for him.

It's only through hindsight that I can now say that I wish Carter had lost. His presidency was a disaster, the ramifications of which are continuing to come to light today.

I always did like Ford and his family though. They came across as very warm and human compared to Nixon and his wife.

[alisa]

I felt that way in 1976. I really liked Ford. I became a republican because of Jimmy Carter.

[Jack]

Soccerdad, your comment reminded me of my own school experience.

I am sad to say that I voted for Carter. Of course it didn't really count but...