Gerald Ford Totally Explained

   Following his return from the war, Ford became active in local Republican politics. Grand Rapids supporters urged him to take on Bartel J. Jonkman, the incumbent Republican congressman. Ford had changed his view of the world as a result of his military service; "I came back a converted internationalist", Ford stated, "and of course our congressman at that time was an avowed, dedicated isolationist. And I thought he ought to be replaced. Nobody thought I could win. I ended up winning two to one." In 1961, the U.S. House membership voted Ford a special award as a "Congressman's Congressman" that praised his committee work on military budgets.
   Ford was a member of the House of Representatives for twenty-four years, holding the Grand Rapids congressional district seat from 1949 to 1973. It was a tenure largely notable for its modesty. As an editorial in The New York Times described him, Ford "saw himself as a negotiator and a reconciler, and the record shows it: he didn't write a single piece of major legislation in his entire career." Appointed to the House Appropriations Committee two years after being elected, he was a prominent member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Ford described his philosophy as "a moderate in domestic affairs, an internationalist in foreign affairs, and a conservative in fiscal policy." In November 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Ford to the Warren Commission, a special task force set up to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Ford was assigned to prepare a biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin. The Commission's work continues to be debated in the public arena.
   In 1965, Republican members of the House elected Ford as its Minority Leader. During the eight years (1965–1973) he served as Minority Leader, Ford won many friends in the House because of his fair leadership and inoffensive personality. Johnson said of Ford at the time, "That Gerald Ford. He can't fart and chew gum at the same time." The press, used to sanitizing LBJ's salty language, reported this as "Gerald Ford can't walk and chew gum at the same time."
   In 1970, Ford led the unsuccessful effort to impeach William O. Douglas, an associate justice on the Supreme Court, for "moonlighting" for private clients.

Vice Presidency, 1973–74

On October 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned and then pleaded nolo contendere (no contest) to criminal charges of tax evasion and money laundering, part of a negotiated resolution to a scheme wherein he accepted $29,500 in bribes during his tenure as governor of Maryland. According to The New York Times, "Nixon sought advice from senior Congressional leaders about a replacement. The advice was unanimous. 'We gave Nixon no choice but Ford,' House Speaker Carl Albert recalled later". On August 20 Ford nominated former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to fill the vice presidency he'd vacated. Rockefeller was confirmed by the House and Senate.

Nixon pardon

On September 8, 1974, Ford issued, which gave Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes he may have committed against the United States while President. In a televised broadcast to the nation, Ford explained that he felt the pardon was in the best interests of the country and that the Nixon family's situation "is a tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I've concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must." At the same time as he announced the Nixon pardon, Ford introduced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War draft dodgers who had fled to countries such as Canada. Unconditional amnesty, however, didn't come about until the Jimmy Carter Presidency.
The Nixon pardon was highly controversial. Critics derided the move and claimed, a "corrupt bargain" had been struck between the men. In an editorial at the time, The New York Times stated that the Nixon pardon was "a profoundly unwise, divisive and unjust act" that in a stroke had destroyed the new president's "credibility as a man of judgment, candor and competence."

Administration and cabinet

Upon assuming office, Ford inherited the cabinet Nixon selected during his tenure in office. Over the course of Ford's relatively brief administration, only Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Secretary of the Treasury William E. Simon remained. Ford appointed William Coleman as Secretary of Transportation, the second African American to serve in a presidential cabinet (after Robert Clifton Weaver) and the first appointed in a Republican administration.

The Ford Cabinet
OFFICE	NAME	TERM

President	Gerald Ford	1974–1977
Vice President	Nelson Rockefeller	1974–1977

State	Henry Kissinger	1974–1977
Treasury	William E. Simon	1974–1977
Defense	James R. Schlesinger	1974–1975
	Donald Rumsfeld	1975–1977
Justice	William Saxbe	1974–1975
	Edward Levi	1975–1977
Interior	Rogers Morton	1974–1975
	Stanley K. Hathaway	1975
	Thomas S. Kleppe	1975–1977
Agriculture	Earl Butz	1974–1976
	John Albert Knebel	1976–1977
Commerce	Frederick B. Dent	1974–1975
	Rogers Morton	1975
	Elliot Richardson	1975–1977
Labor	Peter J. Brennan	1974–1975
	John Thomas Dunlop	1975–1976
	William Usery, Jr.	1976–1977
HEW	Caspar Weinberger	1974–1975
	F. David Mathews	1975–1977
HUD	James Thomas Lynn	1974–1975
	Carla Anderson Hills	1975–1977
Transportation	Claude Brinegar	1974–1975
	William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr.	1975–1977

Midterm elections

The 1974 Congressional midterm elections took place less than three months after Ford assumed office. Occurring in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Democratic Party was able to turn voter dissatisfaction into large gains in the House elections, taking 49 seats from the Republican Party, and increasing their majority to 291 of the 435 seats, which was one more than the number needed (290) for a 2/3rds majority, necessary in order to over-ride a Presidential veto (or to submit a Constitutional Amendment). Perhaps due in part to this fact, the 94th Congress overrode the highest percentage of vetoes since Andrew Johnson was President of the United States (1865–1869). Even Ford's old, reliably Republican seat was taken by Democrat Richard VanderVeen. In the Senate elections, the Democratic majority became 61 in the 100-seat body.

Domestic policy

The economy was a great concern during the Ford administration. In response to rising inflation, Ford went before the American public in October 1974 and asked them to "Whip Inflation Now." As part of this program, he urged people to wear "WIN" buttons. In hindsight, this was viewed as simply a public relations gimmick without offering any effective means of solving the underlying problems. At the time, inflation was approximately seven percent.
   The economic focus began to change as the country sank into a mild recession, and in March 1975, Congress passed and Ford signed into law income tax rebates as part of the Tax Reduction Act of 1975 to boost the economy. When New York City faced bankruptcy in 1975, Mayor Abraham Beame was unsuccessful in obtaining Ford's support for a federal bailout. The incident prompted the New York Daily News' notorious headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead."
   Ford was confronted with a potential swine flu pandemic. Sometime in the early 1970s, an influenza strain H1N1 shifted from a form of flu that affected primarily pigs and crossed over to humans. On February 5, 1976, an Army recruit at Fort Dix mysteriously died and four fellow soldiers were hospitalized; health officials announced that "swine flu" was the cause. Soon after, public health officials in the Ford administration urged that every person in the United States be vaccinated. Although the vaccination program was plagued by delays and public relations problems, some 25% of the population was vaccinated by the time the program was canceled in December of that year. The vaccine was blamed for twenty-five deaths; more people died from the shots than from the swine flu.
   Despite his reservations about how this program ultimately would be funded in an era of tight public budgeting, Ford still signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, which established special education throughout the United States. Ford expressed "strong support for full educational opportunities for our handicapped children" according to the official White House press release for the bill signing.
   Ford was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, issuing Presidential Proclamation 4383.

In this Land of the Free, it's right, and by nature it ought to be, that all men and all women are equal before the law.

Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States of America, to remind all Americans that it's fitting and just to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment adopted by the Congress of the United States of America, in order to secure legal equality for all women and men, do hereby designate and proclaim August 26, 1975, as Women's Equality Day.(External Link)

As president, Ford's position on abortion was that he supported "a federal constitutional amendment that would permit each one of the 50 States to make the choice." This had also been his position as House Minority Leader in response to the 1973 Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade, which he opposed. Ford came under criticism for a 60 Minutes interview his wife Betty gave in 1975, in which she stated that Roe v. Wade was a "great, great decision." In later life, Ford would identify as pro-choice.

Foreign policy

All U.S. military forces had withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973. As the North Vietnamese invaded and conquered the South in 1975, Ford ordered the final withdrawal of U.S. civilians from Vietnam in 'Operation Frequent Wind', and the subsequent fall of Saigon. On April 29 and the morning of April 30, 1975, the U.S. embassy in Saigon was evacuated amidst a chaotic scene. Some 1,373 U.S. citizens and 5,595 Vietnamese and third country nationals were evacuated by military and Air America helicopters to U.S. Navy ships off-shore. Ford continued the détente policy with both the Soviet Union and China, easing the tensions of the Cold War. In his meeting with Indonesian president Suharto, Ford gave the green light through arms and aid to invade the former Portuguese colony East Timor.
   Still in place from the Nixon Administration was the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). The thawing relationship brought about by Nixon's visit to China was reinforced by Ford's December 1975 visit to the communist country. In 1975, the Administration entered into the Helsinki Accords with the Soviet Union, creating the framework of the Helsinki Watch, an independent non-governmental organization created to monitor compliance that later evolved into Human Rights Watch.
   Ford also faced a foreign policy crisis with the Mayaguez Incident. In May 1975, shortly after the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia, Cambodians seized the American merchant ship Mayaguez in international waters. Ford dispatched Marines to rescue the crew, but the Marines landed on the wrong island and met unexpectedly stiff resistance just as, unknown to the U.S., the Mayaguez sailors were being released. In the operation, forty-one U.S. servicemen were killed and fifty wounded while approximately sixty Khmer Rouge soldiers were killed.
   Ford attended the inaugural meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations (initially the G5) in 1975 and secured membership for Canada. Ford supported international solutions to issues. "We live in an interdependent world and, therefore, must work together to resolve common economic problems," he said in a 1974 speech.

Assassination attempts

Ford faced two assassination attempts during his presidency, occurring within three weeks of each other: while in Sacramento, California on September 5, 1975, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, pointed a Colt 45-caliber handgun at Ford. As Fromme pulled the trigger, Larry Buendorf, a Secret Service agent, grabbed the gun and managed to insert the webbing of his thumb under the hammer, preventing the gun from firing. It was later found that, although the gun was loaded with four cartridges, it was a semi-automatic pistol and the slide hadn't been pulled to place a round in the firing chamber, making it impossible for the gun to fire. Fromme was taken into custody; she was later convicted of attempted assassination of the President and was sentenced to life in prison.
Seventeen days later, another woman, Sara Jane Moore, also tried to kill Ford while he was visiting San Francisco, but her attempt was thwarted when former Marine Oliver Sipple deflected her shot. One person was injured when Moore fired, and she was later sentenced to life in prison.

Supreme Court appointment

In 1975, Ford appointed John Paul Stevens as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to replace retiring Justice William O. Douglas. Stevens had been a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, appointed by President Nixon. During his tenure as House Republican leader, Ford had led efforts to have Douglas impeached. After being confirmed, Stevens eventually disappointed some conservatives by siding with the Court's liberal wing regarding the outcome of many key issues. Nevertheless, President Ford paid tribute to Stevens. "He has served his nation well," Ford said of Stevens, "with dignity, intellect and without partisan political concerns."

1976 presidential election

Ford reluctantly agreed to run for office in 1976, but first he'd to counter a challenge for the Republican party nomination. Then-former Governor of California Ronald Reagan and the party's conservative wing faulted Ford for failing to do more in South Vietnam, for signing the Helsinki Accords and for negotiating to cede the Panama Canal (negotiations for the canal continued under President Carter, who eventually signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaties). Reagan launched his campaign in the autumn of 1975 and won several primaries before withdrawing from the race at the Republican Convention in Kansas City, Missouri. The conservative insurgency convinced Ford to drop the more liberal Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in favor of Kansas Senator Bob Dole.
   In addition to the pardon dispute and lingering anti-Republican sentiment, Ford had to counter a plethora of negative media imagery. Chevy Chase often did pratfalls on Saturday Night Live, imitating Ford, who had been seen stumbling on two occasions during his term. As Chase commented, "He even mentioned in his own autobiography it had an effect over a period of time that affected the election to some degree."
   President Ford's 1976 election campaign had the advantage that he was an incumbent President during several anniversary events held during the period leading up to the United States Bicentennial. The Washington, D.C. fireworks display on the Fourth of July was presided over by the President and televised nationally. On July 7, 1976, the President and First Lady served as proud hosts at a White House state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of Great Britain, which was televised on the Public Broadcasting Service network. The 200th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts gave Ford the opportunity to deliver a speech to 110,000 in Concord acknowledging the need for a strong national defense tempered with a plea for "reconciliation, not recrimination" and "reconstruction, not rancor" between the United States and those who would pose "threats to peace." Speaking in New Hampshire on the previous day, Ford condemned the growing trend toward big government bureaucracy and argued for a return to "basic American virtues." Democratic nominee and former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter campaigned as an outsider and reformer; he gained support from voters dismayed by the Watergate scandal. Carter led consistently in the polls, and Ford was never able to shake voter dissatisfaction following Watergate and the Nixon pardon. Presidential debates were reintroduced for the first time since the 1960 election. While Ford was seen as the winner of the first debate, during the second debate he inexplicably blundered when he stated, "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford Administration." Ford also said that he didn't "believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union." In an interview years later, Ford said he'd intended to imply that the Soviets would never crush the spirits of eastern Europeans seeking independence. However, the phrasing was so awkward that questioner Max Frankel was visibly incredulous at the response.
   In the end, Carter won the election, receiving 50.1% of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes compared with 48.0% and 240 electoral votes for Ford. The election was close enough that had fewer than 25,000 votes shifted in Ohio and Wisconsin – both of which neighbored his home state – Ford would have won the electoral vote. Though he lost, in the three months between the Republican National Convention and the election Ford managed to close what was once a 34-point Carter lead to a 2-point margin. In fact, the Gallup poll the day before the election showed Ford held a statistically insignificant 1-point advantage over Carter.
   Had Ford won the election, he'd have been disqualified by the 22nd Amendment from running in 1980, since he served more than 2 years of Nixon's term.
   An article published in Newsweek shortly after Ford's death in 2006 discussed the former President's spiritual beliefs and cited evidence that Ford's preference not to openly express his Episcopalian faith in public contributed to his loss to Southern Baptist former Sunday School teacher Jimmy Carter. Ford's lowest level of support was in the Bible Belt states of the Deep South (Carter won every Southern state that year except Virginia). The 1976 election was arguably the last time to date that the Republican Presidential candidate could be considered the less conservative candidate relative to his Democratic opponent. While Ford's views on abortion were often ambiguous, he's often considered the last Republican President to hold pro-choice views.

Post-presidential years, 1977–2006

Activity

The pardon controversy eventually subsided. Ford's successor, Jimmy Carter, opened his 1977 inaugural address by praising the outgoing President, saying "For myself and for our Nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he's done to heal our land."
   Ford remained relatively active in the years after his presidency and continued to make appearances at events of historical and ceremonial significance to the nation, such as presidential inaugurals and memorial services. In 1977, he reluctantly agreed to be interviewed by James M. Naughton, a New York Times journalist who was given the assignment to write the former President's advance obituary, an article that would be updated prior to its eventual publication.
   During the term of office of his successor, Jimmy Carter, Ford received monthly briefs by President Carter’s senior staff on international and domestic issues, and was always invited to lunch at the White House whenever he was in Washington, D.C. However, a close friendship with Carter developed only after Carter had left office, with the catalyst being their trip together to the funeral of Anwar el-Sadat in 1981. Until Ford's death, Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, visited the Fords' home frequently. In 2001, Ford and Carter served as honorary co-chairs of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform.
   Like Presidents Carter, Bush Senior and Clinton, Ford was an honorary co-chair of the Council for Excellence in Government, a group dedicated to excellence in government performance and which provides leadership training to top federal employees.
   After securing the Republican nomination in 1980, Ronald Reagan gave serious consideration to his former rival Ford as a potential vice-presidential running mate. But negotiations between the Reagan and Ford camps at the Republican National Convention in Detroit were unsuccessful. Ford conditioned his acceptance on Reagan's agreement to an unprecedented "co-presidency", giving Ford the power to control key executive branch appointments (such as Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State and Alan Greenspan as Treasury Secretary). After rejecting these terms, Reagan offered the vice-presidential nomination instead to George H. W. Bush.
   In 1977, he established the Gerald R. Ford Institute of Public Policy at Albion College in Albion, Michigan. This institute is designed to give undergraduates training in public policy. In 1981, he opened the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, and the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1999, Ford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton. In 2001, he was presented with the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award for his decision to pardon Richard Nixon to stop the agony America was experiencing over Watergate. In retirement Ford also devoted much time to his love of golf, often playing both privately and in public events with comedian Bob Hope, a longtime friend. On 29 October, 2001, in an article by Deb Price, a columnist with the Detroit News, Ford broke with conservative members of the Republican party by stating that gay and lesbian couples "ought to be treated equally. Period." He became the highest ranking Republican to embrace full equality for gays and lesbians, stating his belief that there should be a federal amendment outlawing anti-gay job discrimination and expressed his hope that the Republican Party would reach out to gay and lesbian voters. He also was a member of the Republican Unity Coalition, which The New York Times described as "a group of prominent Republicans, including former President Gerald R. Ford, dedicated to making sexual orientation a nonissue in the Republican Party."
   On November 22, 2004, New York Republican Governor George Pataki named Ford and the other living former Presidents (Carter, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton) as honorary members of the board rebuilding the World Trade Center.
   In a prerecorded embargoed interview with Bob Woodward of The Washington Post in July 2004, Ford stated that he disagreed "very strongly" with the Bush administration's choice of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction as justification for its decision to invade Iraq, calling it a "big mistake" unrelated to the national security of the United States and indicating that he wouldn't have gone to war had he been President. The details of the interview were not released until after Ford's death, as he requested.

Health problems

As Ford approached his ninetieth year, he began to experience significant health problems associated with old age. He suffered two minor strokes at the 2000 Republican National Convention, but made a quick recovery. In January 2006, he spent 11 days at the Eisenhower Medical Center near his residence at Rancho Mirage, California, for treatment of pneumonia. On April 23, President George W. Bush visited Ford at his home in Rancho Mirage for a little over an hour. This was Ford's last public appearance and produced the last known public photos, video footage and voice recording. While vacationing in Vail, Colorado, he was hospitalized for two days in July, 2006 for shortness of breath. On August 15 Ford was admitted to St. Mary's Hospital of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for testing and evaluation. On August 21, it was reported that he'd been fitted with a pacemaker. On August 25, he underwent an angioplasty procedure at the Mayo Clinic, according to a statement from an assistant to Ford. On August 28, Ford was released from the hospital and returned with his wife Betty to their California home. On October 13, he was scheduled to attend the dedication of a building of his namesake, the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, but due to poor health and on the advice of his doctors he didn't attend, much to his personal disappointment. The previous day, on October 12, however, Ford entered the hospital yet again for undisclosed tests at the Eisenhower Medical Center; he was released on October 16. As a result of his frail health it was announced on October 17 that Ford was considering selling his home near Vail due to the uncertainty as to whether he'd be able to return. Those that saw him during the last five months of his life said that he looked frailer than ever and that it appeared his body was slowly failing him, and by November 2006 he was confined to a hospital bed in his study. On November 12, 2006 upon surpassing Ronald Reagan to become the longest lived president in US history he released his last public statement:

Longevity

On November 12, 2006, Ford became the longest-lived President, surpassing Ronald Reagan. At the time of his death, he'd outlived President Reagan by 45 days.

Ford was the third longest lived Vice President at the age of 93. The two oldest were John Nance Garner, 98, and Levi Parsons Morton, 96.

Ford died on the 34th anniversary of President Harry Truman's death, the second U.S. President to die on Boxing Day, which Ford's pastor, The Rev. Dr. Robert Certain, noted when he referred to December 26 as its traditional Christian reference, St. Stephen's Day.

Ford had the second longest post-presidency (29 years and 11 months) after Herbert Hoover (31 years and 7 months).

Ford was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission.

Ford is one of only four former Presidents to live to 90 or more years of age. The others are Ronald Reagan (93), John Adams (90) and Herbert Hoover (90).

Death

Ford died at the age of 93 years and 165 days on December 26, 2006 at 6:45 p.m Pacific Standard Time (02:45, December 27, UTC) at his home in Rancho Mirage, California of arteriosclerotic cerebrovascular disease and diffuse arteriosclerosis. At 8:49 p.m., Ford's wife, Betty, issued a statement that confirmed his death: "My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather, has died at 93 years of age. His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country." The statement was released from the Eisenhower Medical Center, where Gerald Ford's body had been taken and remained until the start of the funeral services on December 29, 2006.
On December 30, 2006, Ford became the 11th U.S. President to lie in state. The burial was preceded by a state funeral and memorial services held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on January 2, 2007. Ford was eulogized by former President George H. W. Bush, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former NBC Nightly News anchorman Tom Brokaw and current President George W. Bush. On December 28, 2006, the New York Times reported that, at Ford's request, former President Jimmy Carter would deliver a eulogy. Decades ago, "Mr. Ford asked whether his successor might consider speaking at his funeral and offered, lightheartedly, to do the same for Mr. Carter, depending on who died first". Carter didn't actually speak at the state funeral, though he did speak at the funeral service at Grace Episcopal Church in East Grand Rapids on January 3, 2007. Ford was also eulogized by Donald Rumsfeld, who was Ford's Chief of Staff, and Richard Norton Smith, Presidential historian. The invitation-only list of attendees included Vice President Dick Cheney, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, and U.S. Senators from Michigan Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow. After the service, Ford was interred at his Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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