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Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King, Jr.; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974. As the first person appointed to the vice-presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment (after the resignation of Spiro Agnew), when he became President upon Richard Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974, he became the only President of the United States who was never elected President or Vice-President. Before ascending to the vice-presidency, Ford served nearly 25 years as Representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district, eight of them as the Republican Minority Leader. As President, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, marking a move toward détente in the Cold War. With the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam nine months into his presidency, U.S. involvement in Vietnam essentially ended. Domestically, Ford presided over what was then the worst economy since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession during his tenure. One of his more controversial acts was to grant a presidential pardon to President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. During Ford’s incumbency, foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the President. In 1976, Ford narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, but ultimately lost the presidential election to Democrat Jimmy Carter. Following his years as president, Ford remained active in the Republican Party. After experiencing health problems and being admitted to the hospital four times in 2006, Ford died in his home on December 26, 2006. He lived longer than any other U.S. president, dying at the age of 93 years and 165 days.
Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., on July 14, 1913, at 3202 Woolworth Avenue in Omaha, Nebraska, where his parents lived with his paternal grandparents. His father was Leslie Lynch King, Sr., a wool trader and son of prominent banker Charles Henry King and Martha King. His mother was the former Dorothy Ayer Gardner. Dorothy separated from King Sr. just sixteen days after her son's birth. She took her son with her to the Oak Park, Illinois, home
of her sister Tannisse and her husband, Clarence Haskins James. From
there she moved to the home of her parents, Levi Addison Gardner and
his wife, the former Adele Augusta Ayer, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Dorothy and Leslie King divorced in December 1913; she gained full
custody of their son. Ford's paternal grandfather Charles Henry King
paid child support until shortly before his death in 1930. Gerald Ford later said his biological father had a history of hitting his mother. James
M. Cannon, a member of the Ford administration, wrote in a Ford
biography that the Kings' separation and divorce were sparked when, a
few days after Ford's birth, Leslie King threatened Dorothy with a
butcher knife and threatened to kill her, Ford, and Ford's nursemaid.
Ford later told confidantes that his father had first hit his mother on
their honeymoon for smiling at another man.
After two and a half years with her parents, on February 1, 1916 Dorothy King married Gerald Rudolff Ford, a salesman in a family owned paint and varnish company. They then called her son Gerald Rudolff Ford, Jr. The future president was never formally adopted, however, and he did not legally change his name until December 3, 1935;
he also used a more conventional spelling of his middle name. He was raised in Grand Rapids with
his three half-brothers by his mother's second marriage: Thomas Gardner
Ford (1918 – 1995), Richard Addison Ford (born 1924), and James Francis
Ford (1927 – 2001). Ford
also had three half-siblings from his father's second marriage:
Marjorie King (1921 – 1993), Leslie Henry King (1923 – 1976), and
Patricia
Jane King (born 1925). They never saw each other as children and he did
not know them at all. Ford was not aware of his biological father until
he was 17, when his parents told him about the circumstances of his
birth. That year his father Leslie King, whom Ford described as a
"carefree, well-to-do man who didn't really give a damn about the hopes
and dreams of his firstborn son", approached Ford while he was waiting
tables in a Grand Rapids restaurant. The two "maintained a sporadic
contact" until Leslie King, Sr.'s death. Ford
maintained his distance emotionally, saying, "My stepfather was a
magnificent person and my mother equally wonderful. So I couldn't have
written a better prescription for a superb family upbringing." Ford was involved in The Boy Scouts of America, and earned that program's highest rank, Eagle Scout. In subsequent years, Ford received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in May 1970 and Silver Buffalo Award from the Boy Scouts of America. He is the only U.S. president who was an Eagle Scout. Scouting was
so important to Ford that his family asked that Scouts participate in
his funeral. About 400 Eagle Scouts were part of the funeral
procession, where they formed an honor guard as the casket went by in
front of the museum. A few selected scouts served as ushers inside the
National Cathedral. Ford attended Grand Rapids South High School and was a star athlete and captain of his football team. In 1930, he was selected to the All-City team of the Grand Rapids City League. He also attracted the attention of college recruiters. Attending the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, Ford played center and linebacker for the school’s football team and helped the Wolverines to undefeated seasons and national titles in
1932 and 1933. The team suffered a steep decline in his 1934 senior
year, however, winning only one game. Ford was the team’s star
nonetheless, and after a game during which Michigan held heavily favored Minnesota (the eventual national champion) to a scoreless tie in the first half, assistant coach Bennie Oosterbaan later said, “When I walked into the dressing room at half time, I had tears
in my eyes I was so proud of them. Ford and [Cedric] Sweet played their
hearts out. They were everywhere on defense.” Ford himself later
recalled, “During 25 years in the rough - and - tumble world of politics, I
often thought of the experiences before, during, and after that game in
1934. Remembering them has helped me many times to face a tough
situation, take action, and make every effort possible despite adverse
odds.” His teammates later voted Ford their most valuable player, with
one assistant coach noting, “They felt Jerry was one guy who would stay and fight in a losing cause.” During the same season, in a game against the University of Chicago, Ford “became the only future U.S. president to tackle a future Heisman Trophy winner when he brought down running back Jay Berwanger, who would win the first Heisman the following year.” In
1934 Gerald Ford was selected for the Eastern Team on the Shriner’s
East West Crippled Children game at San Francisco (a benefit for
crippled children), played on January 1, 1935. As part of the 1935
Collegiate All-Star football team, Ford played against the Chicago Bears in an exhibition game at Soldier Field. By virtue of Ford's future career as President of the United States, the University of Michigan retired Ford's #48 jersey in 1994. Ford
retained his interest in football and his alma mater throughout life,
occasionally attending games. Ford also visited with players and
coaches during practices, at one point asking to join the players in
the huddle. Ford often had the Naval band play the University of Michigan fight song, The Victors, prior to state events instead of Hail to the Chief. He also selected the song to be played during his funeral procession at the U.S. Capitol. On his death in December 2006, the University of Michigan Marching Band played the fight song for him one final time, for his last ride from the Gerald R. Ford Airport in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Ford was also an avid golfer. In 1977, he shot a hole in one during a Pro-am held in conjunction with the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic at Colonial Country Club in Memphis, Tennessee. He received the 1985 Old Tom Morris Award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, GCSAA's highest honor. At Michigan, Ford became a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity
(Omicron chapter) and washed dishes at his fraternity house to earn
money for college expenses. Following his graduation in 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, he turned down contract offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers of the National Football League to take a coaching position at Yale and apply to its law school. Ford continued to contribute to football and boxing, accepting an assistant coaching job for both at Yale in September 1935. Ford
hoped to attend Yale's law school beginning in 1935 while serving as
boxing coach, assistant varsity football coach, and teacher of JV
cheerleading, at which he was very good because he knew how to do
several tucks and back handsprings. Yale officials initially denied his
admission to the law school, because of his full-time coaching
responsibilities. He spent the summer of 1937 as a student at the University of Michigan Law School and was eventually admitted in the spring of 1938 to Yale Law School. Ford earned his LL.B. degree in 1941 (later amended to Juris Doctor), graduating in the top 25 percent of his class. His introduction to politics came in the summer of 1940 when he worked in Wendell Willkie's presidential campaign. While attending Yale Law School, he joined a group of students led by R. Douglas Stuart, Jr., and signed a petition to enforce the 1939 Neutrality Act. The petition was circulated nationally and was the inspiration for the America First Committee, a group determined to keep the U.S. out of World War II. Ford graduated from law school in 1941, and was admitted to the Michigan bar shortly thereafter. In May 1941, he opened a Grand Rapids law practice with a friend, Philip Buchen, who
would later serve as Ford's White House counsel. But overseas
developments caused a change in plans, and Ford responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor by enlisting in the Navy. Ford received a commission as ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve on April 13, 1942. On April 20, he reported for active duty to the V-5 instructor school at Annapolis, Maryland. After one month of training, he went to Navy Preflight School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he was one of 83 instructors and taught elementary seamanship,
ordnance, gunnery, first aid and military drill. In addition, he
coached in all nine sports that were offered, but mostly in swimming,
boxing and football. During the one year he was at the Preflight
School, he was promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade on June 2, 1942, and to Lieutenant in March 1943. Applying for sea duty, Ford was sent in May 1943 to the pre-commissioning detachment for the new aircraft carrier USS Monterey, at New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey.
From the ship's commissioning on June 17, 1943 until the end of
December 1944, Ford served as the assistant navigator, Athletic
Officer, and antiaircraft battery officer on board the Monterey. While he was on board, the carrier participated in many actions in the Pacific Theater with the Third and Fifth Fleets during the fall of 1943 and in 1944. In 1943, the carrier helped secure Makin Island in the Gilberts, and participated in carrier strikes against Kavieng, New Ireland in 1943. During the spring of 1944, the Monterey supported landings at Kwajalein and Eniwetok and participated in carrier strikes in the Marianas, Western Carolines, and northern New Guinea, as well as in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. After overhaul, from September to November 1944, aircraft from the Monterey launched strikes against Wake Island, participated in strikes in the Philippines and Ryukyus, and supported the landings at Leyte and Mindoro. Although the ship was not damaged by Japanese forces, the Monterey was one of several ships damaged by the typhoon that hit Admiral William Halsey's Third Fleet on December 18 – 19, 1944. The Third Fleet lost three destroyers and over 800 men during the typhoon. The Monterey was
damaged by a fire, which was started by several of the ship's aircraft
tearing loose from their cables and colliding on the hangar deck.
During the storm, Ford narrowly avoided becoming a casualty himself. As
he was going to his battle station on the bridge of the ship in the
early morning of December 18, the ship rolled twenty-five degrees,
which caused Ford to lose his footing and slide toward the edge of the
deck. The two-inch steel ridge around the edge of the carrier slowed
him enough so he could roll, and he twisted into the catwalk below the
deck. As he later stated, "I was lucky; I could have easily gone
overboard." Because
of the extent of the fires, Admiral Halsey ordered Captain Ingersoll to
abandon ship. Instead Captain Ingersoll ordered Ford to lead a fire
brigade below. After five hours he and his team had put out the fire. After the fire the Monterey was declared unfit for service, and the crippled carrier reached Ulithi on December 21 before continuing across the Pacific to Bremerton, Washington, where
it underwent repairs. On December 24, 1944 at Ulithi, Ford was detached
from the ship and sent to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Saint Mary's College of California,
where he was assigned to the Athletic Department until April 1945. One
of his duties was to coach football. From the end of April 1945 to
January 1946, he was on the staff of the Naval Reserve Training Command, Naval Air Station, Glenview, Illinois, as
the Staff Physical and Military Training Officer. On October 3, 1945 he
was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. In January 1946, he was sent to
the Separation Center, Great Lakes, to be processed out. He was released from active duty under honorable conditions on February 23, 1946. On June 28, 1946, the Secretary of the Navy accepted Ford's resignation from the Naval Reserve. For his naval service, Gerald Ford earned the Asiatic - Pacific Campaign Medal with nine engagement stars for operations in the Gilbert Islands, Bismarck Archipelago, Marshall Islands, Asiatic and Pacific carrier raids, Hollandia, Marianas, Western Carolines, Western New Guinea, and the Leyte Operation. He also received the Philippine Liberation Medal with two bronze stars for Leyte and Mindoro, as well as the American Campaign and World War II Victory Medals. Ford was a member of several civic organizations, including the American Legion, AMVETS, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, Sons of the Revolution, and Veterans of Foreign Wars. Gerald R. Ford was initiated into Freemasonry on September 30, 1949. He
later said in 1975, "When I took my obligation as a master
mason — incidentally, with my three younger brothers — I recalled the value
my own father attached to that order. But I had no idea that I would
ever be added to the company of the Father of our Country and 12 other
members of the order who also served as Presidents of the United
States." On October 15, 1948, at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, Ford married Elizabeth Bloomer Warren, a department store fashion consultant. Warren had been a John Robert Powers fashion model and a dancer in the auxiliary troupe of the Martha Graham Dance Company. She had previously been married to and divorced from William G. Warren. At the time of his engagement, Ford was campaigning for what would be his first of thirteen terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives. The wedding was delayed until shortly before the elections because, as The New York Times reported in a 1974 profile of Betty Ford, "Jerry was running for Congress and
wasn't sure how voters might feel about his marrying a divorced ex-dancer." The Fords had four children. After returning to Grand Rapids, Ford became active in local Republican politics, and supporters urged him to take on Bartel J. Jonkman, the incumbent Republican congressman. Military service had changed his view of the world; "I came back a converted internationalist", Ford wrote, "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." During his first campaign in 1948, Ford visited voters at their doorsteps and as they left the factories where they worked. Ford
also visited local farms where, in one instance, a wager resulted in
Ford spending two weeks milking cows following his election victory. Ford was known to his colleagues in the House as a "Congressman's Congressman". Ford was a member of the House of Representatives for twenty-five 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 did not 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
the early 1950s, Ford declined offers to run for both the Senate and
the Michigan governorship. Rather, his ambition was to become Speaker
of the House. 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 the foreword to his book, A Presidential Legacy and The Warren Commission, Ford said the CIA destroyed
or kept from investigators critical secrets connected to the 1963
assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He said the commission's
probe put "certain classified and potentially damaging operations in
danger of being exposed." The CIA's reaction, he added, "was to hide or
destroy some information, which can easily be misinterpreted as
collusion in JFK's assassination." According to a 1963 FBI memo
released in 2008, Ford secretly provided the FBI with information
regarding two of his fellow commission members, both of whom were
dubious about the FBI's conclusions regarding the assassination. The
FBI position was that President Kennedy was shot by a single gunman
firing from the Texas Book Depository. Another 1963 memo released in
1978 stated that Representative Ford volunteered to advise the FBI
regarding the content of the commission's deliberations, provided that
his involvement with the bureau was kept confidential, a condition
which the bureau approved. Ford was an outspoken proponent of the single assassin theory. According to the same reports, Ford generally had strong ties to the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover. In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon Johnson led
a landslide victory for his party, securing another term as president
and taking 36 seats from Republicans in the House of Representatives.
Following the election, members of the Republican caucus looked to
select a new Minority Leader.
Three members approached Ford to see if he would be willing to serve;
after consulting with his family, he agreed. After a closely contested
election, Ford was chosen to replace Charles Halleck of Indiana as Minority Leader. The
Republicans had 140 seats in the House compared to the 295 seats held
by the Democrats. As a result, the Johnson Administration was able to
propose and pass a series of programs termed by President Johnson as
the "Great Society". During the first session of the Eighty-ninth Congress alone,
the Johnson Administration submitted eighty-seven bills to Congress,
and Johnson signed eighty-four, or 96%, arguably the most successful
legislative agenda in U.S. Congressional history. Criticism over the Johnson Administration's handling of the Vietnam War began
to grow in 1966, with Ford and Congressional Republicans expressing
concern that the United States was not doing what was necessary to win
the war. Public sentiment also began to move against Johnson, and the 1966 midterm elections saw
a 47 seat swing in favor of the Republicans. This was not sufficient to
give Republicans a majority in the House, but the victory did give Ford
the opportunity to prevent the passage of further Great Society
programs. Ford's
private criticism of the Vietnam war became public following a speech
from the floor of the House, in which he questioned whether the White
House had a clear plan to bring the conflict to a successful conclusion. The speech angered President Johnson, who accused Ford of playing "too much football without a helmet." As Minority Leader in the House, Ford appeared in a popular series of televised press conferences with famed Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen,
in which they proposed Republican alternatives to Johnson's policies.
Many in the press jokingly called this "The Ev and Jerry Show". Johnson said at the time, "Jerry Ford is so dumb 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." Ford's role shifted under President Nixon to being an advocate for the White House agenda. Congress passed several of Nixon's proposals, including the National Environmental Policy Act and the Tax Reform Act of 1969.
Another high profile victory for the Republican minority was the State
and Local Fiscal Assistance act. Passed in 1972, the act established a Revenue Sharing program for state and local governments. Ford's
leadership was instrumental in shepherding revenue sharing through
congress, and culminated in a bipartisan coalition that supported the
bill with 223 votes in favor (compared to 185 against). 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. An office building in the U.S. Capitol Complex, House Annex 2, was renamed for Gerald Ford as the Ford House Office Building.
On October 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned and then pleaded 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
while 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". Ford was nominated to take Agnew's position on October 12, the first time the vice-presidential vacancy provision of the 25th Amendment had been implemented. The United States Senate voted 92 to 3 to confirm Ford on November 27. Only three Senators, all Democrats, had voted against Ford's confirmation: Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, Thomas Eagleton of Missouri and William Hathaway of Maine.
On December 6, the House confirmed Ford by a vote of 387 to 35. One
hour after the confirmation vote in the House, Ford took the oath of
office as Vice President of the United States.
Ford's
brief tenure as Vice-President was little noted by the media. Instead,
reporters were preoccupied by the continuing revelations about criminal
acts during the 1972 presidential election and allegations of cover-ups within the White House. Following Ford's appointment, the Watergate investigation continued until Chief of Staff Alexander Haig contacted Ford on August 1, 1974, and told him that "smoking gun"
evidence had been found. The evidence left little doubt that President
Nixon had been a part of the Watergate cover-up. At the time, Ford and
his wife, Betty, were living in suburban Virginia, waiting for their
expected move into the newly designated vice president's residence in Washington, D.C.However, "Al Haig [asked] to come over and see me," Ford later related, "to tell me that there would be a new tape released
on a Monday, and he said the evidence in there was devastating and
there would probably be either an impeachment or a resignation. And he
said, 'I'm just warning you that you've got to be prepared, that things
might change dramatically and you could become President.' And I said,
'Betty, I don't think we're ever going to live in the vice president's
house.'" When
Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal on August 9, 1974,
Ford assumed the presidency, making him the only person to assume the
vice-presidency and the presidency without having been voted into
either office. Immediately after taking the oath of office in the East Room of the White House, he spoke to the assembled audience in a speech broadcast live to the nation. Ford
noted the peculiarity of his position: "I am acutely aware that you
have not elected me as your president by your ballots, and so I ask you
to confirm me as your president with your prayers." He went on to state: I
have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it.
Those who nominated and confirmed me as Vice President were my friends
and are my friends. They were of both parties, elected by all the
people and acting under the Constitution in their name. It is only
fitting then that I should pledge to them and to you that I will be the
President of all the people. He also stated: My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. 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.... Let us restore the golden rule to our political process and
let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and hate. A portion of the speech would later be memorialized with a plaque at the entrance to his presidential museum.
On August 20, Ford nominated former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to fill the vice presidency he had vacated. Rockefeller's top competitor had been George H. W. Bush.
Rockefeller underwent extended hearings before Congress, which caused
embarrassment when it was revealed he made massive gifts to senior
aides, such as Henry Kissinger.
Although conservative Republicans were not pleased that Rockefeller was
picked, most of them did vote for his confirmation, and his nomination
passed both the House and Senate. However, some, including Barry Goldwater, voted against him.
On September 8, 1974, Ford issued Proclamation 4311, 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 have
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, did not 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. They claimed Ford's pardon was quid pro quo, in exchange for Nixon's resignation that elevated Ford to the Presidency. According to Bob Woodward, Nixon Chief of Staff Alexander Haig proposed a pardon deal to Ford. Despite the situation, Ford never accepted any offer from Haig. He later decided to pardon Nixon for other reasons, primarily the friendship he and Nixon shared. Regardless, historians believe the controversy was one of the major reasons Ford lost the election in 1976, an observation with which Ford concurred. 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." Ford's first press secretary and close friend Jerald Franklin terHorst resigned his post in protest after the announcement of President Nixon's full pardon. Ford also voluntarily appeared before Congress on October 17, 1974 to give sworn testimony — the only time a sitting president has done so — about the pardon. After
Ford left the White House in 1977, intimates said that the former
President privately justified his pardon of Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text of Burdick v. United States, a 1915 U.S. Supreme Court decision
which stated that a pardon indicated a presumption of guilt, and that
acceptance of a pardon was tantamount to a confession of that guilt. In 2001, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award to Ford for his pardon of Nixon. In presenting the award to Ford, Senator Ted Kennedy said
that he had initially been opposed to the pardon of Nixon, but later
stated that history had proved Ford to have made the correct decision.
Upon assuming office, Ford inherited Nixon's cabinet. 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. Ford selected George H.W. Bush as Chief of the US Liaison Office to the People's Republic of China in 1974 and then Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in late 1975. Ford's transition chairman and first Chief of Staff was former congressman and ambassador Donald Rumsfeld. In 1975, Rumsfeld was named by Ford as the youngest ever Secretary of Defense. Ford chose a young Wyoming politician, Richard Cheney, to replace Rumsfeld as his new Chief of Staff and later campaign manager for Ford's 1976 presidential campaign. Ford's dramatic reorganization of his Cabinet in the fall of 1975 has been referred to by political commentators as the "Halloween Massacre."
The
1974 Congressional midterm elections took place less than three months
after Ford assumed office and 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. This was one more than the number
needed (290) for a two-thirds majority, necessary to override 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, defeating Republican Robert VanderLaan. In the Senate elections, the Democratic majority became 61 in the 100-seat body. The economy was
a great concern during the Ford administration.One of the first acts
the new president took to deal with the economy was to create the
Economic Policy Board by Executive Order on September 30, 1974. 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. At
the time, inflation was believed to be the primary threat to the
economy, more so than growing unemployment. They felt as though
controlling inflation would work to fix unemployment. In
order to reign in inflation it was necessary to take steps to control
the public's spending. “WIN” called for Americans to reduce their
spending and consumption in an attempt to mesh service and sacrifice. On
October 4, 1974, Ford gave a speech in front of a joint session of
Congress and as a part of this speech kicked off the “WIN” campaign.
Over the next nine days 101,240 Americans mailed in “WIN” pledges. In hindsight, this was viewed as simply a public relations gimmick without offering any effective means of solving the underlying problems. The
main point of that speech was to introduce to Congress a one year 5
percent income tax increase on corporations and wealthy individuals.
This plan would also take $4.4 billion out of the budget bringing
federal spending below $300 billion. At the time, inflation was approximately seven percent. 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. Ford was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, issuing Presidential Proclamation 4383. In this Land of the Free, it is 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 is 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. 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." During his later life, Ford would identify as pro-choice. The federal budget ran a deficit every year Ford was President. Despite his reservations about how the program ultimately would be funded in an era of tight public budgeting, Ford 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. The economic focus began to change as the country sank into a mild recession.
The focus of the Ford administration became fixing the increase in
unemployment, which hit 7.2 percent in December 1974. In January 1975,
Ford proposed a 1 year tax reduction of $16 billion to stimulate
economic growth, along with spending cuts to avoid inflation. Ford
was criticized greatly for quickly switching from advocating a tax
increase to a tax reduction. In Congress, the proposed amount of the
tax reduction increased to $22.8 billion in tax cuts and lacked
spending cuts. In March 1975, Congress passed, and Ford signed into law, these income tax rebates as part of the Tax Reduction Act of 1975. This resulted in a federal deficit of around $53 billion for the 1975 fiscal year and $73.7 billion for 1976. 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' famous headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead". The following month, November 1975, Ford changed his stance and asked Congress to approve federal loans to New York City. Ford continued the détente policy with both the Soviet Union and China, easing the tensions of the Cold War. 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
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. In the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean, two on-going international disputes developed into crises. The ongoing Cyprus dispute turned into a crisis with the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, causing extreme strain within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance. In mid August, the government withdrew
Greece from the NATO military structure; in mid September 1974 the
Senate and House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to halt
military aid to Turkey. Ford, concerned with both the effect of this on
Turkish American relations and the deterioration of security on NATO’s
eastern front, vetoed the bill. A second bill was passed by the house,
and vetoed, although a compromise was accepted to continue aid until
the end of the year. As Ford expected, Turkish relations were considerably disrupted until 1978. In the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict, although the initial cease fire had been implemented to end active conflict in the Yom Kippur War, Kissinger’s continuing shuttle diplomacy was
showing little progress. Ford considered it “stalling” and wrote,
“Their [Israeli] tactics frustrated the Egyptians and made me mad as
hell.’ During
Kissinger’s shuttle to Israel in early March 1975, a last minute
reversal to consider further withdrawal, prompted a cable from Ford to
Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, which included: I
wish to express my profound disappointment over Israel’s attitude in
the course of the negotiations... Failure of the negotiation will have
a far reaching impact on the region and on our relations. I have given
instructions for a reassessment of United States policy in the region,
including our relations with Israel, with the aim of ensuring that
overall American interests... are protected. You will be notified of
our decision. On
March 24, Ford received congressional leaders of both parties and
informed them of the reassessment of the administration policies in the
Middle East. "Reassessment", in practical terms, meant to cancel or
suspend further aid to Israel. For six months between March and
September 1975 the United States refused to conclude any new arms
agreements with Israel. Rabin notes it was ”an innocent - sounding term
that heralded one of the worst periods in American - Israeli relations.” As
could be expected, the announced reassessments upset the American
Jewish community and Israel’s well-wishers in Congress. On May 21, Ford
“experienced a real shock,” seventy-six senators wrote him a letter
urging him to be “responsive” to Israel’s request for $2.59 billion in
military and economic aid. Ford felt truly annoyed and thought the
chance for peace was jeopardized. It was, since the September 1974 ban
on arms to Turkey, the second major congressional intrusion upon the
President’s [foreign policy] prerogatives. The following summer months were described by Ford as an American - Israeli “war of nerves” or ”test of wills,” and after much bargaining, the Sinai Interim Agreement (Sinai II), was formally signed on September 1 and aid resumed. One
of Ford's greatest challenges was dealing with the continued Conflict
in Vietnam. American offensive operations against North Vietnam had
ended with the Paris Peace Accords,
signed on 27 January 1973. The accords declared a cease fire across
both North and South Vietnam, and required the release of American prisoners of war. The agreement guaranteed the territorial integrity of Vietnam and, like the Geneva Conference of
1954, called for national elections in the North and South. The Paris
Peace Accords stipulated a sixty-day period for the total withdrawal of
U.S. forces. The accords had been negotiated by United States National Security Advisor Dr. Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese politburo member Le Duc Tho. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu was
not involved in the final negotiations, and publicly criticized the
proposed agreement. However, anti-war pressures within the United
States forced Nixon and Kissinger to pressure Thieu to sign the
agreement and enable the withdrawal of American forces. In multiple
letters to the South Vietnamese president, Nixon had promised that the
United States would defend his government, should the North Vietnamese
violate the accords. In December 1974, just months after Ford took office, North Vietnamese forces invaded the province of Phuoc Long. General Trần Văn Tràs ought
to gauge any South Vietnamese or American response to the invasion, as
well as to solve logistical issues before proceeding with the invasion. As
North Vietnamese forces advanced, Ford requested aid for South Vietnam
in a $522 million aid package. The funds had been promised by the Nixon
administration, but Congress voted against the proposal by a wide
margin. Senator Jacob Javits offered "...large sums for evacuation, but not one nickel for military aid." President
Thieu resigned on April 21, 1975, publicly blaming the lack of support
from the United States for the fall of his country. Two days later, on April 23, Ford gave a speech at Tulane University. In that speech, he announced that the Vietnam War was over "...as far as America is concerned." The announcement was met with thunderous applause. 1,373 U.S. citizens and 5,595 Vietnamese and third country nationals were evacuated from the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon during Operation Frequent Wind. Military and Air America helicopters took evacuees to U.S. Navy ships off-shore during an approximately 24-hour period on April 29 to 30, 1975, immediately preceding the fall of Saigon.
During the operation, so many South Vietnamese helicopters landed on
the vessels taking the evacuees that some were pushed overboard to make
room for more people. Other helicopters, having nowhere to land, were
deliberately crash landed into the sea, close to the ships, their
pilots bailing out at the last moment to be picked up by rescue boats. Many of the Vietnamese evacuees were allowed to enter the United States under the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act. The 1975 Act appropriated $455 million toward the costs of assisting the settlement of Indochinese refugees. In all, 130,000 Vietnamese refugees came to the United States in 1975. Thousands more escaped in the years that followed. North
Vietnam's victory over the South led to a considerable shift in the
political winds in Asia, and Ford administration officials worried
about a consequent loss of U.S. influence there. The administration
proved it was willing to respond forcefully to challenges to its
interests in the region on two occasions, once when Khmer Rouge forces seized an American ship in international waters and then again during the Axe murder incident in Korea. The first crisis was the Mayaguez Incident. In May 1975, shortly after the fall of Saigon and the Khmer Rouge conquest of 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, two Military transport
helicopters carrying the Marines for the assault operation were shot
down, and 41 U.S. servicemen were killed and 50 wounded while
approximately 60 Khmer Rouge soldiers were killed. Despite
the American losses, the operation was seen as a success in the United
States and Ford enjoyed an 11-point boost in his approval ratings in
the aftermath. The Americans killed during the operation became the last to have their names inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, D.C. Some
historians have argued that the Ford administration felt the need to
respond forcefully to the incident because it was construed as a Soviet
plot. But
recent work by Andrew Gawthorpe, based on an analysis of the
administration's internal discussions, shows that Ford's national
security team understood that the seizure of the vessel was a local,
and perhaps even accidental, provocation by an immature Khmer
government. Nevertheless, they felt the need to respond forcefully to
discourage further provocations by other Communist countries in Asia. The second incident which the Ford administration believed required a forceful response occurred at Panmunjom,
a village which stands in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two
Koreas. At the time, this was the only part of the DMZ where forces
from the North and the South came into contact with each other.
Encouraged by U.S. difficulties in Vietnam, North Korea had been waging
a campaign of diplomatic pressure and minor military harassment to try
and convince the U.S. to withdraw from South Korea. Then,
in August 1976, North Korean forces killed two U.S. officers and
injured South Korean guards who were engaged in trimming a tree in
Panmunjom's Joint Security Area. The attack coincided with a meeting of the Non-Aligned Conference in Colombo, at which the North presented the incident as an example of American
aggression, helping a motion calling for a U.S. withdrawal from the
South to be passed. After
mulling various options and deciding that a forceful response was
necessary despite the risk of escalation into a wider battle, the Ford
administration decided it needed to respond forcefully and show the
North Koreans that it would defend its interests. At administration meetings, Henry Kissinger voiced the concern that the North would see the U.S. as "the paper tigers of Saigon"
if they did not respond. Ford agreed. The administration sent in a
large number of ground forces to cut down the tree, while
simultaneously making a show of force that included B-52 bomber flights
over Panmunjom. The North backed down and allowed the tree cutting to
go ahead, and later issued an unprecedented diplomatic apology.
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 semi-automatic pistol had
four cartridges in the magazine, the slide had not 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, but was paroled on August 14, 2009.
In
reaction to this attempt, the Secret Service began keeping Ford at a
more secure distance from anonymous crowds, a strategy that may have
saved his life seventeen days later: as he left the St. Francis Hotel in downtown San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore, standing in a crowd of onlookers across the street, pointed her .38-caliber revolver at him. Just before she fired, former Marine Oliver Sipple grabbed
at the gun and deflected her shot; the bullet struck a wall about six
inches above and to the right of Ford's head, then ricocheted and hit a
taxi driver, who was marginally wounded. Moore was later sentenced to
life in prison. She was paroled from prison on December 31, 2007,
having served 32 years. 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." In addition to the Stevens appointment, Ford appointed 11 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 50 judges to the United States district courts. Ford
reluctantly agreed to run for office in 1976, but first he had 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 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 hosts at a White House state dinner for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of the United Kingdom, 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, gaining support from voters dismayed by
the Watergate scandal and Nixon pardon. After the Democratic National
Convention, he held a huge 33-point lead over Ford in the polls.
However, as the campaign continued, the race tightened, and, by
election day, the polls showed the race as too close to call. There
were three main events in the fall campaign. Most importantly, Carter
repeated a promise of a "blanket pardon" for Christian and other
religious refugees and other opponents of the Vietnam War draft dodgers (Ford
had only issued a conditional amnesty) in response to a question on the
subject posed by a reporter during the presidential debates, an act
which froze Ford's poll numbers in Ohio, Wisconsin, Hawaii, and
Mississippi. (Ford had needed only to shift 11,000 votes in two of
those four states in order to win.) Americans viewed the pardon as an
essential moral act and as the true end to a bitterly hated war. It was
the first act signed by Carter, on January 20, 1977. Earlier, Playboy magazine
had published a controversial interview with Carter; in the interview
Carter admitted to having "lusted in my heart" for women other than his
wife, which cut into his support among women and evangelical
Christians. Also, on September 24, Ford performed well in what was the
first televised presidential debate since 1960.
Polls taken after the debate showed that most viewers felt that Ford
was the winner. Carter was also hurt by Ford's charges that he lacked
the necessary experience to be an effective national leader, and that
Carter was vague on many issues. 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 startlingly 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 did not "believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union". In an interview years later, Ford said he had 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. As
a result of this blunder, and Carter's promise of a full presidential
pardon for political refugees from the Vietnam era during the
presidential debates, Ford's surge stalled and Carter was able to
maintain a slight lead in the polls. 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 with 276 votes to 261 for Carter. 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, the provisions of the 22nd amendment would have disqualified him from running in 1980, because he had served more than two years of Nixon's remaining term. The Nixon 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 has 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. In 1979, Ford published his autobiography, A Time to Heal. A review in Foreign Affairs described
it as, "Serene, unruffled, unpretentious, like the author. This is the
shortest and most honest of recent presidential memoirs, but there are
no surprises, no deep probings of motives or events. No more here than
meets the eye." 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. Their close friendship developed
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, George H.W. Bush, 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. Ford considered a run for the Republican nomination in 1980,
foregoing numerous opportunities to serve on corporate boards to keep
his options open for a grudge match with Carter. Ford attacked Carter's
conduct of the SALT II negotiations and foreign policy in the Middle
East and Africa. Many have argued that Ford also wanted to exorcise his
image as an "Accidental President" and to win a term in his own right.
Ford also believed the more conservative Ronald Reagan would
be unable to defeat Carter and would hand the incumbent a second term.
Ford was encouraged by his former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger
as well as Jim Rhodes of Ohio and Bill Clements of
Texas to make the race. However, on March 15, 1980, Ford announced that
he would forgo a run for the Republican nomination, vowing to support
the eventual nominee. After
securing the Republican nomination in 1980, Ronald Reagan considered
his former rival Ford as a potential vice-presidential running mate,
but negotiations between the Reagan and Ford camps at the Republican National Convention 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. Ford
did appear in a campaign commercial for the Reagan - Bush ticket, in
which he declared that the country would be "better served by a Reagan
presidency rather than a continuation of the weak and politically
expedient policies of Jimmy Carter." After his presidency, Ford joined the American Enterprise Institute as a distinguished fellow. He founded the annual AEI World Forum in 1982. Ford was awarded an honorary doctorate at Central Connecticut State University on March 23, 1988. In 1977, he established the Gerald R. Ford Institute of Public Policy at Albion College in Albion, Michigan, to give undergraduates training in public policy. In April 1981, he opened the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the north campus of his alma mater, the University of Michigan, followed in September by the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids. 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. In
October 2001, 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
expressing 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 non-issue 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 pre-recorded 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 would not have gone to war had he
been President. The details of the interview were not released until
after Ford's death, as he requested.
As Ford approached his 90th year, he began to experience health problems associated with old age. He suffered two minor strokes at the 2000 Republican National Convention, but made a quick recovery after being admitted to Hahnemann University Hospital. 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 had 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 at
the University of Michigan, but due to poor health and on the advice of
his doctors he did not attend. The previous day, Ford entered the
Eisenhower Medical Center for undisclosed tests; he was released on
October 16. By November 2006 he was confined to a bed in his study. In
reality, President Ford had end-stage coronary artery disease and
severe aortic stenosis and insufficiency, caused by calcific alteration
of one of his heart valves. Ford died on December 26, 2006, at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, of arteriosclerotic cerebrovascular disease and diffuse arteriosclerosis. His age at the time of his death was 93 years and 165 days, making Ford the longest-lived U.S. President. 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. After the service, Ford was interred at his Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Ford died on the 34th anniversary of President Harry Truman's death, thus becoming the second U.S. President to die on Boxing Day. He was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission. Ford was the longest-lived U.S. President, his lifespan being 45 days longer than Ronald Reagan's. He was the third longest-lived Vice President, falling short only of John Nance Garner, 98, and Levi P. Morton, 96. Ford had the third longest post-presidency (29 years and 11 months) after Herbert Hoover (31 years and 7 months) and Jimmy Carter (30
years and counting). On November 12, 2006, upon surpassing Ronald
Reagan's lifespan, Ford released his last public statement: The
length of one’s days matters less than the love of one’s family and
friends. I thank God for the gift of every sunrise and, even more, for
all the years He has blessed me with Betty and the children; with our
extended family and the friends of a lifetime. That includes countless
Americans who, in recent months, have remembered me in their prayers.
Your kindness touches me deeply. May God bless you all and may God
bless America. The trust the American people had in him was severely and rapidly tarnished by his pardon of Nixon. Nonetheless,
many grant in hindsight that he had respectably discharged with
considerable dignity a great responsibility that he had not sought. His subsequent loss to Carter in 1976 has come to be seen as an honorable sacrifice he made for the nation. In
spite of his athletic record and remarkable career accomplishments,
Ford acquired a reputation as a clumsy, likable and simple minded
Everyman. An incident in 1975 when he tripped while exiting the
presidential jet in Austria, was famously and repetitively parodied by Chevy Chase, cementing Ford's image as a klutz. Pieces
of Ford's common Everyman image have also been attributed to Ford's
inevitable comparison to Nixon, as well as his perceived Midwestern
stodginess and self-deprecation. Ridicule
often extended to supposed intellectual limitations, with Lyndon
Johnson once joking, "He's a nice fellow but he spent too much time
playing football without a helmet." |