Gerald Ford? Nope, I got nuthin’. Obviously I know that he’s the guy that took over when Nixon quit but what did he do exactly? Now I realize that Ford did not have oodles of time to bring his presidential dreams to fruition, nor did he have the mandate of the people due to the fact that he was never popularly elected to the office he held. But surely in the two years that he was in office, he had to do something! I wonder if I’m the only clueless one. No matter—I simply went off to the library and got Gerald Ford: American Presidents Series by Douglas Brinkley (New York: Times Books, 2007). I was impressed by the fact that Mr. Brinkley was not only a professor of History at Tulane but he’s authored dozens of political books, many of them biographies. Let’s see how he handles this tribute to our 38th president.
Jerry Ford’s beginnings were rather…um…shocking, especially in that day and age. “When he [Leslie King Sr] flew into another violent rage two weeks after she bore their son, brandishing a knife and threatening to kill both her and the baby, Dorothy packed up her belongings and her son and fled Omaha in the cold glare of an afternoon” (p. 2). Dorothy Gardner, Gerald’s mum, then moved back to her parents house in Grand Rapids, MI and would later marry Gerald R. Ford Sr. on February 1, 1917. In 1935, our 38th president would legally change his name to Gerald Ford Jr and he would eventually have 3 half-brothers.
During the Great Depression, the Fords were hit hard and Gerald Sr’s business failed. But young Jerry continued to do relatively well in school and was very popular. “In high school Jerry Ford was a good, but not too good, student; well-liked by his peers, Ford couldn’t turn his charm on—or off” (p. 4). His main interest was playing football, where he was both the center and a linebacker. Sports was a major factor in who Gerald Ford turned out to be by giving him guidelines for living life. “Discipline, preparation, teamwork, and adherence to a game plan may be the platitudes of the locker room but Ford carried them onto the political field” (p. 5). He was so good that he won a full scholarship to play at the University of Michigan, where he was also invited to play in the All-Star Game. He graduated in 1935 with majors in Economics and Political Science.
He was not immediately accepted to Yale Law School but Ford went anyway and became the boxing assistant football coach there. Three years later, he was finally admitted to the college as a law student and graduated in 1941. He then moved back to Michigan to set up a law practice with one of his fraternity brothers.
When World War II began in earnest, Jerry joined the US Naval Reserves as an ensign on April 20, 1942 and was assigned to the USS Montgomery. “Lieutenant Ford’s primary duties were to oversee the
antiaircraft gun crew on the fantail deck and to serve as the ship’s director of physical training. The enlisted men loved him for constructing a basketball court on the hangar deck. But he also took intense interest in his later secondary role as assistant navigation officer” (p. 9). Ford was transferred to the USS Monterey and was sent to the Pacific Theater. He was soon promoted to lieutenant-commander due to his presence of mind, not only when faced the weather but also with the actual enemy. “The Monterey, in fact, sank a Japanese cruiser and destroyer, with Ford directing the ship’s forty-millimeter guns” (p. 10). He was discharged in 1946 and returned to Michigan to resume his law practice.On June 17, 1948, Gerald Ford entered his first election to become a US Congressman for Michigan’s Fifth District. Not only did this rookie win the primaries but also the entire election! “He combined his athlete’s backslapping bonhomie with simple, nice-guy good manners. He spoke pretty well but, more important, he listened brilliantly, offering his full attention to any voter who took the time to address him” (p. 12). Gerald Ford was headed to Washington.
Elizabeth Ann Bloomer Warren, better known as Betty, was a pretty divorcee working at a department store when she met Jerry Ford. They hit it off and were married on October 15, 1948. They moved together to Washington in 1949 and soon made many friends with other young Congressmen like John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Incredibly Ford seemed to fit right into the House of Representatives environment and even made it onto the powerful House Appropriations Committee in his first year.
In the 1960 election, Ford wanted to help his good friend win the election so he put together a Truth Squad. The Truth Squad followed Nixon as he campaigned around the country and they truthfully answered questions about Nixon’s virtues and promises. Unfortunately, the Republicans did not win but Ford returned to the House with not only the everlasting gratitude of Nixon but also he now had enough clout to run for the prestigious position of chairman of the House Republican Conference.
Due to Jerry Ford’s unblemished reputation and strict moral code, he was placed on the Warren Commission, alongside an impressive list of political bigwigs, to determine the causes, motives, and possible conspiracies associated with John Kennedy’s assassination. He agreed with the rest of the committee on their conclusions, for the most part, and co-wrote a book, called Portrait of the Assassin, defending the Committee’s reasoning. He was very angry over Oliver Stone’s movie about JFK and even wanted to challenge him to debate the matter. His aides talked him out of it.
In 1965, Ford won the position of House Minority Leader but it was no secret that his biggest ambition was to become Speaker of the House. Unfortunately, it had been several decades since the Republican’s controlled the House so Ford set out to try to not only remain elected (although this was never much of an issue) but also to increase the number of Republicans in Congress. He invented a mobile office which he took around Michigan and other parts of the country to be closer to his constituents. “In truth, he was successful because he was so unspectacular. There was nothing threatening about Gerald Ford, which encouraged others to let her guard down around him” (p. 32).
When Nixon won the 1968 election, the Congressional Republicans were ecstatic. They thought that now some real progress would be made but they were unprepared for Nixon’s loner-mentality and it caused some real tension between the president and the legislative branch. As the House minority leader and in the same party as the president, it was up to Ford to ease executive legislation through the House or in some cases to block it. “In truth, Ford was smart enough to figure out a way to keep the White House from bullying its programs through. He may not have had much imagination but he did know how to block and hold the line” (p. 36). In order to withhold some of the crazier White House ideas from Congress, Ford did have to go along with their bidding at times. One of those instances included Ford going on a rampage to try to impeach one of the Supreme Court justices. It backfired on him and he lost some credibility in that particular witch hunt, sanctioned by the White House.
When Watergate in all its glory hit the proverbial fan, Ford believed that the White House was not involved and so did all that he could to get Nixon re-elected. He blocked the Patman Committee Hearings, which were delving into the finances of Watergate and were coming very close to the truth of the matter. Of course, Nixon won but only a year later his vice president, Spiro Agnew, was having legal and financial issues of his own. Agnew was, in essence, forced to resign in October 1973 so Nixon turned to his old friend and on December 6, 1973, Gerald Ford was sworn in as the vice president of the United States. Ford’s primary duty during the next couple months was mainly to defend the president against the Watergate accusations and also to serve as a conduit between the president and Congress. Wherever Ford went in his official capacity, he declared that he believed Nixon was innocent. “As vice president, Ford had been led to expect that he would serve President Nixon on Capitol Hill, as a sort of uber-lobbyist for the administration’s positions on pending legislation…Most of his time instead went to doing what he liked best: stumping across the country for the Republican cause, which at that point was the survival of Nixon’s presidency” (p. 54).
Things just got worse for Nixon, however, until even he was forced to resign. Thus, on August 9, 1974, Gerald Ford was sworn in as the 38th president of the United States. Ford’s very first order of business was to find a vice president for himself. In an effort to unify both sides of the party, he chose the progressive governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller. He also pronounced amnesty for all Vietnam draft-dodgers and then, in a spectacularly low-key moment, announced a full and complete pardon of Richard Nixon. Ford pardoned Nixon in an effort to move on and to leave Nixon and Watergate in the past but most Americans freaked out against this evidence of Ford’s apparent betrayal. “The widespread suspicion that the pardon came out of a secret deal between Nixon and his handpicked successor irredeemably tarnished Gerald Ford’s political career. Intended to put Watergate behind the nation once and for all, Ford’s pardon of his predecessor did just the opposite in the minds of many Americans, who saw it as an extension of Nixon’s unlamented ‘imperial presidency,’ stained with the same reliance on ‘executive privilege’” (p. 69). Ford’s honeymoon was officially over. “Americans of every political stripe denounced the moved with a vehemence that proved just how agonizing the Watergate crisis had been for the country—a new Gallup poll showed Ford’s approval rating having instantly sunk from 71 to 50 percent” (p. 73). Desperate, Ford even decided to appear before a public hearing in the House (something no president had ever done) to go on record that there had been no deal between him and Nixon. It didn’t seem to matter.
To top it all off, his wife, Betty, was diagnosed with breast cancer at this time, while a severe economic crisis, called a stagflation due to high rates of unemployment and inflation, was hitting the country hard. To try and fix the
economic issues, Ford appealed directly to Americans in his Whip Inflation Now campaign. “Echoing Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s calls the citizenry to conserve for the war effort, WIN made a commonsense pitch to Americans to stop wasting money and resources, especially fuel” (p. 77). WIN was never really successful and most people simply laughed at it. Ford also had to face problems with the CIA due to the Rockefeller Commission’s findings on illegal activities.
“Among the tactics President Ford picked up from his predecessor was Nixon’s way of dealing with rancor at home: to go abroad” (p. 82.) Thus, Ford made his way, in a prolonged trip, through Europe and Asia.
On his return, Ford faced new problems—this time from his own party. Because he was a nice guy and tried to placate just about everybody, Ford had decided to be as non-partisan as possible during his presidency. Unfortunately, this meant that he lost his backing from the Republican Party when he needed it most—a.k.a. Vietnam, as an issue, was not over yet. Nixon had merely promulgated a ceasefire so on January 6, 1975, North Vietnam broke it by invading South Vietnam. Instead of sending in the Marines, Ford announced the official end of the Vietnam War (at least on the American side) at a speech at Tulane University. “After the slow agonies that Watergate and Vietnam had put the nation through, seizing the first opportunity to move on from them just seemed the sensible thing to do” (p. 92). What happened next was truly a scene right out of a movie. “Suddenly, all that remained of America’s longest and most divisive military conflict was the urgent need to evacuate the approximately six thousand US citizens still in South Vietnam—a number that swelled by sixfold when the American’s Vietnamese wives, children and in-laws wanted out, too” (p. 93). None of the South Vietnamese were able to hold back the invaders in the slightest. In fact, the North Vietnamese moved through South Vietnam so quickly, that the US had to evacuate people off the roof of the embassy with helicopters because they were running out of time. “America’s only unelected president did what his four predecessors could not: he extricated the United States from Vietnam’s long-running civil war” (p. 99).
Please don’t think that Ford’s problems were over just yet. There was the Mayaguez incident when some Cambodian pirates took over an American ship in the Gulf of Siam. There were conflicting accounts of the situation and although Ford got the whole crew back (minus one), he did not receive undisputed approbation over the affair. “The general acclaim for the commander in chief’s swift and decisive handling of the Mayaguez incident was, naturally, offset by some harsh criticism that Ford had overreacted, ordering a disproportionate military response just to prove his toughness” (p. 104). Some of what the critics claimed was fair—after losing the war in Vietnam, Ford had to show the world that the United States was not some weak, fallen giant.
In July 1975, while Ford publicly announced his candidacy for the next presidential election, he was also involved in a pretty controversial action—attending the Helsinki Accords, also known as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Although Ford’s reputation sank at home, the Helsinki Accords were a noble piece of work. “Yet, with their calls for openness and respect for human rights, the Helsinki Accords would mark the beginning of the end of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe…The agreement reflected everything that was best about Jerry Ford: long-term thinking, his deep-seated internationalism, and his belief in engagement rather than aggression, in matters large and small” (p. 106).
During the primaries campaign which pitted Ford against Ronald Reagan, Ford also faced the New York City debt crisis. After years of financial mismanagement, the city of New York begged the government to float it another loan to stave off insolvency. Ford refused, stating it was now time for New York City to fix its abysmal budget situation. His hard-line approach angered many Americans due to the fact that there was already an economic crisis going on and this just proved that the government did not want to help. “That fall, between his cold dismissal of Nelson Rockefeller and his harsh treatment of the Big Apple, good ol’ Jerry Ford had begun to look awfully mean, not to mention disloyal, cynical, and somehow waffling and stubborn at the same time” (p. 128). There were also widespread bombs, murders, and shootouts across the United States. So Ford went on another trip to Asia. Ironically though he left the US to get away from domestic issues, he ended up precipitating one himself when he visited General Suharto in Indonesia. Suharto told Ford that the island of East Timor was in revolt and so “Ford and Kissinger approved Suharto’s plans to invade East Timor” (p. 131). The problems began when Suharto went in and started massacring people. “Documentary evidence proved that Ford-Kissinger acquiescence helped contribute to the genocide of approximately two hundred thousand East Timorians due to violence and famine” (p. 131). Americans did not like this.
Although Ford won the Republican nomination, he was hurt by the infighting between himself and Reagan. He went into the 1976 presidential election almost dead even with Carter and, through some famous blunders during the campaign, Ford lost by only the tiniest margin. He and the family then retired to Rancho Mirage, CA and managed to stay friends with Carter and Nixon. Jerry and Betty both wrote their memoirs and Jerry stayed determinedly by Betty’s side as she recovered from alcoholism. They raised money not only for the Ford Presidential Library and Museum (which opened in 1981) but also for the Betty Ford Clinic. Ford sat on a number of corporate boards, including “Amax, Inc; American Express Company; Texas Commerce Bank; Tiger International, Inc.; Beneficial Corporation of New Jersey; and 20th Century Fox Film Corporation” (p. 153). He also wrote a book called Humor in the Presidency.
At times, Ford continued to be included in national matters by existing presidents. He defended Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky situation by stating that Clinton did nothing impeachable. He was involved in the National Day of Prayer in DC after 9/11 and continued to uphold the man in the White House, whoever he was. He died on December 26, 2006 of heart problems.
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