#38: Gerald Ford Part 2

Really Cool Stuff about Gerald Ford
1. The name on Gerald Ford’s birth certificate was actually Leslie Lynch King Jr but he legally changed his name to Gerald Ford Jr (in honor of his stepfather) in 1935. “When Gerald Ford came into the world on July 14, 1913, in an ornate Victorian hours on Woolworth Avenue in Omaha, Nebraska, he was named Leslie Lynch King Jr” (p. 1).
2. As a football fan, here’s a little tidbit that I particularly enjoyed. “Ford’s senior-year MVP award [for football] earned him a starting slot in the annual East-West Shrine Game in San Francisco on New Year’s Day 1935, and eight months later an even more coveted spot in the College All-Star Game against the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field” (p. 6). I’m intrigued—did an NFL team (or was it AFL at the time) really play a real game against an elite selection of college players every year? Hmmm…I’m going to have to look into this one!
3. Our 38th President even did a bit of modeling while at law school. “A fairly serious relationship with an aspiring model named Phyllis Brown turned into a thousand-dollar investment in a fledgling New York agency, which led to the football star’s posing in ski togs next to his girlfriend—in seventeen photos splashed across five pages of the March 1940 issue of Look magazine” (p. 7).
4. Ford had some good ideas on how to remain elected. “With a similar openness to innovation, soon after self-developing film came on the market in 1948, Ford bought a Polaroid Land camera to keep in his Washington office so that visitors could get their pictures taken with the congressman, or seated at his desk if he was out. To Ford, a single Polaroid souvenir meant a loyal supporter for life” (p. 30-31.)
5. I’ve mentioned this before but it’s worthy of extra note that Ford was the only president to never be elected to that office. “He loosened his party ties deliberately, out of respect for his extraordinary position as the only US president to never be elected to national office. Unlike all his predecessors (save George Washington), he had never slogged through the mud of a presidential campaign” (p. 75).
6. Ford was the first US president to visit Japan. “So with the US economy still in trouble in late November 1974, and the midterm election a GOP disaster, Ford left on a tour of Asian nations, including Japan (the first time ever for a US president) and South Korea” (p. 82).
7. President Ford used his veto-card quite a bit. “Ford, for his part, vetoed fifteen bills in his first three months in office, more than Nixon had in the eighteen months preceding his resignation. However, Ford had a higher percentage of those vetoes overridden than any other twentieth-century president” (p. 114). Although Ford had literally spent decades in Congress, his stock slowly declined there once he became president. “The journalist Richard Reeves observed that as of mid-1975, Ford had had less success leading Congress than any new president in recent history. It seemed as if every major bill Ford supported was treated like a flaming cowpie” (p. 114). Ha!
8. Ford lived through 2 very similar assassination attempts: both were in California, both assassins were women and both occurred in September 1975. The first one many of you might recall, because it was done by a young woman (and Charles Mason devotee) named Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme and it technically wasn’t an assassination attempt at all due to the fact that she never got the shot off. The second lady, named Sara Jane Moore, did fire some shots but Ford was never hit. “Outwardly unfazed by the two attempts on his life, President Ford made it clear that the bizarre acts of two deranged women in California would have no effect on his public appearances” (p. 121).
9. Saturday Night Live is a staple when it comes to political parodies in today’s society. So I thought it was extremely funny to find out that Chevy Chase was the one portraying Ford in the 1976 presidential campaign satires. “At least as hard to take as the charge of dumbness was the media’s depiction of Ford as a clumsy oaf. For some reason, the sort of embarrassing everyday missteps the press had ignored in covering previous presidents became news when committed by Gerald Ford, be it stumbling on a Colorado ski slope, tripping on a church stairway, or bumping his head on the door to Air Force One. The media characterized him as a klutz. The comedian Chevy Chase’s running slapstick routine as a bumbling Ford on Saturday Night Live became so well known that the president tried to defuse its impact by taping self-deprecating bits for an episode of the popular NBC comedy series… ‘Chevy definitely cost some votes,’ Ford later joked. ‘But I had to admit he was damn funny’ (p. 136). Anyone who saw what happened to Sarah Palin in the last election knows that the media is a powerful, powerful force.
10. In the election of 1976, Jimmy Carter ended up winning by only a teensy, weensy amount. “In the popular vote, Carter notched 40.8 million votes to Ford’s 39.1 million. The electoral college tally of 297 to 240 (with one vote going to Ronald Reagan) marked the closest presidential contest since 1916” (p. 144).
11. Due to Ford’s stand on human rights in his post-presidential period, he was eventually awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “This animosity only grew when, on August 11, 1999, President Clinton praised Ford and awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom” (p. 157). He also won the ‘Profiles in Courage Award’ for the year 2001. “All of these events were a buildup to what Ford considered the most redemptive honor of his life. Every year, the John F Kennedy Foundation announces winners of the ‘Profiles in Courage Award,’ given to elected officials who ‘withstood strong opposition from constituents, powerful interest groups or adversaries to follow what she or he believes is the right course of action.’ In April 2001 the award went to Gerald Ford for his controversial decision to pardon Richard Nixon” (p. 157-58).
12. I just think this is cool—Ford has a leadership award in his honor, given by the NCAA. “Honors came raining down on Ford from all corners; for example, the National Collegiate Athletic Association created an annual leadership award in his name while the National Archives hosted a symposium to honor his public service achievements” (p. 159).
13. Gerald Ford would live to become the oldest president in American history. “He was now, at age ninety-three, the oldest president in American history, having surpassed Ronald Reagan” (p. 159).

So it appears that I was in error when I said at the beginning of this blog that I knew nothing about Gerald Ford. Recently, my friend was quick to point out to me that she knew Gerald Ford and since I knew about that, then my original premise was false. Here is my official apology: Shannon, I forgot that you went to preschool with Ford’s granddaughter (daughter?) and I am so sorry. Forgive me? Hahaha.

Gerald Ford was a rather remarkable guy to read about due to the fact that he had many interests and worked for long years in the House of Reps. The author, Douglas Brinkley, gave us both good and bad and, this is what I liked, he tracked the metamorphosis that Ford’s reputation took over a lifetime in politics. And I have to say that, for the most part, Ford did just what he thought was right and that was that. For instance, he supported the Vietnam War in Congress, although most Republicans were pulling away from the Democratically-sustained fracas as quickly as they could. He pardoned Nixon because he decided it was right (although he got hell for it) and he attended the Helsinki Accords in the face of really violent domestic opposition.

I guess that the most controversial act of Ford’s career—and he had puh-lenty of those, let me tell ya—was the pardon of Richard Nixon. Brinkley describes what the Nixon White House was like with stunning accuracy. “Nixon’s desperate desire for reelection in 1972 didn’t surprise veteran pols like Gerald Ford. The ruthlessness of his tactics, however, reflected a mind-set so genuinely twisted that, when later revealed, it would shock the nation. For the time being, the very outrageousness of what was going on in the White House was simply too incredible to be suspected” (p. 42). Most people, especially from the mid-1970s, would have looked at that statement and agreed that Nixon should have stood trial for his copious crimes. When Ford took that away from them, they howled in horror and as one, the American people turned their unsatisfied fury on him. “The historian Barry Werth, in his fine book 31 Days, correctly deemed September 8 [when Ford pardoned Nixon] the ‘Day of the Avalanche.’ Hundreds of protest letters began piling up in the White House while the switchboard lighted up with calls running 8 to 1 against the pardon” (p. 68).

But was the pardon a truly bad idea? After several decades, it is easy to look back and pronounce judgment but I really believe that Ford did the right thing at the time and took the political fallout for sticking to his guns. Can you imagine what a bad precedent he would have set if he, as the president, had allowed the President of the United States to be sent to jail? I am in no way condoning Nixon’s atrocious behavior but Nixon in prison, only to satisfy our collective bloodlust, would have been a cruel blow to our constitutional framework. In fact, I can’t even imagine the repercussions of such an event. Nowadays, many historians, journalists and regular people, who remember the Watergate fiasco, are also convinced that Ford did the right thing by pardoning Nixon. After all, Ford was convinced at the time that if Nixon accepted the pardon, he was as good as flat-out saying that he was guilty. “Hearing that legal phrase caused him [Ford] to interject that according to the 1915 decision [Burdick vs United States], Nixon, by accepting the pardon, had admitted guilt in the Watergate cover-up” (p. 155).

Ford made his decision carefully. He could either allow the former president to be hauled before a court, tried and sentenced, or he could use judicial precedent to pardon Nixon and by doing so, give Americans a cathartic conclusion to Watergate and also allow us all to move on. Granted, I don’t think that even Ford was quite prepared for the viciousness that followed but he defended himself and his decision every chance he got.

Probably his greatest legacy as a president was the healing that America received not only from the pardon, but also from the official end of the Vietnam War. “For it was Gerald R. Ford who dissipated the pall of Richard Nixon, however controversially, and who shepherded the nation safely through to the end of the most divisive war while living up to the United State’s ensuing responsibilities to South Vietnam’s refugees. It was Ford whose help in forging the Helsinki Accords opened the way for the collapse of Soviet communism. It was Ford who acknowledged the seriousness of the global energy crisis and who conveyed the urgent need for cooperation to do something about it to the rest of the industrialized world, and whose careful fiscal policies cut inflation in half and boosted the US economy out of its direst fix since the Great Depression. And it was Ford who, purely by dint of coming across as a really nice, normal guy, restored Americans’ faith in the validity of their government” (p. 146).

That’s not a bad legacy, right?

PS. In my continuing quest for closure concerning JFK’s assassination, it’s only right and fair that I include Ford’s opinion on the matter. If you recall, he was a member of the Warren Commission and therefore was privy to all the important shit (sorry! The Big Lebowski reference) going around at the time. “Ford concurred with the Warren Commission’s overall conclusion that Oswald had acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy. As the final report on the investigation was being prepared, however, he contended that Oswald’s sole culpability could not be proved by the available evidence. Thanks to Ford, the Warren Report backed away from categorically stating that there had been no conspiracy to kill JFK” (p. 25). Of course, the wording of the report left the door wide open for conspiracy theorists. Here is what Ford had to say about Oliver Stone’s controversial movie, JFK. “’I’d like to tell you I never saw Stone’s ridiculous film,’ Ford said. ‘But I was flying from New York to Los Angeles on American Airlines, and what did they show? I had no choice. The film is filled with inaccuracies and omissions. It bothered me so much because it was so wrong. But what can I do about it? At some point, I was so upset with Oliver Stone I was tempted to challenge him to a debate. I had people on my staff who said, ‘All you’ll do is highlight the movie and he’ll get the benefit, etc.’ So I backed off’” (p. 25).