Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford I INTRODUCTION Gerald Ford (1913-2006), 38th president of the United States (1974-1977), the only president not to be elected to either the office of the presidency or the vice presidency. He attempted during his 2.5-year term to restore the nation's confidence in a government tarnished by the Watergate scandal and an economy suffering from inflation and unemployment. After being defeated in his bid for election to the presidency in 1976 by Jimmy Carter, Ford retired to private life. He died on December 26, 2006. II EARLY LIFE Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 14, 1913. The same year his mother, Dorothy, left her husband (they divorced in 1914) and took her son to live with her parents in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At a church function, she met Gerald R. Ford, whom she married in 1916. Although he never formally adopted Dorothy's son, Ford gave her child his name--Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. That name became the future president's legal name in 1935. Ford, whom family and friends called Junior, worked in his stepfather's paint and varnish store, achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, and became star center for the South High School football team. Ford's skill as a football player won him a scholarship to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1931. While at Michigan, Ford was an average student but a star football player. After his graduation in 1935, both the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League offered him a contract. Instead, Ford entered Yale University to study law. To finance his studies, he signed on as the coach of the boxing team (although he had never boxed before), and as an assistant coach for the varsity football team. Ford graduated from Yale in 1941 and, after a short time in New York City, returned to Grand Rapids to open a law firm with a friend from the University of Michigan, Philip R. Buchen. However, the firm of Ford and Buchen was short-lived. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States declared war the next day. Ford enlisted in the U.S. Navy as an ensign, and after a short period teaching flight recruits, he was assigned to active duty. During World War II (1939-1945), he served on the light aircraft carrier Monterey in the South Pacific, where in 1944 a typhoon almost washed him overboard. At the end of the war, Ford was discharged as a full lieutenant. III EARLY POLITICAL CAREER Ford had joined the Republican Party before the war and had worked for presidential candidate Wendell Willkie in the 1940 election. Like his stepfather, Ford had generally disliked what he considered excessive government spending. He had also believed that the United States should not involve itself deeply in international affairs, a position called isolationism. When he returned to Grand Rapids from the war, however, Ford abandoned his isolationism and called for the United States to play a larger role in world affairs. The young lawyer supported the United Nations, the international organization of nations pledged to settle international disputes by peaceful means, and the European Recovery Program (called the Marshall Plan), a program of U.S. financial assistance to help rebuild European nations devastated by the war. Local Republicans, including U.S. Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan, urged Ford to compete in the Republican primary against U.S. Representative Bartel Jonkman, an isolationist who had represented Grand Rapids in the Congress of the United States for four terms. Emphasizing his war record, and capitalizing on the fact that Jonkman refused to campaign until it was too late, Ford easily won the 1948 Republican primary and was elected to Congress that fall. Immediately after the victory in the Republican primary, Ford married former fashion model Betty Bloomer Warren, whom he had met the previous year. The Fords had four children, Michael Gerald, John Gardner, Steven Meigs, and Susan Elizabeth. A United States Representative Ford represented his district in Congress for the next 25 years. During his tenure there, he opposed federal aid to education and housing, increases in the minimum wage, Medicare, and antipollution bills. Ford favored increasing the defense budget, and he usually voted for civil rights legislation. He also specialized in budgetary matters, serving on the House Appropriations Committee, which allocates money for specific government departments to spend, as well as on the subcommittee that appropriates funds for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the primary agency responsible for keeping the government informed of foreign actions that affect the United States. An astute student of the legislative process who easily made friends in both parties, Ford quickly rose through the congressional ranks. In January 1963 he was elected chairman of the House Republican Caucus; following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) in November of that year, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Ford to serve on the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, called the Warren Commission. In January 1965 Ford was elected the minority leader of the House of Representatives, making him one of the most influential Republicans in Congress. Twice during that period--in 1960 and in 1968--Republican presidential candidate and former congressman, senator, and vice president Richard Nixon of California considered Ford as a possible vice-presidential running mate in national elections. In 1960 the idea interested Ford, but Nixon did not choose him. In 1968 Nixon formally asked him to join the ticket, but Ford refused, hoping instead that Nixon's election would help bring a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. If that happened, Ford would become the Speaker of the House--the political office that Ford later wrote he truly wanted more than any other. Nixon's 1968 margin of victory was narrow, however, and the House retained a Democratic majority. Ford served as minority leader for five more years, supporting Nixon's domestic legislative program and the administration's Vietnam War policy. B Vice President Two political scandals changed Ford's life. The first occurred on October 10, 1973, when Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned rather than face trial on charges of bribery and income-tax evasion. Under the terms of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Nixon had to submit the name of a candidate for the vice presidency to Congress for consideration and approval. He was the first president in U.S. history to do so. Because Democratic and Republican leaders had informed Nixon that Ford was the only Republican of any stature who could be confirmed, Nixon named Ford on October 11 in a White House ceremony. After several weeks of testimony, both houses of Congress approved Ford's appointment, and he was sworn in as vice president on December 6, 1973. The second scandal to change Ford's career was the Watergate affair. On June 17, 1972, five men had been caught after breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Their arrest eventually uncovered a plan, sponsored by the White House, to spy on political opponents. An investigation revealed that a number of senior people in the Nixon Administration had been involved, including former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, White House Counsel John Dean, White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, White House Special Assistant on Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman, and President Nixon himself. In May 1973 the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Activities opened hearings and in a series of startling revelations, Dean testified that Mitchell had ordered the break-in and that the president had authorized payments to the burglars to keep them quiet. The Nixon administration vehemently denied these assertions. In March 1974 a grand jury indicted Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and four other White House officials for their part in covering up the Watergate break-in and referred to Nixon as an "unindicted co-conspirator." The following month Nixon released written transcripts of secret White House tapes from a recording system that had been installed in the president's office. The tapes, made before and after the original Watergate break-in, revealed the administration's extreme concern with punishing political opponents and hindering the Watergate investigation. Experts confirmed that an 18.5-minute gap on one tape was the result of five separate erasures. The missing minutes created suspicion that the president was trying to prevent something damaging from becoming public. In May 1974 Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski requested 64 more tapes as evidence in the criminal cases against the indicted officials. Nixon refused, but on July 24 the Supreme Court of the United States voted 8 to 0 that Nixon must turn over the tapes. At the end of July the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment, charging Nixon with misusing his power in order to violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, obstructing justice in the Watergate affair, and defying Judiciary Committee subpoenas. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. IV PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES Ford spent much of his eight months as vice president on the road, replacing the embattled Nixon at political affairs. By June 1974, however, Ford knew that Nixon would have to resign. Ford deliberately avoided any appearance that he was waiting for Nixon's resignation so that he could become president. On August 9, 1974, only moments after Nixon's resignation became official, Ford addressed the nation from the East Room of the White House, and announced, "Our long national nightmare is over." For the first month, both the press and the public seemed to enjoy the new president and his family, because they appeared to be a normal, middle-class family. Ford was shown making his own breakfast and taking laps in the swimming pool. His daughter Susan refused to stop wearing blue jeans in the White House, even after White House staff told her that it was improper. Betty showed both a refreshing openness and sense of humor. A Domestic Affairs Ford, however, immediately faced the same dilemma that other vice presidents before him had faced--how to set his political agenda apart from that of his predecessor. For the first few weeks Ford refused to fire any of Nixon's appointees in an effort to stabilize the presidency. However, if Ford had appointed his own Cabinet he may have been better able to establish his own style and program. Instead, Ford spent his first several press conferences answering questions not about his plans, but about the fate of Richard Nixon. The press wanted to know what Ford intended to do with the 250 reels of secret Watergate tapes still in the White House basement and whether Ford intended to pardon Nixon. A1 Pardoning the President On September 9, 1974, Ford pardoned Nixon for any "crimes he committed or may have committed." The pardon was the result of several weeks of negotiation between the Ford administration and Nixon, then living at San Clemente, California. Analysts have speculated that the president may have wanted to pardon Nixon to eliminate the problem of Watergate once and for all: Ford ordered his chief negotiators--his former law partner Philip Buchen, now the chief counsel to the president, and lawyer Benton Becker--not to drive too hard a bargain. As a result, the final pardon allowed Nixon to keep restricted access to the Watergate tapes and did not require him to apologize to the American people for his actions. Many observers suspected that the pardon, issued largely on Nixon's terms, had been arranged prior to the resignation. However, Buchen emphatically asserted that there had been no secret agreements made between Nixon and Ford. Nevertheless, the pardon ended any chance Ford might have had to establish his own presidency. His press secretary, Jerald terHorst, resigned rather than support the pardon. Confirmation of Ford's nominee for vice president, former New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, was held up for three months. Congress forced Rockefeller to publicly disclose his wealth and undergo a series of cross-examinations that many argued made it impossible for Rockefeller to be influential in the Ford administration. Ford himself was called upon to testify in October 1975 to a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee that was investigating the pardon. The first president since Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) to testify in person, Ford was clear to the committee: "There was no deal, period." Even this extraordinary appearance did not lessen press criticism of Ford, which had begun as soon as the pardon was announced. A large part of this criticism was extensive coverage of Ford's apparent clumsiness--he tripped and fell down the stairs of the presidential airplane in Austria, and was filmed several times falling down while skiing. Even two assassination attempts in 1975, both in California, failed to generate any substantial popular support for the president. A2 Legislative Problems Reaction to the pardon also prevented Ford from putting together a governing coalition in Congress. The 1974 congressional elections, held only two months after the pardon, gave the Democrats control over both houses of Congress. The new Democrats worked to obstruct Ford's policies and rid the government of any corruption. They were joined by members of the right wing of the Republican Party, who had never been very comfortable with either Ford or his policies. Ford's Republican opponents saw opposition to the pardon as an opportunity to move the party toward a more conservative candidate. They supported former California Governor Ronald Reagan who, by mid-1975, openly opposed the president and planned to challenge him for the 1976 presidential nomination. A3 Economic Difficulties Ford had the misfortune to inherit the weakest U.S. economy of the post-World War II period. He faced three major problems: rising inflation, unemployment, and energy use. Inflation had risen with government spending for social programs and the Vietnam War (1959-1975), as well as a dramatic rise in world oil prices after 1973. At the same time production decreased and unemployment began to rise, reaching 9 percent, the highest since the Great Depression of the 1930s. To attack inflation, he attempted to restrict spending on social programs and vetoed more than 50 bills. During his term, the annual inflation rate fell from 11.2 to 5.3 percent. To control unemployment, Ford tried to create jobs by cutting the taxes of upper-income people so that they would buy more goods, but he resisted demands for government-sponsored public works projects to create jobs. At first Congress blocked Ford's attempt to cut taxes and reduce government spending. However, in 1976 Congress passed what became the Tax Reform Act of 1976, which cut taxes even more than Ford had proposed. Ford signed the act, but argued that tax cuts that large would weaken the economy. World oil prices had increased after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) refused to export oil to Western nations friendly to Israel following the start of the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 between Israel, Syria, and Egypt. Congress also hindered Ford's attempt to deregulate the price of domestic oil, so that its cost would rise and perhaps reduce oil consumption and stimulate domestic production at the same time. Consequently, as oil prices increased, Ford was forced to rely on voluntary measures to conserve energy. The administration pleaded with people to cut their energy consumption. Citizens who signed a pledge agreeing to save energy were sent a button with the acronym WIN (Whip Inflation Now) in bright blue letters. WIN buttons were soon the object of jokes in the press, which saw them as the symbol of an administration that was incapable of dealing with the nation's problems. B Foreign Affairs B1 Vietnam War Ford also inherited the Vietnam War, in which Communist guerrillas attempted to overthrow the government of South Vietnam; the guerrillas were supported by the Communist government of North Vietnam. Eventually the struggle involved other Southeast Asian nations and the United States. By the time Ford became president, all U.S. fighting forces had been withdrawn from Vietnam. However, conservatives who were strongly opposed to Communism urged Ford to give more money to South Vietnam to help that country defend itself against a final North Vietnamese invasion that everyone assumed would soon occur. Ford agreed and offered several appropriations bills that would have given South Vietnam greater U.S. support. After the 1974 congressional elections, however, few members of Congress favored more aid to South Vietnam. Congress rejected the bills in 1975, despite conservative criticism that to abandon South Vietnam would reduce U.S. influence because other nations would be unable to rely on U.S. support. In an attempt to appeal to those who wanted to leave the problems of the war behind them, Ford offered amnesty to men who had evaded the military draft, or conscription, but the program was met with skepticism from Democrats and hostility from conservative Republicans. Only about 20,000 of the estimated 100,000 draft evaders applied for amnesty. In the spring of 1975 the North Vietnamese began what was to be the last offensive in the war. Only a small contingent of American security personnel and U.S. embassy personnel remained in Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, and in April 1975 Ford ordered their evacuation. On April 23, 1975, at Tulane University, Ford announced that the war in Vietnam was "finished as far as America is concerned." One week later, North Vietnam captured Saigon and the South Vietnamese government surrendered, ending the war. B2 Mayaguez Incident Perhaps because of the humiliation in Vietnam, the administration reacted quickly and strongly when Cambodian Communists seized an American commercial vessel, the Mayaguez, in the Gulf of Siam (Thailand) only 13 days after Ford's speech at Tulane. The 30 members of the crew were taken from the ship and held hostage. Despite the fact that U.S. intelligence services were not certain where the crew was being held, Ford ordered the bombing of the Cambodian mainland and an amphibious invasion of nearby Koh Tang Island. This show of force helped free the crew of the Mayaguez, but more Americans were killed in the operation than were rescued. Ford argued later that the rescue mission was a justifiable response to a nation taking U.S. citizens as hostages; others argued that it was overkill, designed to improve Ford's standing in the public opinion polls. B3 Cold War Ford's policies toward the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were also opposed by both Democrats and conservative Republicans. The most controversial issue was the Helsinki Accords, which recognized the existing frontiers between states, including those that separated West and East Germany. In return for this provision, which implicitly acknowledged Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, the USSR agreed to respect basic human rights, to ease travel restrictions both to and from and within the USSR, and to allow freer dissemination of information. Although newspaper reports charged the USSR with numerous human rights violations, including refusal to allow the emigration of Soviet Jews, Ford signed the accords, which he considered a political necessity. He personally attended the signing in Finland in August 1975. Opponents of Communism attacked the accords, accusing Ford of placing interests of the USSR over those of the United States. Even an accord halting the fighting between the Israelis and the Egyptians, signed in September 1975 and arranged by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, did little to stem Republican criticism of Ford's foreign policy. Ford also continued negotiations to return control of the Panama Canal to Panama, which further angered U.S. conservatives. C 1976 Republican Primaries Ronald Reagan, who opposed the Helsinki Accords, announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in the fall of 1975. Hoping to win favor from Reagan supporters, Ford then asked Nelson Rockefeller--who had been chosen in part to help the more conservative Ford win the support of Republican moderates--to withdraw from consideration for the vice presidency in the 1976 campaign, which Rockefeller did. However, the episode angered Republican moderates. In addition, the move did little to hinder Reagan's challenge. Reagan, a former motion-picture actor, had an engaging speaking style, but he did not appear to have a focused platform. He criticized the Nixon and Ford administrations and called for a general housecleaning in the federal government. Ford narrowly won the New Hampshire Republican primary in March 1976, but rather than withdrawing from the race, Reagan changed his tactics. He began to hammer at the Ford administration for its decision to pursue a Panama Canal treaty. Ford argued that such a treaty would prevent another Vietnam War in Latin America, which might occur if the United States were required to defend the canal. Reagan responded by arguing: "We built it, we paid for it, it's ours, and we are going to keep it!" Reagan's stance was a major factor in defeating Ford in the North Carolina and Texas primaries, but Ford's support in the Republican Party was sufficient. At the 1976 Republican National Convention, Ford narrowly won the nomination, and, on Reagan's recommendation, chose U.S. Senator Robert Dole of Kansas as his running mate. C1 Presidential Campaign Ford's primary fight with Reagan divided the Republican Party. The Democratic candidate, Jimmy Carter, a former governor of Georgia, held a huge early lead in public opinion polls. Carter sometimes changed his stance on issues to meet the political need of the moment. However, his statement that he would not lie to the American people and his comfortable style before the television cameras appealed to a public disillusioned by government scandal. Ford's campaign sputtered from the start, and he never decided on the message he wanted to send to the voters. The campaign also suffered from Ford's blunder in the second presidential debate. A tired Ford insisted that there were no Soviet troops in Poland; when offered the chance to correct himself, Ford refused to do so. It took almost a week for Ford to issue a clarification, which fed the perception that Ford might not be competent to be president. A record low voter turnout made the 1976 election the closest in decades. Carter won 50.1 percent of the vote to Ford's 48 percent. In the electoral college, Carter's margin was the narrowest since 1916, 297 votes to 240. Ford's campaign manager later said that the Nixon pardon cost Ford the presidency, citing poll numbers showing that 7 percent of Republican voters either voted for Carter or did not vote in protest. V AFTER THE PRESIDENCY After leaving office in 1977 Ford briefly served as an adjunct professor of government at the University of Michigan and was a founding member of the American Enterprise Institute (an organization in Washington, D.C., devoted to studies on public policy). He also served on the boards of many corporations, including Citigroup, Inc., and the Chase Bank of Texas. In June 1979 Ford published his memoir, A Time to Heal. He briefly returned to politics in 1980 when Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan approached Ford about serving as his vice president. After negotiating what seems to have come close to a copresidency arrangement, Ford agreed, only to have Reagan withdraw his offer after the press discovered the discussions. Ford retired to private life, dividing his time between homes in Rancho Mirage, California, and Beaver Creek, Colorado. In April 1981, Ford dedicated his presidential library on the campus of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; five months later, in September, 1981, he dedicated the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This made Ford the only president to have his library and museum reside in separate locations. In October 1981, at the request of President Reagan, Ford joined former presidents Nixon and Carter as the American representatives to the state funeral of slain Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. On that trip, Ford and Carter began repairing their personal differences. Eventually both men came to an understanding that they would speak at the funeral of the man who passed first; in this case, Carter would deliver a moving eulogy to Ford at his funeral in Grand Rapids. On August 11, 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded Ford the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. The end of Ford's life was marred by deteriorating health. In August 2000 he suffered a stroke, as well as actinomycosis (a tongue abscess). He was hospitalized several times in 2006 for pneumonia, and on August 25, 2006, he had a cardiac pacemaker implanted and underwent coronary angioplasty. Shortly before his death, Ford became disenchanted with the foreign policy of President George W. Bush, particularly that regarding the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In an interview given to journalist Bob Woodward shortly before his death, Ford was highly critical of Bush. Woodward released the contents of that interview immediately following Ford's death. Ford died on December 26, 2006, at his home in Rancho Mirage California at age 96. Following funeral services at his home parish of St. Margaret's Church in Palm Desert, California, his body was flown to Washington, D.C., to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol. In a testimony to Ford's career and character, his family arranged for the funeral cortege to drive through Alexandria, Virginia, where the Fords had lived through his congressional career. Upon his removal from the Capitol, Ford's casket also paused in repose outside the House and Senate chambers, honoring his service in those two institutions. Following a state funeral on January 2, 2007, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., Ford was buried the next day on the grounds of the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Contributed By: John Robert Greene Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.