Ford, Gerald

Ford, Gerald (1913–2006), thirty‐eighth president of the United States.Born Leslie L. King Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska, Ford moved with his mother, Dorothy, to her hometown, Grand Rapids, Michigan, following the breakup of her marriage in 1915. There Dorothy married Gerald R. Ford, a local merchant, who adopted her son and gave him his name. Young Ford excelled at sports and in the classroom. Graduating in 1935 from the University of Michigan, where he starred as a lineman on the football team, Ford attended Yale Law School before serving as a naval officer in the Pacific during World War II. He entered politics as a Republican in 1948, winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. That year he married Betty Warren, a Grand Rapids native.

Known as a conservative in fiscal matters, a moderate on social issues, and an internationalist in foreign policy, Ford initiated no major legislation during his long tenure in the House. Though he rose through Republican ranks to become minority leader in 1965, his true ambition—to be Speaker of the House—remained elusive, despite Republican presidential victories in 1968 and 1972. With Democrats firmly in control of Congress, Ford considered retirement from politics; but a series of Republican scandals altered his plans. In October 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned from office amid charges of bribery and tax fraud. President Richard M. Nixon, facing investigation himself in the unfolding Watergate drama, nominated the popular and easily confirmable Ford to succeed Agnew under the Twenty‐fifth Amendment. When Nixon resigned in August 1974 to stave off impeachment, Gerald Ford became president.

Americans appeared ready for an honest leader with decent values and an ordinary touch. As the new president joked, “I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln”. Yet he, too, became enmeshed in the Watergate morass by granting Nixon a “full, free, and absolute pardon” in the hope of ending this “national nightmare”. Within days, his public approval rating dropped from 72 to 49 percent.

He also faced a bleak economic picture. As energy costs spiraled, unemployment and inflation reached the highest levels in years. Believing a balanced federal budget essential to recovery, Ford proposed sizeable cuts in government programs. But the Democratic Congress called for increased federal spending to spur the economy and create new jobs. As a result, Ford vetoed more than sixty major bills during his short tenure in office.

In foreign affairs, he sought unsuccessfully to extend emergency aid to the government of South Vietnam, which fell to the Communists in 1975. In May 1975, demonstrating American willpower after the Vietnam debacle, Ford ordered the Marines to free the crew of the Mayagüez, a U.S. merchant vessel siezed by Cambodia. The mission succeeded, but at a cost of forty‐one Marines’ lives. More broadly, he worked to maintain the policy of détente begun by Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who remained as secretary of state. Aspiring to win the White House on his own, Ford, at the 1976 Republican National Convention, narrowly beat back a challenge from conservative Ronald Reagan. In the general election he faced Democrat Jimmy Carter, who portrayed himself as an “outsider” with no ties to the Washington “establishment”. The media, meanwhile, caught Ford in a series of bumbling accidents and misstatements, such as his insistence that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”. On election day, Carter narrowly won.

Gerald Ford restored confidence and integrity to a badly damaged presidential office. In addition, his domestic policies laid the groundwork for the conservative Republican presidential administrations of the 1980s.
See also Cold War; Energy Crisis of the 1970s; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: House of Representatives; Republican Party; Vietnam War.

Bibliography

Gerald R. Ford , A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford, 1979.
A. James Reichley , Conservatives in an Age of Change: The Nixon and Ford Administrations, 1981.

David M. Oshinsky