Ford, Gerald Rudolph

Ford, Gerald Rudolph (b. 14 July 1913). 38th US President 1974–7 The only unelected President of the USA, he was selected as Vice-President by Richard Nixon in 1973 following the resignation of Spiro Agnew. Born Leslie Lynch Key in Omaha, Nebraska, his name was changed to that of his stepfather after his mother moved to Michigan and remarried. He was a gifted football player who became assistant coach at Yale, and he graduated from Yale Law School in 1941. He served on an aircraft carrier in World War II in the Pacific, and after the war in 1945 returned to Michigan to practise law. He was elected to the US House of Representatives as a Republican in 1948, and became House Minority Leader in 1965. In 1973, upon the resignation of Spiro Agnew owing to accusations of tax evasion and bribery, President Nixon, himself in desperate need of shoring up support in Congress in the growing Watergate investigation, appointed the affable Ford as his Vice-President. When Nixon himself resigned ten months later, Ford became the first unelected President of the USA. Amongst his first acts as President following Nixon's resignation was to pardon his predecessor for any crimes which he might have committed. This act was deeply unpopular, and implicated Ford in the traumas of Watergate. Ford was also hurt by his inability to overcome the economic problems caused by the first oil price shock of 1973. This was not helped by his inability to get his fiscal proposals through Congress. In foreign policy, Ford presided over the end of US involvement in the Vietnam War in 1975. His campaign for re-election was damaged by a strong challenge by Ronald Reagan in the primaries, a campaign that bitterly divided the party. He narrowly lost the elections to Jimmy Carter. He retired in 1977 to California, where he helped his wife Betty to recover from illness, and alcohol and drug dependency, as well as pursuing various part-time businesses and academic jobs.