Gerald Ford

Former US president who entered the White House after the Watergate scandal without receiving a single electoral vote. Gerald Ford, who has died aged 93, will be remembered for exposing an extraordinary constitutional weakness unforeseen by the founding fathers of the United States. Having been a notoriously mediocre congressman, he went on to fill the country's two principal executive posts without the benefit of a single electoral vote.

When voters were eventually given a chance to legitimise his presidency in 1976, he became the first White House incumbent in 44 years to be thrown out of office. Opinion polls showed that a critical factor had been his decision, almost as soon as he succeeded his disgraced patron Richard Nixon, to issue the former president a "full, free, and absolute pardon for all offences against the United States" committed during the Watergate cover-up.

There has been endless speculation whether this pardon was part of a deal to persuade Nixon to abandon his rearguard fight against impeachment. Certainly there were well-attested, if tangential, discussions on the subject between Vice-President Ford and the White House chief of staff, Alexander Haig. But the consensus is that, even as his tenure crumbled, Nixon remained confident that his longstanding influence over Ford would stop him facing trial.

Ford had, in fact, not been Nixon's first choice as vice-president when Spiro Agnew was forced out of office in 1973 for corruption. The president wanted one of his closest political allies, former governor of Texas John Connolly, to take over, but he was warned of insuperable opposition in Congress where, under the unusual terms of the recently adopted 25th amendment, any nominee required confirmation by a majority in both houses.

So, after a review of a wide variety of candidates ranging from Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York on the Republican left to Senator Barry Goldwater on the party's right, Nixon settled for the minority leader in the House of Representatives.

He did so to ensure an easy confirmation - which he got. But, according to the former White House chief of staff HR Haldeman, Nixon also calculated that a House familiar with Ford's inadequacies would never risk presidential impeachment, since that would put Ford into the Oval Office. Henry Kissinger acknowledged in his memoirs that he made a similar judgment at the time.

Nixon and Ford had been politically associated since both were young congressmen in 1948. Alexander Butterfield - Haldeman's White House deputy who revealed to a startled Senate committee Nixon's habit of taping his conversations Ã³ reminisced in 1983 that the president had always had the minority leader totally under his thumb. "He was a tool of the Nixon administration, like a puppy dog. They used him when they had to - wind him up and he'd go 'arf 'arf."

He had been voted Republican leader in the House of Representatives in 1965, when one side-effect of Barry Goldwater's overwhelming presidential defeat was the chamber's largest Democratic majority since 1936. Amid the bitter faction fighting of extremely sore losers, Ford won by the slim margin of 73 to 67. As one of his colleagues phrased it, "there were fewer people mad at Ford".

Keeping people calm had been a pattern of Ford's life from his earliest years. When he was born in Omaha, Nebraska, his parents named him Leslie King. But they were divorced when he was still an infant and, after his mother had moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and married a paint salesman, Leslie's name was changed to that of his stepfather, Gerald Rudolph Ford.

He gave differing accounts of his feelings when he accidentally met his natural father at the age of 17 and discovered he had been adopted. At times he said it had not had any particular impact but at others he commented that he had felt very bitter comparing the affluent life of his natural father with the poverty of his upbringing in the Ford family. One theory to explain his famously compliant nature was that he tended to seek out father figures.

At the age of 18 he gained a football scholarship to the University of Michigan and ended his time there as the university's most valuable player. In 1935 he moved to Yale to work his way through its law school, graduating in 1941 just as America entered the second world war. He volunteered for the navy and spent most of his active service in the South Pacific.

After the war he resumed his legal career but with the clear intention of making his way in politics. In 1948 he stood for Congress in the third district of Michigan, gaining invaluable support in the Republican primary from the state's long-serving and influential Senator Arthur Vandenberg. Beating the sitting member by a margin of two to one in this solidly Republican seat, Ford was home and dry at the general election and was repeatedly re-elected as Grand Rapids' representative for the next 25 years.

He built up an impressive record of flat-earth conservatism. He voted against federal aid for education and housing, repeatedly resisted increases in the minimum wage, tried to block the introduction of medical care for the elderly, and consistently fought any measures to combat pollution. At the same time he supported virtually all increases in defence spending.

One of his few deviations from the classic rightwing agenda was to support Lyndon Johnson's civil rights legislation. But that did not save him from the presidential quip (later sanitised for a prissy American public) that "Gerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time".

Ford had a mixed record as minority leader. He was responsible for persuading between 140 and 190 wayward Republican members to vote the right way in a political culture where party discipline counts for little. Most of the time he delivered between 85% and 95% of them but, since the House had an overwhelming Democrat majority while he was there, his efforts had little practical impact.

He frequently showed an extraordinary lack of political grasp, attacking President Johnson for putting up interest rates without apparently understanding that the decision had been taken by the wholly independent Federal Reserve Board. And, at the time of the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, when the US already had 500,000 troops fighting in the country, he told an election strategy meeting that the White House's best response was "to Americanise the war".

He was also prepared to use crude political pressure to bend the constitutional separation of powers. When two of Nixon's conservative nominees to the Supreme Court failed their Senate confirmation hearings, Ford tried to impeach the liberal Justice William O Douglas in retaliation. After hearings lasting nine months, a Congressional inquiry found no substance in any of Ford's allegations.

Apart from the furore raised by the Nixon pardon, and a bungled assassination attempt by disturbed followers of the mass murderer Charles Manson, there was little to remember about Ford's presidency.

It looked briefly as if there would be a startling change of course when, just after taking office, Ford asked a conservative Democrat, John Marsh, to become his national security adviser. The offer was hastily withdrawn when the president was reminded that the formidable Henry Kissinger already held the job.

For the most part he retained his predecessor's key staff, and they carried on the Nixon administration's policies. The Helsinki Agreement was signed under Ford, but all the crucial groundwork had preceded him. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev invited him to a summit meeting in Vladivostok at which the two agreed to pursue further strategic arms limitation. But nothing concrete was achieved for years (and even then the Senate refused to ratify the agreement).

Domestically, Ford was faced with rampant inflation and the highest unemployment rate since the Depression. There was also an energy crisis caused by Arab oil countries cutting supplies after the 1973 Middle East war. At a world conference to consider the situation, Ford created international pandemonium by threatening to retaliate with an American food embargo, declaring that "throughout history, nations have gone to war over natural advantages such as water or food". But it was bluster: his administration did not go to war even to the mild extent of combating America's profligate use of energy.

The seal was finally set on his presidency in the 1976 campaign against Jimmy Carter. In one of their televised debates he offered the unbelievable judgment that "there is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe". It brought home sharply to his audience how slim was his understanding of the world he was supposed to lead. A few weeks later a virtually unknown Southern governor was heading for the White House to close one of the odder chapters of American history.

For a time after his defeat Ford remained surprisingly influential within the Republican party, and there was even a bizarre proposal at the 1980 convention for him to be Ronald Reagan's running mate so they could share the presidency. But that was a nine-hour wonder after which the country's 38th president retired to the Californian sunshine and academic footnotes.

In 1948, he married Elizabeth Bloomer Warren. The pain from a neck injury and the loneliness of being a political wife led to her becoming dependent on prescription drugs and alcohol. Her family confronted her about these addictions in 1978: she sought treatment, and four years later gave her name to the Betty Ford Center for drug and alcohol rehabilitation in Rancho Mirage, California. She survives her husband, as do their sons Michael, John and Steven, and daughter Susan.

"Gerald Ford, who has died aged 93, will be remembered for exposing an extraordinary constitutional weakness unforeseen by the founding fathers of the United States. Having been a notoriously mediocre congressman, he went on to fill the country's two principal executive posts without the benefit of a single electoral vote."

do these retards realize the Constitution has such mechanisms for in place for emergencies? I just wanted to post this to show how vile some newspapers are in representing President Ford's tenure in Office. God Bless you President Ford.

It is pretty sad. Really, why come down on Ford for stepping in? Anybody who stepped in would have done it without the benefit of a single electoral vote. The Constitution worked exactly as it was suppose to. He did his role and did what he thought was best for the country. Rest in Peace President Ford.

I just wanted to post this to show how vile some newspapers are in representing President Ford's tenure in Office. God Bless you President Ford.

I would expect no less from a news organization (the Guardian) with deep roots in the international Communist Party. No matter:

Gerald Ford was a very good and decent man whose quiet contributions to America were widely unappreciated during his Presidency. He not only helped to heal the psychic wounds of Watergate, but restored a sense of honor to an office he had not sought, but ably served.

For his decision to pardon President Nixon, Mr. Ford was publicly pilloried, hauled before a Congressional committee to explain himself, and perhaps even lost his office in the close election of 1976 as a result. In the fullness of time, most observers now accept that the pardon helped put the political trauma of Watergate behind us and forced the nation to look forward again. RIP.

Gerald Ford, who has died aged 93, will be remembered for exposing an extraordinary constitutional weakness unforeseen by the founding fathers of the United States.

Actually the whole affair revealed the STRENGTH of the Constitution! And later Ford lost to Jimmy Carter by all of one-tenth of one percent of the vote, which was surely a backlash from Watergate, pardon or no pardon (if you'll pardon the expression). Jimmy Carter would never have been elected under any other circumstances.

I agree about Carter. Not enough people know that, because of many minor party candidates and independent candidates, Carter won with only 49.95% of the vote. The last presidential election in which a Democrat received a majority of the vote was 1964.

Interesting that Ford who was the captain of the two time undefeated national champion Michigan Wolverines and turned down a chance to play in the NFL was portrayed as a klutz by some limp d*ck liberal Hollywood type.

If Bill Clinton had been water boy for Georgetown they would have called him a sports legend.

The hits just keep on comin'. What scumbags.

DUmmie FUnnies 12-27-06 (DUmmies Dance On Gerald Ford's Grave)
DUmmie FUnnies | December 27, 2006 | DUmmies and PJ-Comix
Posted on 12/27/2006 7:47:43 AM EST by PJ-Comix
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1758892/posts

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