Don't overestimate the influence of the media. The '76 election was just over two years after Nixon's resignation, and in his first months in office Ford got to watch a catastrophic mid-term election and then pardoned Nixon. He took the office with an anchor around his neck and the general perception that he was an accidental president -- no one before or since took the office without winning a nationwide election.
He stumbled a lot, I think, because he didn't go through a presidential campaign before becoming president. He didn't have the practice at smiling for the camera, waving to the crowd, and walking down stairs at the same time. If you think that sounds easy, try it some time. Try it again where there might be ice on the steps and you're wearing dress shoes.
I'm not an exceptional klutz, but if I walk down an unfamiliar set of stairs without looking down, I'll bust my butt at least one time in fifty. If I had to do that twice a day every day, well, you do the math.
Ford got a reputation for being dumb because he spoke in a pretty monotonal and flat midwestern accent that went over well in Grand Rapids, but didn't play in the northeast. Again, lack of practice, because he'd never worked the rubber-chicken primary circuit. No one, not even Truman, was less prepared. That's not his fault, just the fickle finger of fate.
Ford was shoved onto the world's biggest stage with no script and no rehearsals, and the fact that the 1976 election was even close is a testament to the fact that he could improv, he could think on his feet and his straightforward honesty shone through.
As far as the Nixon pardon went, that counts for me as one of the great acts of political courage in the last half-century. He did the right thing for his country, though he had to know it would take a brutal toll on his own political prospects and those of his party. It's right up there with LBJ (and I know that comparison will raise some FR hackles) championing civil rights when he had to know he was pushing Southern votes away with a broom.
The caricature of Ford as a bumbler and a buffoon has less to do with Cronkite than with Chase. Chevy Chase. Ford took office at a post-Watergate time when trust in government and those who served in it was at its lowest ebb, and just at that time, along came a bunch of coked-up kids led by a Canadian to feed sharp satire to a hungry audience. Saturday Night Live might be a plodding relic today, but it was watercooler fodder in the mid-'70s. And, politics aside, they had an incredibly talented batch of actors and writers.
It's difficult, and delusional, to paint the Ford years in halcyon hues. He did not preside over our nation's brightest hours. But he got parachuted into an office he never sought, and landed chest-deep in Watergate, Vietnam, recession, a cynical press and an angry populace (or an angry press and a cynical populace -- works either way), and he pushed back the tide. He emerged with his honor and dignity intact, and in a limited time and a hostile environment he stanched the bleeding and limited the damage.
If Reagan was the surgeon who healed his country, is party, and his ideology, Ford was the paramedic who kept them alive until they got to the OR. It's only when such people are gone that we appreciate how important they were.
I think the main reason Ford lost in 1976 was that some disgruntled Republicans refused to support him, and the American people as a whole wanted to "believe" in the "smiling" Jimmy Carter of GA. They are always taking those false leaps of hope and will do so again in 2008, I predict.
"He stumbled a lot, I think, because he didn't go through a presidential campaign before becoming president. He didn't have the practice at smiling for the camera, waving to the crowd, and walking down stairs at the same time. If you think that sounds easy, try it some time. Try it again where there might be ice on the steps and you're wearing dress shoes."
Actually, per Joe Garagiola, President Ford had bad knees and that is why he fell sometimes. Garagiola was on one of the Fox news shows the other night, he and Ford were very good friends. He did not like that Chevy Chase made fun of Ford's stumbling.
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