We're now on the 37th day of my daily presidents threads celebrating the 250th anniversary of the USA.Today we have Gerald Ford (7/14/1913 - 12/26/2006), who served as president from mid 1974 after Nixon's resignation to 1976. Prior to being president he was a representative from Michigan. He also served in the Navy during WW2, and was a football star during high school. Notable actions or events during his presidency include Pardoning Nixon, the Federal Aid Highway Amendments of 1974, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, his two Assassination Attempts, the Rockefeller Commission, Kleppe v. New Mexico, the Helsinki Accords, the Mayaguez Incident, the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus, and Buckley v. Valeo.What do you think of the guy who fell down a lot?Link to previous thread>>18545682
He did very littleAnd that makes him an incredibly underrated president
>>18547065He paved the way for a very recent figure that fell down a lot too
>>18547069>He did very littleFor how short his tenure was, he did quite a lot. All the best of Nixon without the bad.
He did ok enough with a hostile and very left-wing Democrat Congress that rode into power off Watergate; he had more vetoes overridden than any other president despite not serving a full four year term.
>>18547226Ford had a difficult time convincing Congress to grant Nixon a presidential pension and Secret Service protection after he left office, they gave in only very grudgingly.
Ford was I think an honest and great man put into an unwinnable situation thanks to Nixon. He really wanted to move on from what Nixon had done and try to bring the country back together but the constant spectre of what had happened plus incessant media attention was making it hard for him to do his job. The pardon was as much born out of his desire to be able to get to work as it was his belief that putting the president on trial for a long time would be bad for everyone in an already inflamed period of time. Even critics from the time like Ted Kenney later conceded that he had in hindsight done the correct thing. But it did seem to set a precedent that the president was above the law which in recent history has been exploited wholesale. It was a whole damned if you do, damned if you don't situation where either option was bad so he went with the least bad one.He also wasn't helped by the christcuck right and their empty-suited champion Reagan doing everything they could to undermine him which led to him listening to guys like Cheney and Rumsfeld, dropping Rockefeller as VP for '76 and trying to move more towards the right to appease the Reagan Right which was against his own instincts and general beliefs. The flip-flopping on NYC may have cost him New York which lost him '76 which is a shame. Ford winning in '76 probably changes the last 50 years of American politics considerably by blunting the right-wing since 14 years of Republicans likely means a Democrat wins in 1980 which means Reagan misses his window which severely slows if not outright stops the rightward lurch of the GOP.
>>18547562You overestimate his impact. Plus it was during the gas crisis, things were very desolate then.
>>18547675It's more the reality of modern politics. Americans get antsy when one party is in control of the presidency for so long so a Ford when in 1976 means that come 1980 it would have been 12 years of GOP control (not 14, my mistake) over a sluggish/bad economy. A Democrat would have absolutely won in 1980 maybe he gets the credit for bringing things back if the economy recovers. Volker, if appointed Fed chair, was basically going off of Ford's WIN stuff after all. If that happens then no way does a Republican win in 1984 and Reagan isn't running in 1988 either. Carter's failures and 8 years of Reagan is what allowed the right-wing and supply side shit to take over the party so a Ford win in '76 changes things dramatically.Anyway Oliver Sipple, the guy who stopped the second assassination attempt on Ford, had his life ruined by it. Sipple had worked on Harvey Milk's campaign so Milk knew he was gay and shortly after it happened he went to a journalist to tell him as much so he and the "community" could parade him around as a big gay hero who'd saved the president's life. The journalist then wrote a column about it outing Sipple whose parents disowned him. This caused him to spiral into severe depression and alcoholism which and he eventually drank himself to death over it.Said columnist also said that Ford didn't invite Sipple to the White House because he was gay and Ford's eventual response decades later was that it was an absurd assertion. It's not like Ford would have known he was gay and Ford was generally pro-gay rights anyway.
The economy in '76 was however showing signs of recovery from the OPEC recession and inflation was down.
>>18547065Removed FDR's gay ban on owning gold.
>>18547419Nixon had no other income once he left office short of whatever savings he had and he had also been disbarred from practicing law in New York, but even if that hadn't happened he was very ill and near death and took two years to recover his health, so he couldn't work anyway. Congressional Democrats obviously did not want to give him a pension, but must have finally realized if they didn't then Republicans might do same to one of their presidents someday in retaliation.
>>18547065The only president that no one voted for
>>18548045Aside from Tyler, Fillmore, Johnson, and Arthur
He was a star athlete and remembered as a klutz because of a fabricated SNL parody although really that was on him, the moment that sketch aired he should have been playing pickup football on the White House lawn
>>18548102His "clumsiness" was slipping down some wet stairs because he was kind of rushed. Ford took it all in good humor and thought it was funny. He really just seems like he was a warm and even keeled grampa. Somehat old fashioned but you liked and respected him.
>>18547065he was a good president and a good man.
>Chase recalled "To be honest, I had nothing against Ford. I barely knew anything about him or his actual politics, but I was a young, liberal comedian and I just wanted to attack the first president to pardon Nixon. I eventually met Ford years later and he was about the nicest guy you could imagine."[32]
Last Republican presidential candidate to carry Marin County.
>>18547065>unelected president>turns out to be one of the nicest and least evil of the lotironic...
>>18547065Interesting fellow
>>18547907I still don't know how he expected to enforce this>yes, citizens of a free country, give up a large majority of jewellery, high value coinage, and teeth, you'd be CLASSIST... I mean UNPATRIOTIC if you didn't!
>>18548088They were elected as VPs. Ford was appointed VP after Agnew resigned
>During the US-Soviet summit meeting in Vladivostok in November 1974, Ford prodded Brezhnev about Soviet M-4 Bison long-range bombers. As he recounted in his memoirs, he said "This aircraft can fly from the USSR to Cuba nonstop without refueling." Brezhnev replied that that was nonsense. "Well, that's what our intelligence services told me it can do," Ford continued. Brezhnev furrowed his bushy eyebrows, looked visibly annoyed, and retreated into the adjoining room for a quick conference with his advisors. When he emerged, he said "Mr. President, I believe we know what our own aircraft are capable of."
>>18547065An interesting Ford related story...By the time VP Spiro Agnew was forced to resign, President Richard Nixon was already in trouble; and many (if not most) around DC suspected that he would be forced to resign.With the VP gone, Nixon had the right to nominate whoever he wanted to be the new VP; and if that person was confirmed, it was almost certain they would go on to be president (assuming nixon had to go).On the day Nixon made the announcement, he gave a speech which dragged out for as long as possible him naming a name. Finally, (at the 5:43 mark in this video), he gives the clue that let everyone know it would be Ford. Given the tension that was happening in DC at the time, the cheers which went up all around the world was mostly relief that the country was going to survive after all, because Nixon was picking someone respected and supported by everyone on both sides:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfxUuGtrs9A
>>18547065>and was a football star during high school.He was a star in college too. He won two national championships and received offers from the NFL
>>18547456>>18547065And Gerald Ford fell down a lot
>>18549419Ford was a handsome enough guy when he was younger that he was used as a model, along with his girlfriend at the time Phyllis Brown, for a Cosmopolitan cover in the 1930s.
