Gerald Ford

I

Introduction

Gerald Ford (1913-2006), 38th president of the United States (1974-1977), the only president not to be elected to either the office of the presidency or the vice presidency. He attempted during his 2.5-year term to restore the nation’s confidence in a government tarnished by the Watergate scandal and an economy suffering from inflation and unemployment. After being defeated in his bid for election to the presidency in 1976 by Jimmy Carter, Ford retired to private life. He died on December 26, 2006.

II

Early Life

Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 14, 1913. The same year his mother, Dorothy, left her husband (they divorced in 1914) and took her son to live with her parents in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At a church function, she met Gerald R. Ford, whom she married in 1916. Although he never formally adopted Dorothy’s son, Ford gave her child his name—Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. That name became the future president’s legal name in 1935.

Ford, whom family and friends called Junior, worked in his stepfather’s paint and varnish store, achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, and became star center for the South High School football team. Ford’s skill as a football player won him a scholarship to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1931.

While at Michigan, Ford was an average student but a star football player. After his graduation in 1935, both the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League offered him a contract. Instead, Ford entered Yale University to study law. To finance his studies, he signed on as the coach of the boxing team (although he had never boxed before), and as an assistant coach for the varsity football team. Ford graduated from Yale in 1941 and, after a short time in New York City, returned to Grand Rapids to open a law firm with a friend from the University of Michigan, Philip R. Buchen.

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However, the firm of Ford and Buchen was short-lived. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The United States declared war the next day. Ford enlisted in the U.S. Navy as an ensign, and after a short period teaching flight recruits, he was assigned to active duty. During World War II (1939-1945), he served on the light aircraft carrier Monterey in the South Pacific, where in 1944 a typhoon almost washed him overboard. At the end of the war, Ford was discharged as a full lieutenant.

III

Early Political Career

Ford had joined the Republican Party before the war and had worked for presidential candidate Wendell Willkie in the 1940 election. Like his stepfather, Ford had generally disliked what he considered excessive government spending. He had also believed that the United States should not involve itself deeply in international affairs, a position called isolationism. When he returned to Grand Rapids from the war, however, Ford abandoned his isolationism and called for the United States to play a larger role in world affairs. The young lawyer supported the United Nations, the international organization of nations pledged to settle international disputes by peaceful means, and the European Recovery Program (called the Marshall Plan), a program of U.S. financial assistance to help rebuild European nations devastated by the war.

Local Republicans, including U.S. Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan, urged Ford to compete in the Republican primary against U.S. Representative Bartel Jonkman, an isolationist who had represented Grand Rapids in the Congress of the United States for four terms. Emphasizing his war record, and capitalizing on the fact that Jonkman refused to campaign until it was too late, Ford easily won the 1948 Republican primary and was elected to Congress that fall.

Immediately after the victory in the Republican primary, Ford married former fashion model Betty Bloomer Warren, whom he had met the previous year. The Fords had four children, Michael Gerald, John Gardner, Steven Meigs, and Susan Elizabeth.

A

United States Representative

Ford represented his district in Congress for the next 25 years. During his tenure there, he opposed federal aid to education and housing, increases in the minimum wage, Medicare, and antipollution bills. Ford favored increasing the defense budget, and he usually voted for civil rights legislation. He also specialized in budgetary matters, serving on the House Appropriations Committee, which allocates money for specific government departments to spend, as well as on the subcommittee that appropriates funds for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the primary agency responsible for keeping the government informed of foreign actions that affect the United States. An astute student of the legislative process who easily made friends in both parties, Ford quickly rose through the congressional ranks. In January 1963 he was elected chairman of the House Republican Caucus; following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) in November of that year, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Ford to serve on the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, called the Warren Commission. In January 1965 Ford was elected the minority leader of the House of Representatives, making him one of the most influential Republicans in Congress.

Twice during that period—in 1960 and in 1968—Republican presidential candidate and former congressman, senator, and vice president Richard Nixon of California considered Ford as a possible vice-presidential running mate in national elections. In 1960 the idea interested Ford, but Nixon did not choose him. In 1968 Nixon formally asked him to join the ticket, but Ford refused, hoping instead that Nixon’s election would help bring a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. If that happened, Ford would become the Speaker of the House—the political office that Ford later wrote he truly wanted more than any other.

Nixon’s 1968 margin of victory was narrow, however, and the House retained a Democratic majority. Ford served as minority leader for five more years, supporting Nixon’s domestic legislative program and the administration’s Vietnam War policy.