Gerald Ford

B

Vice President

Two political scandals changed Ford’s life. The first occurred on October 10, 1973, when Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned rather than face trial on charges of bribery and income-tax evasion. Under the terms of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Nixon had to submit the name of a candidate for the vice presidency to Congress for consideration and approval. He was the first president in U.S. history to do so. Because Democratic and Republican leaders had informed Nixon that Ford was the only Republican of any stature who could be confirmed, Nixon named Ford on October 11 in a White House ceremony. After several weeks of testimony, both houses of Congress approved Ford’s appointment, and he was sworn in as vice president on December 6, 1973.

The second scandal to change Ford's career was the Watergate affair. On June 17, 1972, five men had been caught after breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Their arrest eventually uncovered a plan, sponsored by the White House, to spy on political opponents. An investigation revealed that a number of senior people in the Nixon Administration had been involved, including former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, White House Counsel John Dean, White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, White House Special Assistant on Domestic Affairs John Ehrlichman, and President Nixon himself.

In May 1973 the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Activities opened hearings and in a series of startling revelations, Dean testified that Mitchell had ordered the break-in and that the president had authorized payments to the burglars to keep them quiet. The Nixon administration vehemently denied these assertions.

In March 1974 a grand jury indicted Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and four other White House officials for their part in covering up the Watergate break-in and referred to Nixon as an “unindicted co-conspirator.” The following month Nixon released written transcripts of secret White House tapes from a recording system that had been installed in the president’s office. The tapes, made before and after the original Watergate break-in, revealed the administration’s extreme concern with punishing political opponents and hindering the Watergate investigation. Experts confirmed that an 18.5-minute gap on one tape was the result of five separate erasures. The missing minutes created suspicion that the president was trying to prevent something damaging from becoming public.

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In May 1974 Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski requested 64 more tapes as evidence in the criminal cases against the indicted officials. Nixon refused, but on July 24 the Supreme Court of the United States voted 8 to 0 that Nixon must turn over the tapes. At the end of July the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment, charging Nixon with misusing his power in order to violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, obstructing justice in the Watergate affair, and defying Judiciary Committee subpoenas. Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.

IV

President of the United States

Ford spent much of his eight months as vice president on the road, replacing the embattled Nixon at political affairs. By June 1974, however, Ford knew that Nixon would have to resign. Ford deliberately avoided any appearance that he was waiting for Nixon’s resignation so that he could become president. On August 9, 1974, only moments after Nixon’s resignation became official, Ford addressed the nation from the East Room of the White House, and announced, “Our long national nightmare is over.”

For the first month, both the press and the public seemed to enjoy the new president and his family, because they appeared to be a normal, middle-class family. Ford was shown making his own breakfast and taking laps in the swimming pool. His daughter Susan refused to stop wearing blue jeans in the White House, even after White House staff told her that it was improper. Betty showed both a refreshing openness and sense of humor.

A

Domestic Affairs

Ford, however, immediately faced the same dilemma that other vice presidents before him had faced—how to set his political agenda apart from that of his predecessor. For the first few weeks Ford refused to fire any of Nixon’s appointees in an effort to stabilize the presidency. However, if Ford had appointed his own Cabinet he may have been better able to establish his own style and program. Instead, Ford spent his first several press conferences answering questions not about his plans, but about the fate of Richard Nixon. The press wanted to know what Ford intended to do with the 250 reels of secret Watergate tapes still in the White House basement and whether Ford intended to pardon Nixon.

A

1

Pardoning the President

On September 9, 1974, Ford pardoned Nixon for any “crimes he committed or may have committed.” The pardon was the result of several weeks of negotiation between the Ford administration and Nixon, then living at San Clemente, California. Analysts have speculated that the president may have wanted to pardon Nixon to eliminate the problem of Watergate once and for all: Ford ordered his chief negotiators—his former law partner Philip Buchen, now the chief counsel to the president, and lawyer Benton Becker—not to drive too hard a bargain.

As a result, the final pardon allowed Nixon to keep restricted access to the Watergate tapes and did not require him to apologize to the American people for his actions. Many observers suspected that the pardon, issued largely on Nixon’s terms, had been arranged prior to the resignation. However, Buchen emphatically asserted that there had been no secret agreements made between Nixon and Ford.

Nevertheless, the pardon ended any chance Ford might have had to establish his own presidency. His press secretary, Jerald terHorst, resigned rather than support the pardon. Confirmation of Ford’s nominee for vice president, former New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, was held up for three months. Congress forced Rockefeller to publicly disclose his wealth and undergo a series of cross-examinations that many argued made it impossible for Rockefeller to be influential in the Ford administration. Ford himself was called upon to testify in October 1975 to a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee that was investigating the pardon. The first president since Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) to testify in person, Ford was clear to the committee: “There was no deal, period.”

Even this extraordinary appearance did not lessen press criticism of Ford, which had begun as soon as the pardon was announced. A large part of this criticism was extensive coverage of Ford’s apparent clumsiness—he tripped and fell down the stairs of the presidential airplane in Austria, and was filmed several times falling down while skiing. Even two assassination attempts in 1975, both in California, failed to generate any substantial popular support for the president.

A

2

Legislative Problems

Reaction to the pardon also prevented Ford from putting together a governing coalition in Congress. The 1974 congressional elections, held only two months after the pardon, gave the Democrats control over both houses of Congress. The new Democrats worked to obstruct Ford’s policies and rid the government of any corruption. They were joined by members of the right wing of the Republican Party, who had never been very comfortable with either Ford or his policies. Ford’s Republican opponents saw opposition to the pardon as an opportunity to move the party toward a more conservative candidate. They supported former California Governor Ronald Reagan who, by mid-1975, openly opposed the president and planned to challenge him for the 1976 presidential nomination.

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