Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s
scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president
in America’s history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was
93.
Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two
heart treatments – including an angioplasty – in August at the Mayo
Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald
Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in
Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.
Ford was an accidental president, Nixon’s hand-picked
successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a
national ticket. He was as open and straight-forward as Nixon was
tightly-controlled and conspiratorial.
Ford was an accidental president, Nixon’s hand-picked
successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a
national ticket. He was as open and straight-forward as Nixon was
tightly controlled and conspiratorial.
He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and
declared “our long national nightmare is over.” But he revived the
debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he
committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost
Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later
years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.
The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his
presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the
end neared, Ford said: “Today, America can regain the sense of pride
that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a
war that is finished as far as America is concerned.” Evoking Abraham
Lincoln, he said it was time to “look forward to an agenda for the
future, to unify, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first
unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who
also was forced from office by scandal.
He was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.
Even after two women tried separately to kill him, the presidency of Jerry Ford remained open and plain.
Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.