Gerald Ford

• Vice President to:       Richard Nixon - Republican
  
  
• Dates Served: Ford served as Vice President from 1973 - 1974, then as President till 1977.
  
• Political Party: Ford was a Republican, from Michigan.
  
• Born: 1913.
  
• Died: 2006, at the age of 93.
  
• The presidential opponent during his campaign was:
  
  
  • Nobody. Ford was appointed by Nixon after Spiro Agnew resigned as Vice President.
    
    
  
  
• Notable Facts about Gerald Ford:
  
  
  • Gerald Ford was born named Leslie Lynch King Jr. His parents divorced after three years of marriage and he never saw his father while growing up. His mother re-married the following year and her new husband legally adopted her son, changing his name to Gerald Ford when he was 3 years old, to match his own last name. Ford only saw his natural father twice as an adult and deeply resented his never having payed any attention to him while growing up. He died in 1941, never having made peace with his son.
    
    
  • Religious affiliation: Gerald Ford was an Episcopalian. He was a member of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Palm Desert, California. Public comments on his religious faith were rare.
    
    
  • Ford played a lot of football in High School and College, and upon graduating from College he was offered professional contracts by the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions, but he turned them both down in order to study law. He did, however, work as a football coach for 3 years before being admitted to law school.
    
    
  • Ford's first experience in politics was in 1940, when he worked on the Presidental campaign for the Republican candidate Wendell Willkie, who was campaigning against FDR that year. Willkie's campaign went down in flames, being buried under votes for FDR, but it gave the young Gerald Ford a taste of how politics worked, and he would come back for more later.
    
    
  • 2 years later, in 1942, Ford joined the Navy and was assigned to a flight-school in North Carolina as a physical fitness traniner. He was basically a PE Teacher for Uncle Sam. He was later assigned to an aircraft carrier in the Pacific and served in several battles in the Phillipines. After almost being swept overboard during a big storm, he was transferred state-side and was discharged in 1946.
    
    
  • After serving in World War II Ford practiced law for several years before being elected to the US House of Representatives, representing Michigan from 1949 - 1973. He rose to the position of House Minority Leader in 1965, a post he led until 1973.
    
    
  • Ford and Nixon became personal friends in 1940's during Nixon's term in the US House of Representatives, with Ford staunchly defending Nixon prior to his Checkers speech while running for Vice President with Eisenhower, and backing his campaign for President in 1960.
    
    
  • Ford served as one of the 2 House members on the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination. He was the last surviving member of that Commission when he died in 2006.
    
    
  • In 1970 House Representative Ford initiated a campaign to impeach one of the Justices on the Supreme Court who was accused of having ties to Organized Crime. During his efforts Ford was asked once what type of behavior warranted impeachment and if the Justice in question met the qualification. Ford's answer was one that would haunt him during Nixon's Watergate problems, saying, "An impeachable offense is whatever the majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment of history." He later insisted that this standard didn't apply to the President, arguing that convicting a President required more evidence than was required for a mere Supreme Court Justice.
    
    
  • Ever since being elected to the House, Ford's goal was to become Speaker. In 1973 he decided that after 24 years in the House his prospects of ever becoming Speaker were grim, so he decided to run for re-election once more then retire from public life, at age 60. Subsequent events would change those plans somewhat.
    
    
  • On December 6, 1973 Ford was selected by President Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew as Vice President, who had resigned 2 months earlier due to some tax-evasion problems he was having. Nixon was the first President to use the power provided by the 25th Amendment, passed only 6 years earlier. Prior to this, all Presidents who lost a Vice President, or ascended to the Presidency, remained without a Vice. Once elected, Ford continued his staunch support of the President.
    
    
  • Ford was to serve as Vice President for only 8 months. On August 9, 1974 at high noon, President Nixon resigned and within minutes Ford was sworn in. Afterwards Ford said "Our long national nightmare is over".
    
    
  • One month later Ford gave Nixon a full Presidential pardon for all crimes committed while in office. Nixon had yet to be indicted, but most of his closest advisors had been tried and sentenced to prison terms. The pardon freed Nixon from facing any legal consequences whatsoever, a fact that caused just about everyone in America to curse Ford's name. The White House Press Secretary resigned in protest. Ford's rationale was that the prospect of an ex-President going through lengthy criminal proceedings would be bad for the country, and that his resignation was punishment enough. Hardly anyone agreed with him, and he sealed his fate as a one-term President as a result.
    
    
  • Ford also pardoned General Robert E. Lee, posthumously, of charges of treason stemming from the Civil War.
    
    
  • 3 months later, in December, President Ford used the 25 Amendment again, this time to appoint his own Vice President. He selected former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, grandson of the industrialist John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller was a liberal Republican, which Ford felt balanced his views but which caused several coronaries amongst Right Wing Republicans. This was the only time that America was governed by 2 leaders who had never faced election, both having been appointed.
    
    
  • During his term as President, Ford developed a reputation for clumsiness, often bumping his head while exiting helicopters.
    
    
  • Ford was the last President that smoked a pipe.
    
    
  • In September of 1975 two different women tried to assassinate Ford (he was never accused of being a ladies' man):
    
    
    • Lynette Fromme, who'se nickname was "Squeaky" for some reason, was a 27-year-old follower of Charles Manson. On Sept. 5th, 1975, she dressed up as a nun and tried to meet Ford in Sacramento, California to discuss Redwood trees with him. When she couldn't get close to him she pulled out a gun and aimed it at him, but wasn't able to fire it before being tackled by Secret Service agents. She was sentenced to life in prison, and during her trial she threw an apple at the prosecuting attorney.
      
      Her life in prison hasn't been boring. In 1979 she attacked a fellow-prisoner with a hammer, and in 1987 she escaped from prison and spent 2 days trying to find Charles Manson, whom she still idolized. She was captured and, as of December, 2007, is still in prison.
      
      
    • Sarah Jane Moore was a 45-year-old radical Leftist revolutionary, a mother of 5 children, who had been married 7 times. She had issues with the president's politics and she expressed these by walking up to Ford on Sept. 22nd, 1975 in the St. Francis hotel in San Francisco and fired a single shot at him, missing his head by inches, due to a bystander grabbing her arm just before firing. She was sentenced to life in prison, but was released on parole on New Year's Eve, 2007, due to good behavior. At the age of 77.
      
      
  • Ford didn't think much of the Counter Culture and the hippies of the 1960's and '70s. He once said, "It's the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation. It's a quality to be proud of".
    
    
  • In 1976 President Ford tried to run for re-election. Rockefeller dropped out of the running, due to complaints from his own Party's Right Wing that he was too liberal, and Kansas Senator Bob Dole ran for Vice President on the ticket instead. Ford faced a campaign for Republican nomination against a strong campaign by California Governor Ronald Reagan, but beat out Reagan due to Ford getting the backing of ultra-Right Wing Barry Goldwater. The official Republican platform, however, was dominated by Reagan supporters and his agenda.
    
    
  • Ford debated Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter several times, and was helped by an embarrassing interview Carter gave to Playboy magazine, but Ford was unable to shake the stigma of his Nixon Pardon. He lost the election to Carter.
    
    
  • After loosing, Ford became a writer of memoirs, speaker at college campuses, and member of several Boards of Directors. He considered running for Vice President with Ronald Reagan in 1980 but decided not to. He appeared at public functions with several subsequent Presidents and remained a popular member of his Party for the rest of this life.
    
    
  • On November 12th, 2006, Ford became the oldest ex-president ever, surpassing the previous record set by Ronald Reagan. But it was a small margin: when he died later that same year, Ford had outlived Reagan by a mere 42 days.
    
    
  • Ford died on the day after Christmas, 2006, only one day after the singer James Brown died. Ironically, they both died of the same cause: complications from pneumonia.
    

Notable Events during his Vice Presidency:

• Ford's term as Vice President was dominated by the quickly escalating Watergate scandal. In July of 1974 the US House Judiciary Committee televised proceedings in which three Articles of Impeachment were accepted: Obstruction of Justice, Abuse of Power, and Failure to comply with Congressional subpoenas.
  
  
• Nixon knew that he faced certain impeachment and decided he didn't want to face the prospect. On August 9, 1974 he gave a televised speech in which he insisted that had done nothing wrong but announced that he was resigning as President anyway. He said he was doing so because "to continue to fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication would almost totally absorb the time and attention of both the President and the Congress in a period when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home". Nixon climbed into the Presidential helicopter, waved 2 "victory" signs with both hands, and then flew up and away from the White House lawn.