The Ascent of Gerald Ford

Photograph portrait of Gerald Ford, American flag in backjground
Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. / David Hume Kennerly / Color photograph on paper, 1974 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time magazine, © David Hume Kennerly

 

AMENDMENT XXV

Passed by Congress July 6, 1965. Ratified February 10, 1967.

Section 1.
In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Section 2.
Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

(affecting Article II, section 1 of the Constitution)

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The first time a vice president of the United States took the oath of office upon the death of a president was in 1841. John Tyler became president after William Henry Harrison decided to give his inaugural address in the cold and rain without proper attire for the weather. Harrison suffered a short illness and died one month after becoming president. Tyler was rebuked during his term and given the pejorative nickname, “his accidency.”

Tyler’s ascendency to the presidency was the first of nine times in our nation’s history that the vice president was called on to assume the chief executive duties. Four vice presidents have been elevated to the presidency because of the natural death of the president—John Tyler (Harrison), Millard Fillmore (Zachary Taylor), Calvin Coolidge (Warren Harding), and Harry Truman (Franklin Roosevelt). Four other vice presidents have moved to the highest office when presidents were assassinated—Andrew Johnson (Abraham Lincoln), Chester Arthur (James A. Garfield), Theodore Roosevelt (William McKinley), and Lyndon Johnson (John F. Kennedy). In each of these eight instances, the vice president had been elected to hold office and became president after the death of the elected president.

One man, however, became president of the United States without being elected to either the presidency or the vice presidency. That man was Gerald Ford.

Carroll Kilpatrick of the Washington Post wrote of August 8, 1974, the day Richard Nixon resigned, “Thursday was a wet, humid August day, but despite intermittent rain the crowds packed the sidewalks in front of the White House. It was an orderly crowd, resigned and curious, watching newsmen come and go and being a part of a dramatic moment in the life of the nation.”

If there was ever an unprecedented event in the history of the American presidency, this was it. The zenith of Richard Nixon’s power had passed less than two years prior to this ugly nadir. As Kilpatrick also noted, “Largely because of his breakthroughs in negotiations with China and the Soviet Union, and partly because of divisions in the Democratic Party, Mr. Nixon won a mammoth election victory in 1972, only to be brought down by scandals that grew out of an excessive zeal to make certain he would win re-election.”

In November, 1972, he had won his second term to the White House by sweeping George McGovern off the electoral map. After Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in October, 1973 due to a personal tax scandal, Ford was appointed vice president by President Nixon. At the time, the Nixon administration was also being investigated for the June 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters based in the Watergate Hotel.  Ford had barely warmed his chair in the vice presidency when Nixon resigned, overwrought by the massive Watergate fallout.

On August 9, 1974, Gerald Ford was sworn in as president of the United States; his path to the Oval Office had been anything but a traditional one. Addressing a joint session of Congress on August 12, Ford characterized the moment with a bit of humor, saying, “My administration starts off by seeking unity in diversity. My office door has always been open and that is how it is going to be at the White House. Yes, congressmen will be welcomed—if you don’t overdo it.” 

Among his most noteworthy acts as president, on September 8, 1974, Ford pardoned Nixon for any role in the Watergate crimes, stating, “It is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States.” Ford’s two and a half years in office were marred by high inflation and unemployment on the domestic front, while the United States continued to suffer difficulties in Southeast Asia.  He lost the 1976 election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

In 1999, Gerald Ford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died in 2006.

--Warren Perry, Catalog of American Portraits

Cited:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/080974-3.htm

http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/speech-3283

Douglas Brinkley, Gerald R. Ford (New York: Holt and Company, 2007).

President Ford: The Man and His Record. Congressional Quarterly, August 1974.