The passing of former President Gerald Ford was remarkably charitable. For someone who was never elected to either Vice President or President, and whose actions took years to be recognized as the right things to do, his death was marked with humble missives that glossed over his short and, at the time, not so remarkable Presidency.
Many people commented on his being a former athlete having no connection whatsoever to his frequent physical tumbles as President, more likely to happen if news cameras were turned in his direction. But his pardoning of Richard Nixon, which most likely cost him the next election, wasn't seen as a smart move until years later.
Gerald Ford moved into presidential retirement gracefully and offered quiet support to future presidents from both major parties. His counsel was sought far more often than one would think, given the bumbling character portrayed in the heyday of his presidency by Chevy Chase on NBC's Saturday Night Live.
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By: Douglas Brinkley
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The ?accidental? president whose innate decency and steady hand restored the presidency after its greatest crisis When Gerald R. Ford entered the White House in August 1974, he inherited a presidency tarnished by the Watergate scandal, the economy was in a recession, the Vietnam War was drawing to a close, and he had taken office without having been elected. Most observers gave him little chance of success, especially after he pardoned Richard Nixon just a month into his presidency, an action that outraged many Americans, but which Ford thought was necessary to move the nation forward.
Many people today think of Ford as a man who stumbled a lot--clumsy on his feet and in politics--but acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley shows him to be a man of independent thought and conscience, who never allowed party loyalty to prevail over his sense of right and wrong. As a young congressman, he stood up to the isolationists in the Republican leadership, promoting a vigorous role for America in the world. Later, as House minority leader and as president, he challenged the right wing of his party, refusing to bend to their vision of confrontation with the Communist world. And after the fall of Saigon, Ford also overruled his advisers by allowing Vietnamese refugees to enter the United States, arguing that to do so was the humane thing to do.
Brinkley draws on exclusive interviews with Ford and on previously unpublished documents (including a remarkable correspondence between Ford and Nixon stretching over four decades), fashioning a masterful reassessment of Gerald R. Ford?s presidency and his underappreciated legacy to the nation.
By: Thomas M. DeFrank
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In an extraordinary series of private interviews, conducted over sixteen years with the stipulation that they not be released until after Ford's death, the thirty-eighth president of the United States reveals a profoundly different side of himself: funny, reflective, gossipy, strikingly candid-and the stuff of headlines.
In 1974, award-winning journalist and author Thomas DeFrank, then a young correspondent for Newsweek, was interviewing Vice President Gerald R. Ford when Ford blurted out something astonishingly indiscreet related to the White House, came around his desk, grabbed DeFrank's tie, and told the reporter he could not leave the room until he promised not to publish it. "Write it when I'm dead," he said-and that agreement formed the basis for their relationship for the next thirty-two years.
During that time, they talked frequently, but from 1991 to shortly before Ford's death in 2006, the interviews became something else-conversations between two men in which Ford talked in a way few presidents ever have. Here is the real Ford on his relationship with Richard Nixon (including the 1974 revelation that, in DeFrank's words, "will alter what history thinks it knows about the events that culminated in Ford's becoming president"); Ford's experiences on the Warren Commission; his complex relationships with Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter; his startling, never-before-disclosed discussions with Bill Clinton during the latter's impeachment process; his opinions about both Bush administrations, the Iraq war, and many contemporary political figures; and much more. Here also are unguarded personal musings: about key cultural events; his own life, history, and passions; his beloved wife, Betty; and the frustrations of aging.
In all, it is an unprecedented book: illuminating, entertaining, surprising, heartwarming, and, in many ways, historic.
By: David Hume Kennerly
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"I assume the presidency under extraordinary circumstances."
?President Gerald R. Ford, August 9, 1974
Gerald R. Ford stepped into the American presidency during a constitutional crisis that many believed was the country's worst since the Civil War.
Extraordinary Circumstances is a stunning collection of behind-closed-doors images by President Ford's personal photographer, David Hume Kennerly. Seen here are intimate scenes of the inner workings of the White House; Ford's family and much-beloved wife Betty; and many of the twentieth-century's most compelling and elusive figures, including Queen Elizabeth II, Leonid Brezhnev, Emperor Hirohito, Deng Xioping, Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin, Richard Nixon, Andy Warhol, and George Harrison.
The book follows Gerald Ford from the day President Nixon appointed him as vice president through the tumultuous early crises of his presidency, including his controversial pardon of Nixon, the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and his wife Betty's breast cancer, to the end of his presidency after losing to Jimmy Carter.
Adding depth and perspective to the photos are excerpts from exclusive interviews with President Ford, President Jimmy Carter, President George H. W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Alan Greenspan, and other prominent members of the Ford administration.
Extraordinary Circumstances is sponsored and published by the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, the home of the David Hume Kennerly Photographic Archive. It features an introduction by NBC's Tom Brokaw and an overview of Ford's life by famed historian Richard Norton Smith.
By: Yanek Mieczkowski
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For many Americans, Gerald Ford evokes an image of either an unelected president who abruptly pardoned his corrupt predecessor or an accident-prone klutz who failed to provide skilled leadership. In Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s, Yanek Mieczkowski reexamines Ford's two and a half years in office, showing that his presidency successfully confronted the most vexing crisis of postwar era.
Viewing the 1970s primarily through the lens of economic events, Mieczkowski argues that Ford's understanding of the national economy was better than any modern president, that he oversaw a dramatic reduction of inflation, and that he attempted to solve the energy crisis with judicious policies.
Throughout his presidency, Ford labored under the legacy of Watergate. Democrats scored landslide victories in the 1974 midterm elections, and within an anemic Republican Party, the right wing challenged Ford's leadership, even as pundits predicted the GOP's death. Yet Ford reinvigorated the party and fashioned a 1976 campaign strategy against Jimmy Carter that brought him from thirty points behind to a dead heat on election day.
Mieczkowski draws on numerous personal interviews with former President Ford, cabinet officials, and members of the Ninety-fourth Congress, and he skillfully weaves into his discussion such 1970s cultural phenomena as the spoofs about the president on Saturday Night Live. The first major work on Ford to appear in more than a decade, Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s combines the best of biography and presidential history to paint an intriguing portrait of a president, his times, and his legacy.
By: James Cannon
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Gerald Ford came to the presidency at the time of one of our nation's greatest constitutional crises, the downfall of President Richard M. Nixon in the aftermath of the Watergate affair. His service as president concluded a distinguished career in the House of Representatives during which he served as leader of the Republican Party in the House. With unrestricted access to Gerald Ford's papers, James M. Cannon tells the story of Ford's rise and Nixon's ruin, providing new insights into this troubling period of our history and Ford's role in guiding the nation through it. Cannon tells the story of Ford's difficult early life and the beginnings of his career in politics in the period immediately after World War II. He tells the story of Ford's rise to prominence in the House of Representatives during the 1950s and 1960s, giving us a fascinating picture of the Congress. In addition, in telling us about the personal life of Gerald Ford, he gives us a sense of the price Ford paid for his success.
"James Cannon, formerly national affairs editor at Newsweek and Ford's domestic policy advisor, has written a superbly provocative and arresting biography that traces Ford's life from his July 4, 1913, birth in Omaha, Nebraska, to his September 8,1974, decision to pardon Nixon of the Watergate conspiracy." --Washington Post Book World
James M. Cannon is a journalist and was Domestic Policy Adviser to President Ford and Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker.
A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford
By: Gerald R. Ford
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CUSTOMER REVIEW:
A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Geral R. Ford
Having lived through the turbolent sixties and the Watergate era, I was able to more fully appreciate what a great leader Gerald Ford was. He was not a flashy person, but he was steady and calm. He restored a sense of calmness and reliability to a hurting nation.
By: Graeme S. Mount
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On August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigns because of criminal activity in connection with Watergate and flies to California. At noon that day, Gerald R. Ford becomes the 38th president of the United States.
It was left to Gerald Ford to heal a war-torn and scandal-ridden nation and to restore credibility to the presidency in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam. Few presidents have ever been asked to achieve so much in so little time against such great adversity.
In the 895 days that made up his term in office, he would deal with South Vietnam, North Korea, the Helsinki Accord, Cuba, the operational transfer of the Panama Canal, the death of Franco, the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia, public outrage at CIA misdeeds, the US Bicentennial, and Operation Paul Bunyan, a reassurance to South Koreans and a warning to North Koreans.
It is Graeme Mount's belief that developments that changed the world took place when President Ford led the United States. In some of these, he was an instigator; in some, he reacted to events precipitated by others.
Making extensive use of the Gerald Ford Presidential Library, both the archives and the museum, Mount examines the very documents produced by President Ford, members of his cabinet, and the White House staff and through that examination offers a window on the world between August 1974 and January 1976 that provides new insights into a troubling period of US history and Ford's role in guiding the nation through it.
Historian Graeme Mount is the author of some 13 books, including Chile and the Nazis (Black Rose, 2002) and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of Korea (Black Rose, 2004). He has, as well, written extensively on US/Canadian relations in An Introduction to Canadian-American Relations and Invisible and Inaudible in Washington.
By: Mike Venezia
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Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency
By: Jerald F. Terhorst
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By: Barry Werth
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In 31 Days, acclaimed historian Barry Werth takes readers inside the White House during the tumultuous days of August 1974, following Richard Nixon's resignation and the swearing-in of America's "accidental president," Gerald Ford.
The Watergate scandal had torn the country apart. In a dramatic, day-by-day account of the new administration?s inner workings, Werth shows how Ford, caught between political expedience, the country?s demands for justice, and his own moral compass, struggled valiantly to restore the nation?s tarnished faith in its leadership. With deft and refreshing analysis Werth illuminates how this unprecedented political upheaval produced new fissures and battle lines, as well as new opportunities for political advancement for ambitious young men such as Donald Rumsfeld, who had been Nixon?s ambassador to NATO, and Dick Cheney, already coolly efficient as Rumsfeld?s former deputy. A superbly crafted presidential history with all of the twists and turns of a thriller, 31 Days sheds new light on the key players and political dilemmas that reverberate in today?s headlines.
• Fox in henhouse
Vancouver Sun October 13, 2008 The fox has been in the financial henhouse all along Henry Paulson is one of the guys who got us into this mess, now he?s in charge of the bailout Janet Bagnall, Canwest News Service Contemplating the wreckage of the mutual fund from which my paltry savings are seeping into oblivion is not a cheerful exercise. I don?t feel better for knowing there are millions of us in the same boat. Or for knowing that U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is going to w
• Black Dems endorse slate
Black Dems endorse slate October 14 The Black Democrats of Westchester announced its slate of endorsements. They include: President-Vice President: Barack Obama and Joe Biden. U.S. Congress: Eliot Engel and Nita Lowey. New York State Senate: Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Ruth Hassell-Thompson and Jeffrey Klein. New York State Assembly: James Gary Pretlow and Michael Spano. In a letter signed by David Ford, Sr., chairman of the organization, he said it would be working with voters throughou
• Tina Fey ?SNL? Spoofs ?Ruining Sarah Palin Political Career?
Comedienne Tina Fey?s popular spoofs of Governor Sarah Palin for Saturday Night Live are being blamed for the Republican party?s slip in the polls as the nation gears up for the 2008 presidential election. According to a recent poll by The Washington Times, the ?Tina Fey effect? is responsible for turning supporters off the GOP?s race for The White House and destroying Sarah Palin?s reputation in the process. ?Presidential impersonators do influence elections, and in this one, Tina Fey is w
• Palin falls prey to fey
[Quote:] Not since Chevy Chase made many viewers perceive Gerald Ford as a clumsy stooge has a television impersonation been credited with altering the political narrative to such a degree, said John Pitney Jr., a professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College. ?The parodies may have done a bit of damage. People remember Gerald Ford through the prism of Chevy Chase,? he said. ?Ford was among our most athletic presidents, and he had a wide-ranging knowledge of public-policy issue
• ?We?ve all learned a terrible lesson.?
Agency?s ?04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt10/2/08By STEPHEN LABATONThe New York TimesCopyright 2008?We have a good deal of comfort about the capital cushions at these firms at the moment.? ? Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, March 11, 2008.As rumors swirled that Bear Stearns faced imminent collapse in early March, Christopher Cox was told by his staff that Bear Stearns had $17 billion in cash and other assets ? more than enough to weather the storm.Drained o
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