Gerald Ford’s Near Miracle of 1976

Thus Ford adhered to a “Rose Garden strategy,” which one staffer dubbed the “no-campaign campaign.” By tending to economic policy and diplomacy, he remained above the fray. He did practice hard for the debates, rehearsing responses to questions and closing statements, and when the first debate took place in Philadelphia on September 23, Ford was ready. As he strode onto the stage wearing a three-piece suit, the executive image was clear, and at 6 feet 1 inch tall with a football player’s build, Ford cut a more impressive figure than his slender, 5-foot-10 opponent. Carter seemed tentative during the debate while Ford appeared in command, criticizing the former Georgia governor for vacillation and vagueness. He set the tone with his opening line: “I don’t believe that Mr. Carter has been any more specific in this case than he has been in many other instances.”

Polls showed that viewers considered Ford the narrow winner and—more important—his strong performance sliced into Carter’s lead. Carter further damaged his campaign with an embarrassing interview in Playboy. The venue was unusual enough—a magazine featuring nude women—but Carter’s revelations raised even more eyebrows. Though deeply religious, Carter displayed an odd tendency to mix crude language with pious pronouncements. After openly discussing his faith, he used terms like “screw” and “shack up” to discuss sex and then admitted: “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”

Many Americans were shocked. While Carter had built his campaign around the post-Watergate yearning for honesty, this was too much. His words helped cast doubt upon the very character virtues that had brought him from political anonymity to his party’s nomination. He faltered in the polls, with one survey even showing him lagging behind Ford. Momentum—a critical factor in presidential races—was now on Ford’s side as he prepared for the second debate, focused on foreign policy, in San Francisco.

On paper, Ford seemed poised to dominate that contest. Whereas the former Georgia governor had no diplomatic experience, the president had traveled extensively overseas and could boast of arms-control negotiations with the Soviet Union, a first-ever presidential trip to Japan and the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which promoted human rights and greater freedom in the Soviet Union’s Eastern European satellites. But it was precisely that breakthrough that got Ford into trouble. Conservatives and Americans of Eastern European descent denounced the accords for allegedly ratifying the postwar Iron Curtain boundaries. Ford had grown defensive about those charges. When a debate panelist asked him about the Helsinki Accords, he reflexively hit back hard, proclaiming, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” Ford had meant to say that he “does not accept” Soviet domination over Eastern Europe, but he flubbed the line and overstated his case. After four agonizing days of media criticism, Ford apologized and retracted the remark.

The mistake proved costly. Cheney remembered the fallout began just after the debate, when he faced reporters. As he walked to a podium, journalist Lou Cannon of the Washington Post “hollered at me from the back of the room. He said, ‘Hey, Cheney, how many Soviet divisions are there in Poland?’ And I knew right then we were in trouble.” Whereas Ford had built a head of steam after the first debate, he stalled in the polls after the second.

The next contest—a historic first-ever debate between vice presidential candidates—also hurt. Dole the campaigner showed a slashing wit that earned him epithets such as “hatchet man” and “Doberman Dole.” He lived up to the billing in his October 15 debate with Mondale, coming across as caustic and making an unfortunate remark about 20th-century “Democrat wars,” implying that the two world wars and other conflicts were partisan. Dole’s poll numbers fell, and Carter began reminding audiences of the “Ford-Dole” ticket to stimulate growing doubts about the president’s running mate.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to