Gerald Ford’s Near Miracle of 1976

As Election Day neared, perhaps the biggest blow to Ford’s prospects came from the faltering economy. Late in the summer, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, warned Ford that the economy would “pause” in rebounding from the recession, a normal economic hiccup but one that would slow the rate of recovery. By early fall, the pause had arrived, and in October, when September’s jobless statistics came out, the news was bleak, with unemployment at 7.8 percent. During the third and final presidential debate in Williamsburg, Va., Carter pounded away at economic themes, blaming Ford for “the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression.” Still, the president pointed to the nation’s overall economic recovery, including substantially lower inflation.

During the last 10 days before the election, the Ford campaign unleashed a massive advertising blitz and, by November 2, Ford had pulled even with Carter in the polls. It was one of the greatest political comebacks in history.

But, on Election Day, as Cheney flew home with the president, “All the way across the country, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky,” he recalled. “I mean, it was just brilliant sunshine. And that meant we were going to get high voter turnout in a lot of the cities in the Democratic areas. So by the time we landed, I was concerned.” After watching returns late into the evening, Ford went to bed at 2 a.m., knowing Carter’s position was better than his.

Ford awoke the next morning to find he had lost to Carter by just 57 electoral votes and two points in the popular vote, 50 to 48 percent. He had won more states than Carter, 27 to 23, but, in addition to capturing the Democratic Northeast, Carter swept his native South, which Republicans had started to count as a stronghold during the 1960s. Carter also won more than 90 percent of African-American ballots, which proved a decisive margin.

Ford’s comeback effort “came very, very close—almost pulled it out,” Cheney later said. “I always felt good about the campaign because I felt like we gave it our best shot and that it was an uphill climb from the very beginning—partly because you had the Nixon pardon in the background and it was the first presidential campaign after Watergate. We were carrying all that baggage.”

The 1976 election reflected the country’s disillusionment after Watergate and telegraphed a trend. The scandal was the sword hanging over the election, and polls showed that by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans considered Ford’s pardon of Nixon wrong. That especially hurt Ford in Republican areas. Spencer reported “post-election studies showed that basically 7 percent of the Republicans in America couldn’t forgive Ford for pardoning Dick Nixon. That’s a big hunk of your base.” Watergate also made voters more leery of Washington’s professional politicians. In every election since Watergate, except for George H.W. Bush in 1988, the winner has come from outside the Beltway, typically a governor touting executive experience.

After leaving office, Ford often pointed to the Nixon pardon as the decisive factor in his defeat. However, had he not pardoned Nixon, he might have faltered sooner. A Nixon trial would have certainly stretched into 1976, keeping the disgraced president in the headlines and reminding Americans of Ford’s association with him—which might have tipped the balance in Reagan’s favor for the GOP nomination. Instead, the more moderate Ford prevailed, and in doing so helped rehabilitate the party. During Watergate’s darkest days, just 18 percent of voters identified themselves as Republicans, prompting Newsweek to wonder whether the GOP was “slowly and painfully dying.” By healing the party’s wounds and showing it was viable, Ford’s strong comeback and election performance breathed life back into the nation’s two-party system.

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