Gerald Ford’s Near Miracle of 1976

Gerald Ford was angry. He had just barely beaten back a challenge from his bitter political rival, former California Governor Ronald Reagan, in the midst of perhaps the most divided Republican National Convention ever. Now, his two top aides, White House Chief of Staff Dick Cheney and Political Director Stuart Spencer, were challenging his judgment and resisting his idea to kick off the campaign in Russell, Kansas, the hometown of Sen. Bob Dole, who Ford selected to be his running mate.

“Bullshit!” blurted out Cheney and Spencer when Ford broached the idea of going to Russell. The men protested that staff members had worked for three days straight with no sleep and needed a rest. They argued back and forth, the president growing visibly irate, until his aides relented. When Spencer sighed and said “if that’s what you want, we’ll do it,” Ford grabbed the younger man by the arm and said: “Dammit, I know what I’m doing. I know a little bit about politics.”

From the start, Ford seemed an underdog president, and he endured several such moments of doubts about his judgment and challenges to his leadership during his term and the ensuing 1976 election campaign. He was the only chief executive not to have won election to the presidency or vice presidency. In October 1973, acting under the provisions of the 25th Amendment, President Richard M. Nixon nominated House minority leader Ford to be vice president after Spiro Agnew stepped down amid corruption charges. Then, in August 1974, when Nixon resigned because of his role in the Watergate cover-up, Ford took office. In his first address to the people as president, Ford assured Americans that the Watergate scandal had ended, proclaiming, “Our long national nightmare is over.”

Yet the unprecedented scandal’s stains still darkened the White House. On September 8, when Ford shocked the nation and issued Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes he may have committed against the United States while president, his approval ratings plunged. Other setbacks followed. In late 1974, the nation slipped into a deep recession, forcing Ford to abandon his much-touted anti-inflation initiatives and instead move to stimulate the economy. Meanwhile, the Cold War raged on and, when Communist North Vietnam overran South Vietnam in April 1975, Ford ordered all Americans in Saigon evacuated. The last sad chapter of the American war in Vietnam appeared to be a superpower in retreat.

Then, as attention turned to the 1976 presidential contest, the challenges came from within Ford’s party. Since his first election as a Michigan congressman in 1949, Ford had built solid credentials as a conservative Republican, yet as president, when he chose liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller as vice president, conservatives were outraged, and some prepared to rebel. They supported Ronald Reagan, and both Cheney and Spencer recognized the threat that the former California governor posed. “Reagan had a major following in the party,” recalled Cheney, and he “had been shooting for the ’76 presidential campaign for probably eight years,” ever since an abortive run at the nomination in 1968. Spencer, who had been close to Reagan and helped engineer the former actor’s 1966 election as California governor, remembered Reagan “felt that he was the heir-apparent after Watergate,” with Ford just an appointed interim president. After the Nixon presidency collapsed, Reagan stoked his supporters with regular radio addresses and a newspaper column.

The Ford White House watched Reagan nervously, even after July 1975, when Ford said that he would seek a full term. Just four months later, on November 4, Ford announced that Rockefeller requested to be dropped from the 1976 ticket. The president dissembled about the move, later admitting that he asked the vice president to step aside to placate conservatives. Along with the Rockefeller announcement, on that same day Ford unveiled a massive administration overhaul, including the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, George H.W. Bush as CIA director, and Cheney as White House chief of staff.