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Americans Want a “Strong” President. What Does That Look Like?
You can’t have strength without honor
Of all of the weird ways that people stumbled into the presidency, Gerald Ford’s predicament was probably the strangest.
A member of Congress for over two decades, his dream was to become Speaker of the House, but his Republican Party couldn’t get a majority in the chamber. So Ford resigned himself to retiring in 1976… until he got a call from the White House. Vice President Spiro Agnew had resigned in a bribery scandal, and Richard Nixon needed a new #2. Would Ford be willing to take his place?
Ford seems not to have thought all that much about the decision; although Nixon was already under investigation for the Watergate scandal, Ford didn’t believe that there was a serious possibility of Nixon losing his position over it. When he got off the phone, he told his wife Betty that a couple of years as Vice President would be “a nice conclusion” to his political career.
Well, it didn’t quite work out that way. Ford found himself at the center of a maelstrom as Nixon resigned in disgrace. Then, Ford had to decide whether to pardon his old boss (he did). As the only commander-in-chief never to be elected to either the presidency or the vice presidency, he didn’t have much of a mandate. A couple of clumsy…
