(Bloomberg circulated the following article by Roger Runningen on December 27.)
NEW YORK — Former U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, “was a great man who devoted the best years of his life in serving the United States,” President George W. Bush said today.
Ford, who pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, and sought to restore faith in government after the Watergate scandal three decades ago, died at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, late yesterday. He was 93.
“For a nation that needed healing, and for an office that needed a calm and steady hand, Gerald Ford came along when we needed him most,” Bush said of Ford.
Bush, speaking from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, said Ford led with “common sense and kind instincts.”
A cause of death wasn’t given when former first lady Betty Ford made the announcement late yesterday. Ford had been hospitalized several times in the past year. In October, he had tests at the Eisenhower Medical Center in California.
The Ford family is reviewing details of President Ford’s funeral, which will include a period of public repose in Palm Desert, California, and funeral services in Washington and in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ford’s office said in a written statement.
Vice President Richard Cheney, who had served as Ford’s chief of staff, said in a statement that Ford was a “dear friend and mentor” who “embodied the best values of a great generation: decency, integrity and devotion to duty.”
Replaced Agnew
Ford became the 38th president on Aug. 9, 1974, immediately after Nixon’s resignation under threat of impeachment. When Ford took office, he said: “I assume the presidency under extraordinary circumstances. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.”
Ford projected calm during a period of high inflation, looming energy shortages and a waning war in Southeast Asia. Ford, a Republican, lost his bid to win a full term in 1976 to Democrat Jimmy Carter. On Inauguration Day, Carter began his speech: “For myself and for our nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land.”
Ford was in his 13th term as a Michigan congressman and was the House Republican leader when Nixon appointed him in December 1973 as vice president. He replaced Spiro Agnew, who quit amid bribery charges stemming from his time in office as Maryland governor. It was the first use of the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment to fill a vice presidential vacancy, an amendment Ford helped get enacted.
Pardoning Nixon
Eight months later, Ford became president when Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment proceedings over White House attempts to obstruct an investigation into the 1972 burglary of Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington. Ford was the first person to gain the presidency without winning a national election.
In his first speech as president, Ford said, “our long national nightmare is over” and pledged to rebuild confidence in government institutions and the struggling U.S. economy.
On Sept. 8, 1974, a month after taking the presidency, Ford pardoned Nixon for any crimes he might have committed as president, although no formal charges were pending.
Ford told the country in a speech that Watergate was “an American tragedy.”
“It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it,” he said. “I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.”
Belt-Tightening
While he was criticized at the time for undermining the inquiry into the Watergate burglary and its cover-up by issuing the pardon, his actions to overcome Watergate were later applauded.
Ford won the 2001 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for pardoning Nixon.
Moving to repair the damage of Nixon’s resignation, Ford replaced all but three members of Nixon’s Cabinet. In December 1974, congressional majorities backed his choice of former New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller as his vice president.
A self-described fiscal conservative, Ford proposed tax cuts and spending limits to deal with a budget deficit. He also pushed through Congress legislative proposals to deregulate the railroad and securities industries.
Ford confronted the Democratic-controlled Congress by vetoing 39 spending-related measures in his first 14 months. The belt-tightening was aimed at ending a recession. Unemployment rose in his first year to 9 percent before falling to 7.8 percent as he left office — higher than when he started his term. Meanwhile, gross domestic product swung from a minus 4.7 percent rate in the first quarter of 1975, to 9.3 percent a year later, when he campaigned to remain in office.
Middle East
In foreign policy, Ford was dealt twin setbacks with the collapse of Cambodia and South Vietnam’s pro-Western governments in 1975. His approval rating in 1975 rebounded after Marines retrieved a U.S. ship seized by the Cambodian government.
Ford brokered a 1975 truce between Israel and Egypt that installed U.S. observers to separate the two armies. He pursued a policy of detente with China and the Soviet Union, agreeing with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to limit nuclear weapons.
He also signed an executive order to overhaul U.S. intelligence-gathering agencies, including limiting the Central Intelligence Agency’s spying powers.
Assassination Attempts
During his 1975 presidential campaign in California, Ford escaped two assassinations attempts in 17 days: by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme in Sacramento on Sept. 5, and by Sara Jane Moore in San Francisco on Sept. 22.
Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr., in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 14, 1913. He was renamed for his stepfather, Gerald Ford, a paint salesman who married the former president’s mother after her divorce.
Ford was the captain of his high school football team in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a football scholarship took him to the University of Michigan, where he starred as varsity center and played on two national championship football teams. He graduated in 1935 and turned down offers to play professional football to attend Yale Law School, where he also was an assistant football coach. He graduated in the top third of his class in 1941.
Ford returned to Grand Rapids to practice law, then joined the Navy in April 1942. He saw wartime service in the Pacific on the light aircraft carrier Monterey and was a lieutenant commander when he returned to Grand Rapids early in 1946 to resume law practice and dabble in politics.
Warren Commission
Ford was a lawyer before winning election in Michigan’s fifth congressional district in 1948, the same year he married Betty Bloomer Warren. The couple had four children.
Ford was re-elected 12 times on a platform of limited government.
In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Ford to the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Two years later, Ford co-wrote a book, “Portrait of the Assassin,” on the commission’s conclusion that Kennedy was killed in Dallas by a single gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Ford went on to write or co-write three books, including his post-Watergate autobiography, “A Time to Heal,” in 1979.
After leaving office, Ford was an adviser to American Express Co. and was on the board of Citigroup Inc., Travelers Group Inc. and the NASD.
He was the longest-lived former U.S. president, overtaking Ronald Reagan on Nov. 12. He spent three days in August 2006 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to get a heart pacemaker and stents in his coronary arteries to improve blood flow. He had a small stroke at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000.
Ford’s hobbies included skiing, tennis and golf.
He is survived by his wife and children, Michael, John, Steven and Susan.