“Not since Harry Truman succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt twenty-nine years earlier had the American people known so little about a man who had stepped forward from obscurity to take the oath of office as President of the United States.” —from Chapter 4 This is a comprehensive narrative account of the life of Gerald Ford written by one of his closest advisers, James Cannon. Written with unique insight and benefiting from personal interviews with President Ford in his last years, Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Lifeis James Cannon’s final look at the simple and honest man from the Midwest.
The "accidental" president whose innate decency and steady hand restored the presidency after its greatest crisis When Gerald R. Ford entered the White House in August 1974, he inherited a presidency tarnished by the Watergate scandal, the economy was in a recession, the Vietnam War was drawing to a close, and he had taken office without having been elected. Most observers gave him little chance of success, especially after he pardoned Richard Nixon just a month into his presidency, an action that outraged many Americans, but which Ford thought was necessary to move the nation forward. Many people today think of Ford as a man who stumbled a lot--clumsy on his feet and in politics--but acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley shows him to be a man of independent thought and conscience, who never allowed party loyalty to prevail over his sense of right and wrong. As a young congressman, he stood up to the isolationists in the Republican leadership, promoting a vigorous role for America in the world. Later, as House minority leader and as president, he challenged the right wing of his party, refusing to bend to their vision of confrontation with the Communist world. And after the fall of Saigon, Ford also overruled his advisers by allowing Vietnamese refugees to enter the United States, arguing that to do so was the humane thing to do. Brinkley draws on exclusive interviews with Ford and on previously unpublished documents (including a remarkable correspondence between Ford and Nixon stretching over four decades), fashioning a masterful reassessment of Gerald R. Ford's presidency and his underappreciated legacy to the nation.
The former President's favorite funny stories and anecdotes are accompanied by political cartoons and political humor by Art Buchwald, Chevy Chase, Mark Russell, and Bob Orben, as well as sharp-witted policians.
"When Gerald Ford became president, Americans were ready for an honest, hardworking politician. He was trustworthy, cooperative, and cared deeply about all Americans. His life, tougher than some and filled with character-building lessons, had prepared him for the job. Backmatter includes a letter from the Ford family and a timeline"--
A reappraisal of the brief presidency of Gerald Ford, called to leadership in the midst of scandal, stagflation, and an energy crisis. For many Americans, Gerald Ford evokes an image of either an unelected president who abruptly pardoned his corrupt predecessor or an accident-prone klutz spoofed on Saturday Night Live. In this book, Yanek Mieczkowski reexamines Ford’s two and a half years in office, showing that his presidency successfully confronted the most vexing crisis of the postwar era. Viewing the 1970s primarily through the lens of economic events, Mieczkowski argues that Ford’s understanding of the national economy was better than any modern president’s; that he oversaw a dramatic reduction of inflation; and that he attempted to solve the energy crisis with judicious policies. Throughout his presidency, Ford labored under the legacy of Watergate. Democrats scored landslide victories in the 1974 midterm elections, and within an anemic Republican Party, the right wing challenged Ford’s leadership, even as pundits predicted the GOP’s death. Yet Ford reinvigorated the party and fashioned a 1976 campaign strategy against Jimmy Carter that brought him from thirty points behind to a dead heat on election day. Drawing on numerous personal interviews with former President Ford, cabinet officials, and members of the Ninety-fourth Congress, Mieczkowski presents the first major work on Ford in more than a decade, combining the best of biography and presidential history to paint an intriguing portrait of a president, his times, and his legacy. “This ambitious work calls for a reexamination of the Ford presidency in light of the formidable challenges he faced upon taking office. A welcome and important addition to the literature on the Ford presidency.” ―Library Journal
In a series of private interviews, conducted over sixteen years with the stipulation that they not be released until after his death, the former president offers a revealing, reflective self-portrait as he describes his relationships with Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton; experiences on the Warren Commission; and opinions on the Bush administration, the Iraq war, family, and aging. 150,000 first printing.
This study is a revision of my doctoral dissertation written at the University of Virginia. As a student of the American presidency I became interested in how presidential leadership is defined, analyzed and assessed. Students of the presidency spend a great deal of time studying leadership theory and debating the merits of different measures of leadership "success." These students draw inspiration for their ideas from noted presidency scholars such as Edward S. Corwin, Clinton Rossiter, and Richard Neustadt.
