Bob Woodward, one of The Washington Post reporters whose work brought down Nixon's presidency, would eventually call the pardon "an act of courage," while John F.
Regardless of one's opinion on the pardon's merits, Ford's explanation of it is extraordinary, a surprising window into a president deliberating a tremendous dilemma. As we are a nation under God, so I am sworn to uphold our laws with the help of God. And I have sought such guidance and searched my own conscience with special diligence to determine the right thing for me to do …". Ford went on to lay out his fear that in the lengthy lead-up to a trial of a former president, "ugly passions would again be aroused.
And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad. The president described his primary consideration as "the greatest good of all the people of the United States, whose servant I am," while also explaining his duty "to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience.
I do believe, with all my heart and mind and spirit, that I, not as president but as a humble servant of God, will receive justice without mercy if I fail to show mercy. For starters, in the absurdly long run-up to a presidential election, with all the grandstanding involved in candidates claiming they are uniquely qualified to hold the world's most powerful station, it is refreshing to remember that humbler "servant" leadership was possible not so long ago.
Courageous leadership was, too. Ford surely knew that granting Nixon a pardon would hurt his chances of winning his own term in the White House, which it arguably did when he lost the presidential election to Jimmy Carter.
There are also spiritual lessons in Ford's presidency. His mining the depths of his conscience and weighing the various factors surrounding Nixon's drama mirror Ignatian discernment , while his frequent invocation of a higher power reflect a genuine desire to follow God's will, as opposed to the all-too-frequent use of religion for nakedly political purposes.
Like St. Louis Martin — who gave up dreams of entering the priesthood before fathering St. Finally, in times that can feel profoundly divisive and unforgiving, Ford is a model of the immeasurable value of mercy, an example he reinforced when offering conditional amnesty for draft evasion and desertion during the Vietnam War.
Recognizing this, Jimmy Carter's first words as president were "to thank [his] predecessor for all he has done to heal our land. In Ford's memoir, he recalled his mother using Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" to help him control his temper when he was angry as a child.
Highlighted film and sound featured during the program included audiotaped interviews with President Ford conducted by journalist and former Ford White House aide James Cannon from the late s and into the mids; a filmed interview with President Ford by his White House photographer, David Hume Kennerly, in which President Ford tells the behind-the-scenes stories of photographs documenting his presidency; and the first-ever filmed tour of Camp David.
President Ford opened the secretive sit The eighth in a series on presidential libraries focused on Gerald R. People in this video Elaine K. Didier Director Ford Gerald R. Presidential Library and Museum. He once tripped down the stairs while de-boarding Air Force One; while skiing, a chair lift hit his back. Sensing the American public wanted someone less like the studious, humorless Nixon, he appeared on SNL and once pulled up a tablecloth next to Chase during a formal dinner in Ford, a dog lover, adopted a golden retriever the family named Liberty after he had already taken office.
After doing her business on the south lawn, she and Ford tried to get back inside. When no one sent the elevator back down, Ford decided to take the stairs. Eventually, the Secret Service was alerted to his absence and let him inside. She was unable to fire a shot before the Secret Service apprehended her. Both women were charged with attempted murder and stood trial. Smith: We were talking to Alan Greenspan and he said one of the things that really broke that up was the jet plane.
For a long time, it imposed a kind of artificial consensus. They shared the life-defining experiences that transcended politics. And so it was a combination of the political culture, and a lot of other things.
That is probably not a healthy thing. Smith: One of the things that contributed to this camaraderie one senses that people forty, fifty years ago, just drank a lot more than they do today. Ford: I think they did. Again, it built up over the years. The drinking is just an end result of other stuff. Ford: I do.
It will be nineteen years in June. Here we went through the intervention with Mom and the Betty Ford Center and all that, and ten years after Mom goes through her bout with alcoholism, I, too, have the same thing. You are like Betty Ford, the poster child for this whole thing. Ford: When did we actively talk about it, or when did we sense it? That was a cutting edge, new tool they were using in alcoholism. Ford: Let me go back and finish answering the other question. So you knew something was going on, but, again, there was this denial — the elephant in the room.
So we had to sort of get over that hump, and when we did the intervention, Dad led it and called all us kids. All the kids flew down there the day before and we met in his office next to the house.
The next morning we walked in that door, early in the morning — all the kids, Dad, Clara, a woman who helped raise us, our housekeeper years ago, and a nurse.
Dad led it beautifully. And basically, he shut his life down after that. He stopped going to some of the board meetings and stuff like that until Mom got through this. We were a wakeup call that morning; she did all the work. We woke her up, and obviously, she did all the work. One senses that maybe there is no clear distinction.
But did pills, in some ways, afford a respectable kind of cover? You had this genuine, physical problem for which she was prescribed by a perfectly respectable physician. You could, in some ways, almost take refuge behind that.
Ford: Oh, yeah, you justify it. Oh, yeah. Mom had a legitimate pinched nerved in her neck, and her back hurt and you would prescribe medications for that and that makes sense. And she had to get sober. Again, we woke her up, she did all the work. You might remember, Richard, the best story I remember is after she started the process and went to Long Beach Naval Hospital….
And I remember going, went and sat in on a couple of group sessions, and I remember meeting some of the guys in her group, and they were all the way from an admiral to a petty officer, whatever. I remember Mom sitting there, and I guess it was the cafeteria, we were sitting at the table, and she sat there with three or four of these guys, and they are telling dirty jokes, kind of sailor stuff, and I was just offended.
And so the guy telling the dirty joke was probably a good thing to sort of bring her back. Smith: Well, a detour, but it is well known among those who know her well, that she certainly has a more ribald sense of humor than your dad.
They went around the circle, the patients and some of the family members were there. Why would anybody want to become an alcoholic?
This is stupid. I should have known better. He went out when Mom was at Long Beach. It was a very active time in his life after the presidency. And she was home alone, and he felt it. Ford: Gone, yes, everyone was gone. She was really much more alone than she was, say, at the White House. And you get up to the three-quarters level and your partner gets sick and you could obviously go climb the rest of it on your own.
Or you can come back and help your partner get well, to get to the top together. There is no sense in me getting to the top without you. Maybe because we have more to conserve, nostalgia for the past, or whatever. A true fiscal conservative. But in other respects, he seemed to take a broader view. I wonder whether that unfolding experience, going through the intervention and all that followed, and being involved as much as he was in the work of the Betty Ford Center — in the course of all that, he saw all these people, good people, accomplished people, people he admired, who had a weakness, a problem.
You wonder whether that fired some of the compassion, the broadmindedness. I give it to you on two different levels.
I think Dad always had a great compassion for people and helping people. He was a pull it up by your bootstraps kind of [guy], that was the Midwest Grand Rapids way he was raised. These people are going to die. The Vietcong, the North is going to kill them. We need to help them. He had great compassion in Operation Baby Lift and the orphans coming over and things like that. And so that compassion was already there. So Mom definitely opened up his awareness, even when I went through my alcoholism.
You have to give it up to God. So it was a different kind of compassion that I think she taught him. He already had that compassion for helping people that needed help. Ford: We grew up going to church every Sunday, Episcopal Church, and they were very dedicated that way.
I think they lived out their faith in a different way than you might see other Christians live out their faith. I went to Tanzania to work with some orphans whose parents had died of Aids, and my faith then, I was probably a little bolder about it and everything. I see him get up from the dinner table every night, and go do the dishes for my mother. And love her the way God would love her. He was very quiet. Proverbs 3, 5 through 6, was what they, every night at bedtime they laid there and held hands.
Smith: Was that a form of perfectionism? One thing that would surprise people — but she had butterflies before she went on and made a speech. Opposites attract and they both taught each other things. He loved her very deeply, and she loved him and respected him so much. Ford: Oh yeah. Both of them could be tough about standing their ground on their opinion. You know, Dad had a quick temper and it would come out and be gone.
Once it got out, everything was fine and we moved on. But do you know when I saw his temper the most was when I played golf with him on the golf course. Ford: Yes. Not at somebody else, no. Think about with Mom and Dad, the second half of her life is where she blossomed, and that was when they came to the vice presidency and presidency. And she blossomed from real challenges — the breast cancer, later on the alcoholism, equal rights amendment for women.
But that was her stage, and I think he was very proud of her. Ford: Yeah, vaguely. Smith: Let me go back to — I still find it astonishing, when the vice presidential nomination was made, quite apart from the questions of taste, this kind of celebratory thing that Nixon put on.
It was very interesting that your Dad went out of his way to not reproduce that when he nominated Rockefeller. I think he thought it was unseemly in some ways. It is amazing that things happened as fast as they did. Was it a blur to you? Ford: It was. And, again, I think all of us kids, at least my impression of it was, he was not going to be vice president, they were going to chose somebody else.
And then as far as the presidency, that happened again as quickly. And we barely had time to brush our hair before we ended up at the swearing in process. Both of them happened like that. Smith: While he was vice president, was there ever a conversation in which the possibility of his becoming president…. Everybody remembers the famous picture of Mom and Dad walking out, and Dad purposely walking alongside Nixon.
You know, vice presidents usually follow the president. Here he is walking side by side, Nixon gets on the helicopter; the famous wave from the steps. This was not a celebration, this was a dark, dark cloud hanging over the White House. And you have a man who did not get elected by the American people who is going to lead this nation. It was a very solemn occasion. Very solemn. We go back to Alexandria, Virginia — the house there.
You just became President. So in planning, it was probably a healthy thing for the country. Smith: There are stories that you decided pretty early on that you wanted to get out of Dodge. I applied to Duke the year before, been accepted, was just weeks away from going off on my freshman year at Duke University.
And in August, , Dad becomes president. All of a sudden all of us, Jack, Mike, myself, Susan — we got ten Secret Service agents that are following us around. It had happened so quick. They let me take off. Not go to Duke, moved out West to Montana, started working on ranches — cowboying and rodeoing — took my Secret Service. Smith: Let me ask you about a story because it involves you. Jack Marsh told us, the day before your Dad was going out to Chicago to deliver the VFW speech, which Lord knows was controversial enough.
Smith: No. He sort of put his head in his hands. The extraordinary thing is that the press never found out. You can imagine today. Because at that time at eighteen you were supposed to register for the draft.
It was interesting because there was no draft anymore, basically. I can remember, as a kid growing up, sitting in the living room couch with the whole family, as my older brothers, Mike and Jack — because there was a lottery system for who got picked to go to Vietnam.
And it was based on your birthday. And you got a number. So that had ended. So when my birthday came about, when I turned eighteen, I had forgotten to register for the draft.
Here was this big speech he was supposed to give, and his own son mistakenly had not done the registration. So we had to jump on that and get that taken care of. It was not purposeful, I promise you that, but it certainly would have been a terrible press situation if that had come out. Ford: I heard more about it afterwards — the justification of it.
His reasons for it. These people are angry. I remember one thing he said to me one time. And again, I think he did a poor job of explaining it to the country. But he did a poor job of explaining. But I remember him sitting down with me and talking about the idea of grace and mercy; and the idea that a president is like father of a family, and at times the father of a family has to give grace and mercy to his kids for the betterment of the whole family.
To keep the family together. It was a greater picture to move the country on.
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