AP News, December 28th, 2006
As a president and candidate, Gerald R. Ford made being ordinary a political trademark.
In the beginning, it was a strength that helped Ford assure voters that the era of Richard Nixon and the corrupting of the presidency was over.
He spurned the traditional perks right away, insisting on spending his first night as the chief executive in his own home instead of the White House. His motorcade even stopped for a red light like an average motorist.
But as his presidency wore on, Ford's common-man image gave way to stumbles like the one down the stairs of Air Force One, verbal gaffes on the re-election trail and a drone campaign style that helped doom his re-election.
Here are some first-person recollections of Associated Press reporters who covered Ford's rise from a Republican backbencher in Congress to House minority leader and eventually the nation's only unelected president:
RICHARD PYLE, an AP writer now based in New York City who covered Ford's first day as president in 1974:
It was a day of presidents _ and precedents.
Richard M. Nixon, the first U.S. president to resign from office, delivered a mawkish final speech and a bitter, tearstained smile as he boarded a helicopter and flew away. His successor, Gerald R. Ford, took the oath of office and went home to dinner.
As a reporter in Washington on Aug. 9, 1974, I was called on to be the AP's "body man" on Ford _ staying with him in the first hours, or days, of his presidency.
Covering Ford was a hasty, last-minute assignment. The regulars were busy with the big story _ Nixon's historic resignation and departure _ leaving it to others, myself included, to cover the secondary story of the new president.
After an hour or so, we were escorted outside to where a limousine, several Secret Service cars and a black press van were lined up in a driveway of the White House.
Finally, Gerald Ford appeared. Having elected to spend his first night as president at his home in Alexandria, Va., he looked like any briefcase-toting suburban commuter. He boarded the limousine and we moved slowly out onto 17th Street.
It was now late afternoon in August, hardly a breeze stirred the trees, and traffic was light. Motorcycle cops blocked intersections as we headed toward the Lincoln Memorial and the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac. Other than that we might have been the least conspicuous presidential motorcade ever.
On the Virginia side, our procession _ a press van was traveling about three cars behind Ford _ merged smoothly into the southbound flow toward the Pentagon. Looking at a motorist driving beside us, I realized he was totally unaware that he was sharing the highway with history.
As we drove into the town of Alexandria, our lead car stopped, and so did all others including Ford's limousine, at a red light. The wait was brief, but I wondered if any sitting president of the United States had ever done that before.
Only a month earlier, Congress had approved the use of a mansion on the U.S. Naval Observatory grounds, on upper Massachusetts Avenue, as an official vice presidential residence. It was still being renovated, though, and Ford never had a chance to live there. On his first day as president he returned to the same ranch-style home where he had lived as a member of Congress.
The house was the last one on a short block that dead-ended at a fenced-in park. The family across the street, longtime friends of the Fords, had turned their garage over to the White House for a temporary press center.
Wires were draped across trees, cables snaked in the street, and telephones had been installed along the curbs. (The press took up a collection and bought the family a tree to plant as thanks for their hospitality).
A number of neighbors and curious citizens had gathered on the sidewalks to welcome Ford, and they applauded as he stepped out of the limousine, holding the briefcase in one hand and waving with the other. He uttered a few words, "nice to see you all" or some such pleasantry. Then he turned and went into the house, another husband home from a hard day at the office.
WALTER MEARS, retired AP special correspondent who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 1976 campaign:
Ford was a plain, sometimes plodding campaigner. Up against Ronald Reagan, the showman in the 1976 Republican nomination race, he suffered for the charisma contrast. His everyman style was an asset at the beginning of his presidency, for the contrast then was with the deceitful Nixon. Against Reagan in the primaries, it was a liability.
Ford drew dutiful Republican crowds. Reagan rallies were more intense, with a conservative star on stage. Ford's monotone performances were the stuff of political wisecracks. Comedian Mark Russell: "Jerry Ford gave a fireside chat and the fire went to sleep."
In Concord, N.H., Ford chatted with Tommy Boyd, 14, who had a cast on his left arm. "How did you get that?" the president asked. "I fell," Tommy said. "I fall a lot, too," Ford replied.
By then, Ford's presidential mishaps were legend, even among his supporters. At a campaign rally in North Carolina, he was introduced as "a man who has proved he can win elections and chew gum at the same time." He'd stumbled on the steps of Air Force One, bumped his head on a helicopter door, tumbled on a ski slope. He was the most athletic president since Theodore Roosevelt, but the slips became part of the image.
MIKE FEINSILBER, retired AP reporter who covered the Vietnam War and Watergate:
When Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned, President Nixon, by then enmeshed in the Watergate mess, was inclined to fill the vice presidency with John Connally, former Democratic governor of Texas and Nixon's secretary of the treasury. But Democrats warned that the choice of Connally would lead to a nasty confirmation fight. Instead, Nixon chose the amiable _ and confirmable _ Ford.
Confirmation did come easily, but not without an exhaustive examination of the nominee. Ford testified for eight hours in the fall of 1973 before the Senate Rules Committee. He had an easier time of it in the House, whose members were delighted to see one of their ranks elevated. I covered the hearings.
The possibility of a vacancy in the presidency _ and of a Ford presidency _ was in every mind.
Ford, the good soldier, testified that he was sure of Nixon's innocence of complicity in the Watergate break-in and cover-up. He urged Nixon to find evidence of his innocence and make it public. "There must be documents to prove it," he said.
Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon, a Republican, bluntly asked: "Can Richard Nixon save his presidency?"
Ford, ever loyal, was optimistic _ and wrong. "I think so," he said. "It's going to take a lot of help from a lot of people. Pretty much his ability and the help he will get from many others will permit him to finish office with a fine record."
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TOM RAUM, an AP writer who has covered five presidents:
Ford was president and Ronald Reagan was giving him a stiff challenge in the primaries.
The night of the Texas primary, May 1, 1976, was also the night of the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner. I was in the White House pool. Ford was in a playful mood at the dinner and donned a wide-brimmed Panama hat to mimic Reagan's conservative stand on the Panama Canal. Reagan during the primary campaigns had suggested Ford would give it away at worst or wouldn't defend it at best. Ford's gesture brought a lot of laughs. (Later, Jimmy Carter as president negotiated treaties turning over control of the canal to Panama.)
We went back to the White House and I had to hang around for Ford's possible reaction to the Texas primary. It was a wipe out, with Reagan capturing all 96 Texas delegates. Ford had nothing he wanted to say.
At that point, the GOP campaign seemed to be wide open, especially after a strong Reagan showing a few days later in Indiana _ despite help for Ford from a little-known Texas operative named James A. Baker III.
The tide, however, was turning for Ford. I was at the Ford campaign headquarters on the night of May 18, 1976, when he won both in his home state of Michigan and in Maryland.
His campaign manager, Rogers Morton, had gotten some bad press the week before by his televised response to a possible campaign shake-up: "I'm not going to rearrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic."
The good showing lifted the spirits of Ford's team. Chief of Staff Dick Cheney showed up at the campaign headquarters on crutches, having recently broken a foot, and held forth with reporters on campaign strategy.
