The Caretaker President
Ever since Ford pardoned Nixon, the perspective of the press and the nation changed. When Nixon appointed Gerald Ford to be the position of Vice President of the United States, he hoped to find “a caretaker Vice President who would simply fill out Agnew’s unexpired term.”[1] Looking back at the Ford administration, many label Ford an “accidental” or “caretaker” president.[2] Through his administration, President Ford recoined this normally negative ideal of a president and made it part of his symbolic investment in the presidency. President Nixon left the presidency in a damaged state. In 1974, Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield said he felt convinced “the presidency has been damaged, without doubt.”[3] Presidential historian Professor Richard Neustadt said, “It is broadly suspected that all politicians do the sort of things that happened at Watergate. People feel that all politicians are bums.”[4] As a result of Watergate and its investigation, a quagmire of suspension surrounded the White House after Nixon’s resignation. At the time, President Ford knew the nation needed to move forward, and Ford acted determinedly to get the “monkey [Nixon and Watergate] off my back.”[5] He believed the best way to proceed with the business of the nation was by pardoning Nixon, putting the whole situation behind the nation and starting to answer some of the hard questions of the day.
On September 8, 1974, thirty-one days after becoming the first unelected president who was appointed through the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Ford pardoned his successor. As a rationale, he said, “As President, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the people of the United States whose servant I am… My conscience tells me that only I, as President, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book.” [6] In pardoning Nixon, Ford focused on healing the wounds of the nation and moving it forward. He understood that the nation and the presidency needed care and renewal, and he intended to do all he could do to make this a reality. Ford faced a strong negative reaction; Douglas Brinkley, in his biography Gerald R. Ford, said: “That rock-hard moral core defined Jerry Ford, as a man and as a president. Ford’s bedrock certainty of his own ethics enabled him to weather even the denunciation of most of his countrymen.”[7] President Ford was a caretaker president, but not in the usual sense. Ford understood the hardships that faced the nation, and over his own party and ambition chose to heal the nation through his moral leadership. In reviewing Ford’s impact on the American people, John Greene, author of The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, wrote:
[I]t has been assumed that the Ford administration largely healed the breach of faith between the president and the American People. Gerald Ford made the nation feel better about itself… it was his basic honesty and relative candor that proved the greatest service to the nation. The nation’s experience with Nixon required that Article 2 of the Constitution be rethought – moral leadership had now become an unwritten part of the job description of the presidency. Ford proved that a president could provide that quality again… Gerald Ford clearly set an example. He reset the nation’s ethical compass and put the ship of state on a course that avoided disaster… as a moral leader, Ford surpassed the examples of every president since 1960. He had healed the scars of the spirit caused by Watergate and Vietnam, and the nation was stronger in 1976 than it had been in 1974.[8]Ford’s symbolic investment, as Greene said, was to bring moral leadership to the White House and heal the nation from the wounds of the Nixon presidency.
As time passed, critics changed how they viewed the pardon. One of his most vocal detractors in 1974, Bob Woodward, said in 1999, “Ford made the correct decision in pardoning Nixon. Nixon had already paid the political death penalty of resignation, and for Ford a pardon was the only way of meeting the public and media obsession with his processor’s future.”[9] Also, in 1999, President William Jefferson Clinton awarded Ford the Presidential Medal of Freedom, saying, “Steady, trustworthy, Gerald Ford ended a long national nightmare… When he left the White House after 895 days, America was stronger, calmer, and more self-confident.”[10] In 2001, Ford was awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. According to Caroline Kennedy:
President Kennedy felt his greatest admiration for those in politics who had the courage to make decisions of conscience without fear of the consequences… President Ford presided over this nation during one of its darkest hours, and in an effort to heal a divided nation, he made a very difficult decision that many believe may have cost him the presidency.[11]While the pardon defined the Ford presidency, it would not be until much later the public would be able to truly see the power of his actions and how his symbolic investment of moral leadership would help the nation move past the troubles of the Nixon administration.[12]
[1] Mark O. Hatfield, Vice Presidents of the United States, 1789-1993, ed. Wendy Wolff (Washington (D.C.): U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997), 497.
[2] Andrew D. Moran, “More than a Caretaker: The Economic Policy of Gerald R. Ford,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 41 (2011).
[3] “Effects of Watergate: The Good and the Bad,” U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News & World Report, August 26, 1974), accessed March 21, 2021, https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/08/effects-of-watergate-the-good-and-the-bad.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal (New York, NY: Harper & Row and Reader’s Digest, 1979), 159; John Robert. Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford (Lawrence, KS: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1995), 46.
[6] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 102-03.
[7] Brinkley, Gerald R. Ford, 74.
[8] Greene, The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, 192-93.
[9] Woodward, Shadow, 37.
[10] William P. Bohlen, “Clinton Awards Ford Top Civilian Tribute,” Chicagotribune.com, August 29, 2018, accessed March 21, 2021, https://www.chicago tribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-08-12-9908120312-story.html.
[11] “President Gerald Ford and Civil Rights Leader John Lewis Named Recipients of 2001 Profile in Courage Award,” President Gerald Ford and Civil Rights Leader John Lewis Named Recipients of 2001 Profile in Courage Award | JFK Library, May 5, 2001, accessed March 21, 2021, https://www.jfklibrary.org/about-us/news-and-press/press-releases/president-gerald-ford-and-civil-rights-leader-john-lewis-named-recipients-of-2001-profile-in-courage.
[12] Mieczkowski, Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s, 37.
Dr. Joshua Longmire, Assistant Professor of Leadership and Director of the M.A. in Leadership and M.A. in International Relations.
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