The great gray hull of steel rose twenty-five stories before us. We gathered in front to pay our respects at the waterline. Above us, the flight deck of America’s newest and largest naval vessel covered a full five acres. Deep within the one hundred thousand tons of metal were two nuclear reactors ready to surge to life. The ship spanned the length of three football fields, territory her namesake had known well.1
On hand to commemorate the christening of the USS Gerald R. Ford on November 9, 2013, were his four children, with his daughter Susan taking a lead role in the proceedings. Henry Kissinger was there—his notable German accent no less prominent with age. Ford’s two former White House Chiefs of Staff—former Vice President Dick Cheney and I—were in attendance as well. Filling out the crowd of naval personnel and dignitaries were a good many of President Ford’s former Cabinet, staff, colleagues from his years in government, and friends.2
When Cheney spoke, he invoked the Watergate scandal that had propelled Ford into the presidency, affirming that President Ford had handled the unprecedented challenge of preserving the union and healing the nation “better than anybody else could have.” In his remarks, Dr. Kissinger, who had earned Ford’s greatest respect for his skillful foreign policy leadership, attested he “loved” Ford, pointedly noting that this was “a feeling not every President inspires.”
President Ford had been gone for nearly seven years when the formidable naval vessel that bears his name was christened. I did not have to wonder what he would have thought about that impressive occasion, the military bands and crisp uniforms of hundreds of military personnel arrayed around him. Over the Thanksgiving holiday in 2006, while serving my second tour as Secretary of Defense, this time in the administration of George W. Bush, I had called former President Gerald R. Ford just to visit. He had sounded frail on the phone. At ninety-three, he had become the longest-living former U.S. President in American history.
Since we had each left Washington, D.C., back in 1977 after spending a good many years serving together, first in the Congress and then in the White House, our lives had taken distinctly different paths. Ford had settled into the comfortable but active life of an elder statesman, while making time for some well-deserved hours on the golf course. I had gone on to spend more than two decades in the business world, and then went back into government to join my old colleague and friend Dick Cheney in the administration of George W. Bush.
Over the intervening years, Ford and I had talked on the phone and been together in person periodically. But at the time of my call in 2006, I had not seen him for some time. I came away from our conversation concerned about his health, so Joyce and I decided to leave our home in New Mexico and head west to Ford’s home in Rancho Mirage, California, to pay him a visit.
As we were greeted at the front door, I heard the President shout, “Rummy!” His voice was booming—however frail he might have been, that much was still indomitable. He was in his living room, just down from the front hall, sitting back in a reclining armchair on wheels and giving us his big warm smile.
Though the ship to bear his name was still many years away from construction, I had been able to bring with me a rendition of what the USS Gerald R. Ford would look like once completed, and handed him a baseball cap with the ship’s name emblazoned on the front, which he immediately put on. The aircraft carrier–based World War II veteran was deeply moved by his country’s tribute.
It was a tribute well deserved. That the ship would be an aircraft carrier was particularly fitting, and not just because he had served on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific—the USS Monterey—during World War II. The new nuclear-powered vessel would carry the Ford name and the American flag across the oceans of the world as a massive, floating symbol of American strength and will—qualities that, fortunately for our country, the ship’s namesake had demonstrated in his long service.
As the thirty-eighth President of the United States, Gerald Ford had restored the balance of our faltering republic in what was its most divisive moment since the Civil War. His was a historic accomplishment, not fully appreciated even then. This book is most certainly not a biography of his life. Rather, what I have hoped to do with this book is give a sense of what it was like to be there, during one of our nation’s most tempestuous times, at Gerald Ford’s side. He, along with those who served with him, tried mightily to right America’s ship of state. In the end, it can be said that is what his leadership was able to achieve.
Of course, it didn’t always feel that way for those in the Ford administration. Policy debates are in some ways inevitable challenges whenever a collection of strong-willed personalities find themselves packed together. And nobody should be surprised at the fact that Washington, D.C., can be a magnet for sizable personalities.
Gerald Ford’s saving grace, however, was that he was not a big personality—not when he was in Congress, not when he moved through the ranks of leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, not as the Vice President, and not when serving as President of the United States. His calm, thoughtful, and steadfast nature was remarkable in Washington, D.C., even in his own day, and some might assert even more so now. That may well have been how he was able to keep a strong hand on the wheel throughout the tumultuous years he led the nation.
While our country seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis at home and abroad, and those in the Ford administration did their best to stay ahead of problems and deal with those as they came up, Ford himself remained steady. When faced with a difficult decision, he sought and took the counsel of all sides and ultimately made the decision that he believed would be best for his country, regardless of his or anyone else’s personal feelings. We always knew we could count on him for that.
Aside from the natural humility that was ingrained in him as a product of the American heartland and likely from his experiences in World War II, there was, I think, another wellspring for the modest, prudent nature that Ford brought to the Oval Office. He was the “accidental President,” and he remembered that.
It is common in inaugural addresses for new presidents to declare—possibly with varying degrees of conviction—that they are going to be a President not simply in the service of the party that elected them, but in the service of all Americans. Though Gerald Ford did not have the opportunity to make a proper inaugural address, he made this promise, too—and in his case he meant every word.
He understood from the beginning that he had taken the reins during an emergency, a constitutional crisis unlike anything our country had faced before. He was President, but he did not have a mandate from voters who had endorsed him in an election. But he understood the American people and their desire and indeed need for stable, competent leadership, and that was to be Ford’s priority—not scoring partisan points.
“I am acutely aware,” Ford told the American people after being sworn in by Chief Justice Berger in the East Room of the White House, “that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers.
“I have not campaigned either for the presidency or the vice presidency,” Ford reminded the nation. “I have not subscribed to any partisan platform.” From the outset, Ford looked at his presidency not as a time to further a political agenda but as a mission to bring trust and confidence back to the American government at a time when much of the public was convinced Washington had given up on both.
At the same time, Ford never lost touch with his personal convictions. These remained as strong as they had been when he had helped navigate the Civil Rights Act through Congress back in the 1960s. Whether he was dealing with Soviet leaders on his terms, concluding the nation’s involvement in Vietnam, or finding ways to strengthen the economy at home, Ford was guided by the principles that had sustained him throughout his personal and professional life.
Perhaps the greatest source of that sustenance, though, was his wife. Betty Ford was open and honest, and understood better than most that all of us are human, and all of us have flaws. That made her a steadfast pillar of support for a husband who valued it every single day.
As much as Vice President Ford had never expected to find himself thrust into the role of President, Betty Ford had not expected to be the First Lady, either. But she didn’t let it change her in any way. She continued to provide advice to her husband and to those of us who served him—and whether we had asked for it or not, we always appreciated it. She never held back, and President Ford valued her counsel above anyone else’s.
Given these qualities, it surprised none of us that Betty Ford went on to make such a name for herself helping millions of people around the country. She never met the vast majority, but she didn’t have to meet people personally to understand their struggles. She understood that no human being was broken beyond repair, and her faith in that simple principle sustained an institution that in turn has saved lives and is still doing so today.
The Ford children—Mike, Jack, Steve, and Susan—brought a liveliness to the White House and helped to keep their dad grounded. A family man to the core, Jerry Ford, with his pipe and sweaters and penchant for plaid pants, projected the image of the quintessential “American dad” at a time when the country needed something so familiar and so comforting. Indeed, for a brief period he led our country out of his suburban home on Crown View Drive in Alexandria, Virginia. That house is now on the National Register of Historic Places, which describes it as “typical of middle-class housing in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington,” a “prosperous but unpretentious house and neighborhood.”3
That was Gerald Ford. As a neighbor of mine put it, as we were discussing the former President shortly after his death, “He was one of us.” Despite his holding the highest office in the land, pretension never once clouded his mind. Even though never elected to the vice presidency or the presidency, he knew he owed his best work to all of the folks in the middle-class suburbs, on the farms of the Great Plains, and in the inner cities. They hadn’t chosen him, but they were still counting on him. And around the world, our allies and our enemies waited to see what this unassuming man would do with the smoldering wreckage of America’s prestige he had inherited after Watergate.
Ford understood this calling from the moment he took office, and it sustained him through every day of his presidential service. President Kennedy’s term is nostalgically referred to as “the thousand days”—President Ford had fewer than nine hundred. But each one of those days was spent working toward the goal of getting his country back on the right track and restoring the faith of its people.
That was why Gerald Ford never shied away from opportunities to meet our country’s Cold War adversaries—to show them that America hadn’t been hobbled by internal chaos and was as strong and ready to face the Communist threat as it had ever been. It was why he aggressively attacked inflation and worked to create more jobs and opportunities for American workers struggling in the tough economy of the 1970s.
Knowing Gerald Ford’s dedication firsthand made the 1976 presidential campaign season especially tough for me. Gerald Ford was a good man who deserved to be elected President in his own right. His narrow victory in the Republican primary and his razor’s-width loss to Governor Carter after the polls had narrowed dramatically before the general election were outcomes disappointing for the man who had served so well. But, that’s politics—and even in defeat, Gerald Ford’s graciousness proved an example for us all.
His humility was with him to the end, as it had been from his days as a star center on the University of Michigan Wolverines’ football team. On the college gridiron, Ford proved that you didn’t have to play one of the crowd-pleasing positions like quarterback or running back or wide receiver in order to be voted team captain. Even a humble center could earn that honor if he was good at his job, earned the trust of his teammates, and inspired his team to victory.
Decades later, Ford proved that you didn’t have to have an outsized personality, movie-star charisma, or even Machiavellian cunning to be a truly great political leader at a most challenging time. You simply had to earn the people’s trust and inspire and lead them in their hour of need. And once again, the center held.