Throughout his political life, Michigan congressman Gerald R. Ford’s principal ambition and heart’s desire was to ascend to the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and as House minority leader from 1965 through most of 1973, he was well positioned to achieve that goal should his party—the minority Republican Party—enjoy a favorable change in political fortune. But with the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew, who was under indictment for tax evasion and money laundering, President Richard Nixon, on advice of congressional leadership, selected Ford to fill the vacancy under the provisions of the recently adopted Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Prior to this amendment, once the vice presidency was left vacant, it would have remained an open office until the next presidential election. Seven vice presidents died in office and were not replaced; eight ascended to the presidency owing to the death or resignation of their president (and again, were not replaced), four of whom did so as the result of an assassination. Prior to Agnew, only one vice president had resigned, John C. Calhoun (under President Andrew Jackson), who was not replaced; hence Agnew would become the second vice president to resign and the first to be replaced under the stipulations of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.
Under the new amendment, this vacancy problem was solved, and Vice President Ford was sworn in as the nation’s fortieth vice president on December 6, 1973. Nine months later, he was sworn in again as the thirty-eighth president of the United States upon the resignation of President Nixon, the consequence of new and damaging revelations in the infamous Watergate scandal. “Our long national nightmare is over,” the new president assured the American public, and he began a process of healing the wounds of the protracted Watergate scandal in an attempt to quickly restore confidence in government and unity within the public sphere. In pursuit of this goal, President Ford preemptively pardoned former president Nixon, a move that stirred considerable controversy and even false rumors of a corrupt backroom deal between Ford and Nixon, the latter allegedly promising the former the White House in exchange for a full pardon. Politically, it was a risky move for the new president that was at the time harshly criticized. It was only years later that many came around to the view of the pardon as a needed, dignified act of compassion.
With the resignation of President Nixon, who in 1972 appeared invulnerable and on track to earn a reputation as a great president, and with huge losses in the midterm elections as a result of the Watergate scandal, the Republican Party faced its biggest crisis since the Depression, or perhaps since the assassination of President Lincoln and the controversies that grew out of the administration of his successor, President Andrew Johnson. Many predicted that the GOP would not recover from the blow of a disgraced presidency, and some even anticipated that the Republican Party could fade out, as had the Whig Party in the 1850s. What was in the wings as a possible replacement for the GOP was unclear, but in late 1974 and the early months of 1975, the Republican Party was viewed by many as being in critical condition.
Thus, as the campaign season began, leading up to an election that would coincide with the nation’s bicentennial celebration, those within the Republican Party began looking for a solution to the GOP’s weakened state. Some remained loyal to President Ford, in part because they valued the office of the presidency in and of itself, and in part because Ford was admired within the party as a person representing needed integrity in public service. Others felt that Ford was uninspiring, or maybe too close to the disgraced Nixon White House (even though Ford had nothing to do with Watergate), or politically too moderate to lead the Republican cause in stemming the tide of what they perceived to be a new and dangerous statism promoted by an increasingly liberal and high-spending Democratic Party. For them, the crisis of the failed Nixon presidency was an opportunity, and the nomination and election of former California governor Ronald Reagan, the champion of the conservative wing of the party since the failed Goldwater campaign of 1964, was the best solution. It was at the 1964 Republican convention that Reagan experienced his breakthrough as a national political figure, and from that point, he was regarded by conservatives as the true rallying figure in their cause. Thus, as the campaign season moved ahead, the Republican nomination became a two-way race between the moderate incumbent president Gerald Ford—who by accident had become the first person to fill the presidency without being elected to either the presidency or the vice presidency—and the challenger, Reagan—popular, personable, disarmingly charismatic, and resolved.
Given the vulnerability of the Republican Party, the Democrats were handed the rare, perfect conditions for a major political triumph, perhaps on the order of Franklin Roosevelt’s landslide defeat of President Hoover forty-four years earlier, accompanied by considerable gains in Congress. But there was no one around like FDR (nor has anyone like him materialized since), and the Democrats continued to remain divided, the residues of the fragmented, polarizing Campaigns of 1968 and 1972 still lingering; and thus the party that should have rode easily to victory nearly lost. The field of candidates was among the largest in history, and while it included numerous personalities who were not serious contenders, it was populated by a large number of figures who were indeed quite serious contenders, and who had a chance in the opened field.
In 1975, one of the early front-runners, Washington senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson drew considerable attention owing to his outspoken views on foreign policy (especially his unwavering support of Israel), but he earned the wrath of the liberal wing for his support of the Vietnam War. Former vice president and 1968 party nominee Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota was also regarded as an early contender, along with his former running mate and the early 1972 front-runner, Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine; but Humphrey faced health problems and declined to run, while Muskie seemed to have lost his taste for national campaigns after the debacle of 1972. Other familiar names were floated, such as Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and former senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota; but for different reasons, they could not find traction within the party. (McCarthy would eventually run as an independent, drawing little attention and less support.) Former governor George Wallace, an independent candidate in 1968 who had been paralyzed by a would-be assassin in the 1972 campaign, an incident that caused his withdrawal at the very moment he began to gain momentum, was also once again in the ring. Also joining the field were the 1972 nominee for vice president, Sargent Shriver; Arizona senator Mo Udall; West Virginia senator Robert Byrd; Indiana senator Birch Bayh; former North Carolina governor and former president of Duke University Terry Sanford; Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen; Idaho senator Frank Church; and two new faces on the national stage, Georgia governor James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, to be joined later in the campaign by another governor, California’s free-thinking, free-speaking governor, Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr., the son of another California governor, Edmund “Pat” Brown Sr. (who had himself been a candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1956, at that time running a distant second in the primaries to Estes Kefauver before the party nominated Adlai Stevenson at the convention later that summer). Thus while the Republican race was shaping up to be a close duel between two major public figures, the Democrats were busily sifting through a truly mixed bag of candidates in search of a bona fide front-runner. At the Iowa caucus, things began to clarify.
While the choice of “uncommitted” received more votes than any candidate at the Iowa caucus, Governor Carter sent shockwaves through the party and the press by tallying 28 percent of the delegates in play, 15 percent more than his nearest competitor, Senator Bayh. Carter’s campaign followed with a critical, jolting win in the bellwether New Hampshire primary, where Carter again snagged 28 percent of the vote, followed by Senator Udall with 23 percent, Bayh showing third with 15 percent, and Senator Jackson, an early front-runner who did not participate in Iowa, receiving a meager 2 percent (he won 1% in the Iowa caucus). Jackson’s decision not to compete in Iowa was, looking back, a serious mistake, but it was one that he seemed to correct after winning the Massachusetts primary, taking 22 percent of the vote, with Carter finishing fourth behind Jackson, Wallace, and Udall. But on that same day, Carter won a crushing victory in Vermont, taking 42 percent of the delegates, with Shriver a distant second, winning 28 percent; and from the Vermont poll forward, Carter seemed unstoppable, winning the next nine primaries, soaking up delegates like a sponge, and leaving the rest of the field far behind. On May 11, he finished in a first-place tie with Frank Church in Nebraska, did not compete against Senator Byrd in the West Virginia primary, and was finally defeated by Governor Brown in the Maryland primary. Brown was a compelling candidate, and he might have given Carter a contest, but he entered the campaign season too late, winning two more primaries in the West (Nevada and his home state of California) while watching Carter take eight more primaries, scarcely contested. It was an astonishing development, as prior to the Iowa caucus, Carter was a virtual unknown outside of his home state of Georgia. It was also in 1972 that the importance of Iowa became fully realized, and subsequent campaigns would, at least until very recently, look to the combination of the Iowa caucus and the following New Hampshire primary to set the tone, serving as early indicators of a candidate’s promise.
After Carter campaigned brilliantly in the primaries, the Democratic Convention was left with the simple task of making it official, nominating him on the first ballot to bear the standard of the party in the bicentennial election. To complement the Democrats’ moderate Southern presidential nominee, Minnesota senator Walter Mondale, a liberal Northerner schooled in the Midwestern populism of his fellow Minnesotan Hubert Humphrey, was chosen by Carter to run in the second spot. Carter initiated an unprecedented process of interviewing vice presidential candidates. Prior to the convention, many political observers anticipated that Carter would invite Senator Church to run with him; but Carter harbored second thoughts about Church, conducted interviews of three candidates in his home—Mondale, Muskie, and Ohio senator and former Mercury astronaut John Glenn—and two at the convention—Jackson and Adlai Stevenson III. In the end, Carter chose Mondale on grounds of personal compatibility more than for any concern over North-South strategy (which was, coincidentally, the result) or ideological balance. Mondale proved to be an energetic, knowledgeable, and competent choice as the campaign developed.
Throughout American political history, the presence of an incumbent president usually makes for a fait accompli in the renomination of the incumbent to run for reelection. There are exceptions, the most recent being President Johnson twelve years earlier; but for the most part, an incumbent in the mix makes for no contest within the incumbent’s party. With Reagan’s presence, however, President Ford faced a genuine battle, and one that, it soon became evident, could have gone either way. Ford did show early strength, winning the first six primaries, but he barely beat Reagan in New Hampshire; and as President Johnson discovered in 1968, scarcely winning in New Hampshire is, for incumbents, tantamount to a loss. Once the dust had settled on the primary season, Ford had won eighteen primaries to Reagan’s eleven, and again, had Ford not been the incumbent, there might have been less of an issue with regard to Reagan’s performance; but Reagan had shown strength against the president and at one point won four consecutive primaries, exposing vulnerabilities in the president’s bid. More importantly, where Reagan actively campaigned, things were close, and even though Ford held a narrow lead in delegates going into the convention, there was much hope within the Reagan campaign that the convention might play out differently. Ford’s slight lead over Reagan in delegates did not give him the needed majority, so there was reason in the Reagan campaign to draw that conclusion.
It was the tightest convention since the 1924 Democratic convention, and as the candidates maneuvered for position, Reagan, a conservative who felt that he needed to woo delegates away from the more moderate Ford, announced that if nominated, he would select moderate/liberal Republican Richard Schweiker as his running mate. The move boomeranged, as enough conservatives were offended at what they perceived to be a betrayal of principle to stalk away and switch to Ford, and few if any moderates were drawn to Reagan because of Schweiker. Thus Ford snatched enough delegates to win the nomination, ending one of the more compelling conventions since the ascent of the primaries as the key impetus toward nomination. Ford came very close to asking Reagan to serve as his running mate, but in the end he selected Kansas senator Robert Dole, known for his acerbic wit and who, by some accounts, was chosen for his ability to aggressively attack the Democratic nominee, allowing Ford to remain true to his more affable persona. In a show of unity, Ford invited Reagan to speak at the end of the convention, an invitation accepted by the former governor, who again performed well, and in the opinion of many, he outshone the nominee as he had upstaged Goldwater at the 1964 convention, the event that launched him into the national spotlight. The 1976 Republican convention is the last one in which the party’s nomination was actually in play as the convention began, and at that time, this was an anomaly, given that the primary system had overtaken the process over the course of the past few elections.
Thus the outcome of the primary season was, in retrospect, counterintuitive. The incumbent president, who would under typical circumstances have glided to his nomination, limped out of the convention having barely staved off a significant challenge from an appealing competitor. Governor Carter, comparatively new to the national stage and in most respects an unknown quantity who under typical circumstances would have found himself quickly winnowed out by more seasoned, familiar, and influential candidates, in actuality proved an adept campaigner, winning his party’s nomination with comparative ease and delivering to the Democrats the most unifying candidacy in twelve years. In part this was due to a general desire within the electorate for someone fresh. After Vietnam and Watergate, many Americans were looking for new directions, and the unassuming outsider from Georgia seemed to point the way. Carter’s confidence and ease of victory was not lost on the voters, and Ford’s narrow escape from the Reagan challenge hovered over him throughout the remainder of the campaign season. Thus at the end of the Republican convention in mid-August, national presidential preference polls showed Carter enjoying a double-digit lead over Ford; in some polls Carter led by as much as thirty-four points.
On the issues, the two candidates were both generally moderate, easily the most moderate rivals since the 1960 election pitted Senator John Kennedy against Vice President Nixon. Carter had keenly positioned himself as a moderate on budget and crime issues and a liberal on social issues such as abortion and affirmative action. Instead of calling for higher taxes to pay for the expansion of federal programs, Carter pledged spending discipline and frugality, touting “zero-based budgeting” as a method to control government spending and promising to set firm budgetary priorities. Furthermore, Carter promised to restore honesty in government in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. The Carter campaign made the return of integrity in government its top priority, and so the phrase “Return Integrity to the White House” became the keynote slogan of the Carter campaign.
Fighting back from a huge deficit in the polls, the Ford campaign adopted a strategy that was aimed at convincing the American people that the country was now finally on a promising course, thanks to the president’s leadership, and it emphasized the strong Midwestern values that shaped his upbringing, a countermove to the stress that Governor Carter’s campaign had placed on the values of public service that he developed throughout his life as an observant Southern Baptist. Carter’s religious devotion, never really an issue for the voters, nonetheless defined his persona in a way not seen since the campaign of John Kennedy, a Roman Catholic. However, Kennedy preferred to steer clear of the issue, and he only addressed it to allay concerns from some quarters that he was politically beholden to the pope, and address it he did, in a powerful speech before a gathering of Baptist ministers in Houston during the 1960 campaign. But Carter’s faith visibly shaped his public image, and while not influencing voters either way, it became, along with the perception that he was a “Washington outsider,” a prevalent theme in describing the governor’s background, character, and vision. Ford, an Episcopalian and also devoutly religious, chose not to mention that aspect of his life and instead drew on his long record as a public official with experience in both Congress and the presidency.
Ford’s approach worked; with each poll he incrementally closed the gap, and soon the momentum was clearly his. A slowing rate of inflation and falling unemployment made it easier for the Ford campaign to make the case that his presidency was accomplished, and that given a firm mandate from the people (the only thing he lacked), he could then go on to achieve still greater things. While Carter spoke of personal intimacies, Ford was effectively looking presidential, strengthening his campaign at the right moment. The slogans “The Man Who Made Us Proud Again” and “Peace, Prosperity and the Public Trust” sought to stress these points. Many voters were still disappointed over the pardoning of former President Nixon, and thus Ford avoided raising the issue; but his campaign also emphasized, as did Carter’s, the integrity of Ford and the role he had already played in helping to restore trust in government, a claim that held some merit. Additionally, the Ford campaign sought to raise doubts about Carter’s preparation for the Oval Office, and it challenged the Democrat’s claim that he was ready to take on the responsibilities of the presidency after having only served as governor of Georgia for a relatively short period of time.
For only the second time in history, the two presidential candidates nominated by the major political parties agreed to meet in televised debate. Additionally, for the first time in campaign history, the two vice presidential nominees, Bob Dole and Walter Mondale, also met in a televised debate. In the first presidential debate, both Ford and Carter did well, but many analysts concluded that the president came away holding a slight edge. Ford seemed confident and calm, while Carter appeared at some points unsure and even a little prickly. The polls indicated that the first debate helped Ford: Before the debate, the president had trailed by 18 points, but after the debate, he had gained 10 points on Carter and was now only 8 points behind, significantly narrowing the gap. The momentum was clearly still his.
But in the second debate, the president committed an egregious gaffe that blunted his momentum and, to many observers and analysts, cost him the election. One element of the campaign that had previously worked in Ford’s favor was his experience in foreign policy. After having served in the Oval Office since December 1974, Ford had gained considerable expertise in dealing with foreign leaders and international issues, something that Governor Carter could not easily dismiss. But during the second debate, President Ford, in speaking of the status of Soviet Bloc nations, inexplicably refused to admit that the Soviet Union dominated Eastern European nations, a statement that to everyone seemed to be either patently naïve or, worse, lacking basic understanding of geopolitical dynamics. The president made the comment in defense of the Helsinki Accords that he had negotiated with the Soviet leadership, agreements that to some critics amounted to a concession to Russian hegemony in Eastern Europe, with serious implications for Western Europe and evoking anxiety over the future. In explaining the Helsinki Accords, the president stated, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.” When pressed further to explain himself, the president curiously insisted on digging himself into a deep hole. “I don’t believe,” the president claimed, “that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don’t believe that the Rumanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don’t believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union.” For a candidate who was relying heavily on his foreign policy reputation, it was an epic blunder. Still worse, the following day when the president again attempted to explain still further, he stubbornly refused to admit that he had misspoken. Surprisingly, the polls told a slightly different story, indicating a loss of only one or two points after the second debate; hence it may not have been as deleterious as some analysts, then and now, have concluded. Nonetheless, the mistake effectually broke Ford’s momentum and restrengthened Carter’s position.
As it turned out, Carter did not help his own cause, as he also committed a weird gaffe that directly hurt his numbers. In an injudicious interview with Playboy magazine, some untoward impulse possessed Carter to confess to having “lusted in his heart,” an admission that was viewed by many as far too personal, undignified, and somewhat troubling for a presidential candidate. The very decision to interview with Playboy, in its essence a pin-up centerfold magazine with pretentions to urbane discussion and social relevance, was in itself unusual, but the content of Carter’s remarks in the course of the interview was simply too much to resist. The “lust in my heart” incident drew jokes and jibes from all corners, from popular late-night talk shows (such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson) to numerous political cartoons, and Carter faced his first serious setback since entering the very beginning of his campaign in Iowa. The news media and late-night comedians alike gleefully pounced on Carter, but they also continued to mock Ford. Even though he was probably the most athletic president since Theodore Roosevelt, Ford was portrayed as clumsy and somewhat doltish. On more than one occasion, the president had been caught stumbling on camera, images that fed into the misperception that he was physically inept and, by implication, somehow slow of mind. Saturday Night Live comedian Chevy Chase routinely satirized the president as an awkward and incompetent dunce. Ford took it all in stride, even sportingly making a brief appearance to introduce the popular show. Whether or not either of these major gaffes—Ford’s baffling Eastern Europe comment or Carter’s embarrassing frankness about his salacious urges—in the end made any difference in the race’s outcome is not clear, but neither incident helped them, and both men retrospectively regretted their mistakes.
On Election Night, the early returns indicated a favorable outcome for Governor Carter, as projections for New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and Massachusetts went his way. But as the night developed, Ford came back, taking Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Virginia, and thereby providing his supporters with a degree of hope. But when Texas was announced for Carter, it appeared that the governor would be the next president, even though Ford swept every western state in the lower forty-eight, including California, the biggest electoral prize; the only state Ford lost west of Texas was Hawaii, which was significant given the closeness of the election. The popular tally was tight, Carter winning just over 40,800,000 votes (or 50.1%) with Ford taking just under 39,150,000 votes (a whisker over 48%), the remainder of the votes (less than 2%) going to independent candidate Eugene McCarthy and a variety of obscure minor-party candidates. Governor Carter’s popular victory converted to 297 Electoral College votes (55%) to President Ford’s 240 (45%); it was the closest margin of victory in the Electoral College since 1916 (President Wilson’s 277 votes, or 52%, to 254, or 48%, for Charles Evans Hughes). President Ford was the first incumbent president to lose a general election since President Hoover in 1932. (All told, Ford was now the eighth incumbent to lose an election, joining Hoover, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and William Howard Taft.) Even though on the surface the defeat of an incumbent president was a severe blow to the Republican Party, which was still suffering the aftershocks of the Watergate scandal that brought down a once-popular Republican president, the close election revealed another story. As stated above, in 1974, many considered the GOP on its way to extinction based on the assessment that Watergate had so stained the reputation of Republicans that a complete recovery would be nearly impossible. But even in defeat, and in spite of serious campaign errors, the Ford candidacy proved that his party remained resilient.
Just two years after the resignation of President Nixon, the Republicans were thus showing evidence of rebounding. They only required the right kind of candidate and a favorable turn of circumstances to complete their recovery. With the Ford presidency over, that candidate would have to come from somewhere else. As it turned out, the candidate the GOP was looking for had already proven himself a formidable force in the primaries of 1976, and he would again enter the arena four years hence.
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