When the center held: Gerald Ford and the rescue of the American presidency

Abstract

President Gerald R. Ford spent just under 900 days in the White House, not much below Kennedy's 1,000 days. Yet the Ford presidency, unelected to office, is frequently skipped over in US surveys of foreign policy, foreign relations or history; it is frequently treated as an appendix to the Nixon years. The fact that Kissinger stayed on as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State for a part of the new presidency also lends a narrative of continuity. But Ford did carve out a presidency of his own and gained a more self-assured voice in foreign affairs as time went on. A constant theme plays on the ‘decency’ of Ford, an old-fashioned, unpretentious, honest, straight-laced character from Michigan—as though all people from that region held such characteristics. (Rumsfeld served him in many ways, culminating as the youngest Secretary of Defense (1975–7); he eventually became one of the oldest in the George W. Bush administration (2001–2006).) Rumsfeld's concluding reflections build on this sense of decency: ‘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’. He had worked hard to get his ‘country back on the right track and restoring the faith of its people’. He earned people's trust, led the United States in its post-Vietnam, post-Watergate hour of need, ‘and once again, the center held’ (p. 273). Rumsfeld's memoir is welcome as a study of a much-neglected Ford, though for those acquainted with the period or the presidency, there is little new.