Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford was a Republican from Michigan. He represented Michigan in the House of Representatives for 25 years before the White House. He is the only president who was never elected president or vice president. He became president legally without being elected president or VP. Voters never put him on a national ticket. He became vice president, then president, because of the 25th Amendment, which lets a president name a new vice president if that office is empty. Congress confirms the choice. He took the presidential oath on August 9, 1974 — the same day Nixon left the White House. He served from 1974 to 1977. His vice president was Nelson Rockefeller, a former New York governor, also named under the 25th Amendment.

When Ford took office he said, “Our long national nightmare is over.” He meant the Watergate crisis. His main assignment as president was to steady the country after Watergate. Sometimes the job is to lower the temperature. One of his first big acts was to pardon Richard Nixon. He wanted the country to move on. Many voters were angry, and the pardon likely cost him the 1976 election. He lost that race to Jimmy Carter, a Georgia Democrat. Ford left quietly, the way a republic is supposed to change hands. The Helsinki Accords, signed on Ford's watch, were agreements with European countries that included human-rights promises.

In 1975, during Ford's presidency, South Vietnam fell and the Vietnam War ended. North Vietnamese forces took Saigon. Helicopters lifted the last Americans from the embassy roof. U.S. combat troops had already come home; Ford had to manage the end, not the beginning. At home, inflation was high. His WIN campaign stood for Whip Inflation Now. WIN buttons asked Americans to save and spend less. In 1975, two people tried to assassinate him — two women in California, three weeks apart. Both failed. Ford kept campaigning.