Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford was the only person to serve as president of the United States without being elected to either the presidency or the vice-presidency. Born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha in 1913, he was renamed after his mother remarried, and grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was a star centre on Michigan's national championship football teams, turned down professional offers, coached boxing and football at Yale while studying law there, and served in the Pacific aboard the carrier Monterey. He was elected to Congress in 1948 and served twenty-five years, becoming House minority leader in 1965. He sat on the Warren Commission investigating the Kennedy assassination. Richard Nixon appointed him vice-president in December 1973 under the Twenty-fifth Amendment after Spiro Agnew resigned over bribery charges. When Nixon resigned over Watergate on 9 August 1974, Ford became president, telling the country that its long national nightmare was over. A month later he granted Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes committed in office. It was widely believed to be a bargain, his approval fell about twenty points overnight, and it probably cost him the 1976 election; he defended it as necessary to let the country move on, and the judgement has softened considerably since. His term was economically grim — inflation above eleven per cent, then the worst recession since the 1930s — and he responded with the ineffective Whip Inflation Now campaign. Saigon fell in April 1975, and he signed the Helsinki Accords that August. He survived two assassination attempts within three weeks. He beat Ronald Reagan for the nomination in 1976 and lost narrowly to Jimmy Carter. He died in 2006.
- Lived: 1913 CE – 2006 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: 38th Vice President of the United States (1973–74), 38th President of the United States (1974–77)
