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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Gerald Ford > Item 379
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Gerald R. Ford
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by Douglas Brinkley
Sales Rank: 93040
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List Price: $20.00
$13.60
At Amazon
on 9-14-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 224 pages
Published by: Times Books February 6, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0805069097
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0805069099
Book Dimensions:
8.4 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
Weighs: 12.8 ounces
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by David S. Broder
When historian Douglas Brinkley was asked by the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., general editor of the American Presidents series published by Times Books, to undertake a short biography of Gerald R. Ford, the man from Michigan who served less than three years in the White House was a neglected subject.
By the time Brinkley had finished the manuscript, Ford's story had been told, copiously and repeatedly, in newspaper obituaries recording his death at age 93 last December, and his contributions to American life had been praised in memorial ceremonies in California, Washington and Grand Rapids, Mich. -- and in dozens of columns and editorials. As his body was carried across the country, from his final home near Palm Springs, to the Capitol where he had served, and then back to Michigan for burial, the praise rolled in for the man who had applied the healing comfort of his common sense and goodwill to a nation badly bruised by the ordeals of the Vietnam War and Watergate.
After all that, the current generation of readers -- unlike those who in future decades may turn to Brinkley's book for basic information about the life of the 38th president -- will wonder what fresh insights the author offers. He had only one personal interview with Ford for this project, back in 2003, and he mines it for a number of autobiographical comments, none of them groundbreaking. But Brinkley does address -- and help settle -- some of the unresolved questions about Ford's career.
He has delved deep, for example, into the relationship between Ford and Richard Nixon, the man who appointed Ford to the vacancy created by the resignation of Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew, and thereby put Ford in line for the presidency. After Ford's death, journalists who had interviewed him late in life quarreled among themselves about whether the Ford-Nixon relationship was simply one of mutual political advantage or a genuine friendship.
Brinkley makes a strong case that they were far more than partners in partisanship. He quotes Ford as telling him that Nixon was "my close friend," a man whose views on both foreign and domestic issues "were almost mirror images" of his own, as he quickly discovered when they met as members of the House. Beyond that, both men had grown up in families struggling during the Depression, so, as Ford said, "we understood what it meant to rise on merit, not privilege."
In a private collection of Ford's correspondence, still in the hands of a New York dealer, Brinkley unearthed a number of letters written by Nixon after his resignation, counseling and offering moral support to his successor, whose brief tenure was beset by troubles. In August of 1976, with Ford's approval scores around thirty percent, Nixon wrote from exile urging Ford to "keep that confident, fighting spirit -- and the only poll that matters will come out alright on November 2."
It did not, of course. Brinkley sympathetically repeats Ford's own complaint that it was the long battle that the unelected president had to wage just to keep the Republican nomination in 1976 from Ronald Reagan that fatally weakened Ford for the battle with Jimmy Carter. Ford called Reagan's decision to challenge him "a low-down stunt" and said the Californian's standoffish attitude after losing the nomination fight probably cost him the election. "He snubbed me," Ford said. "Put his nose up in the air."
That bitterness was at odds with most of Ford's life. He had a talent for reconciliation, forging friendships with past antagonists, including Jimmy Carter and many of the journalists who had ridiculed or criticized him as president. Brinkley does full justice to those qualities of Midwestern goodwill exhibited by Ford all his life, and he excuses Ford's anger with Reagan and the right-wingers because he plainly shares Ford's preference for a more tolerant, pragmatic version of conservatism.
The result is a highly sympathetic but largely accurate appraisal of Ford's accomplishments. I would fault Brinkley's account of Ford's rise to the White House in one respect. When discussing the series of backbench revolts that moved Ford into the post of Republican leader of the House, Brinkley makes it sound as if Ford himself were the ringleader in all these efforts. In fact, much of the strategy and organizing was done by others, who were smart enough to recognize that the rapport Ford had gained among his colleagues made him the ideal candidate to put forward against the Old Guard leaders. But a biography of Jerry Ford that contains no mention of the work of Melvin R. Laird, Charles Goodell and Glenard Lipscomb in advancing his career is hardly complete.
That said, I can fully endorse Brinkley's contention that Ford did the right thing in pardoning Nixon -- I thought, and wrote, so at the time -- and that he accomplished more as president than "healing" the wounded presidency. "It was Gerald R. Ford who dissipated the pall of Richard Nixon, however controversially, and who shepherded the nation safely through to the end of its most divisive war while living up to the United States's ensuing responsibilities to South Vietnam's refugees. It was Ford whose help in forging the Helsinki Accords opened the way for the collapse of Soviet communism. It was Ford who acknowledged the seriousness of the global energy crisis and who conveyed the urgent need for cooperation to do something about it to the rest of the industrialized world, and whose careful fiscal policies cut inflation in half and boosted the U.S. economy out of its direst fix since the Great Depression. And it was Ford who, purely by dint of coming across as a really nice, normal guy, restored Americans' faith in the validity of their government."
All of which, Brinkley argues, should boost him into the rank of "near-great president."
Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Product Description
The “accidental” president whose innate decency and steady hand restored the presidency after its greatest crisis When Gerald R. Ford entered the White House in August 1974, he inherited a presidency tarnished by the Watergate scandal, the economy was in a recession, the Vietnam War was drawing to a close, and he had taken office without having been elected. Most observers gave him little chance of success, especially after he pardoned Richard Nixon just a month into his presidency, an action that outraged many Americans, but which Ford thought was necessary to move the nation forward.
Many people today think of Ford as a man who stumbled a lot--clumsy on his feet and in politics--but acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley shows him to be a man of independent thought and conscience, who never allowed party loyalty to prevail over his sense of right and wrong. As a young congressman, he stood up to the isolationists in the Republican leadership, promoting a vigorous role for America in the world. Later, as House minority leader and as president, he challenged the right wing of his party, refusing to bend to their vision of confrontation with the Communist world. And after the fall of Saigon, Ford also overruled his advisers by allowing Vietnamese refugees to enter the United States, arguing that to do so was the humane thing to do.
Brinkley draws on exclusive interviews with Ford and on previously unpublished documents (including a remarkable correspondence between Ford and Nixon stretching over four decades), fashioning a masterful reassessment of Gerald R. Ford’s presidency and his underappreciated legacy to the nation.
Reader Reviews
Well known historian Douglas Brinkley has written this brief biography, as a part of the American Presidents series of works. In the series editor's Introduction, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. notes that (Page xv): "The president is the central player in the American political order." Gerald Ford was an accidental president, taking over after Richard Nixon's downfall resulting from Watergate and his subsequent resignation. Gerald Ford's name at birth was Leslie Lynch King, Jr. His father had a violent temper and the marriage did not last long. His mother later married Gerald Rudolf Ford; after a time, her son was renamed Gerald Rudolph (an Americanized version of the stepfather's middle name) Ford. As a youngster, he excelled at athletics and even had the possibility of a pro football career. However, he chose law school and, shortly after that, electoral politics. He saw action in World War II. When he was elected to the House of Representatives 1948, he began to formulate the ambition to become Speaker of the House. His chosen career was in the legislature. The book does a nice job profiling his rise in the House, with carefully crafted advancement through the ranks; it also depicts the start of a long-time friendship between Ford and Richard Nixon. When Ford finally became Minority Leader in the House, he used his conciliatory approach well. As Brinkley says (Page 31), ". . .he played the good coach, giving his squad wide latitude to speak their minds. In exchange, he wanted no bickering. Ford's open forum proved smart strategy." Some tho9ught him rather slow of thought, but his amiability and ability to work with others represented a great strength. When Nixon was elected President, he tended not to work so well with Congress--including his own Republican mates. Ford did not distinguish himself with his unabating support for Nixon after Watergate became a public matter; after former Attorney General John Mitchell reported that the White House was not involved, Ford clung to that long after so many others had seen through the falsehoods. Then, the unlikely story of his rise to Vice-President and his subsequent ascension to the presidency after Nixon's downfall. The book does a nice job in a brief space noting the major decisions/actions of the Ford Administration, some working out well and some not so well. Here, we read about Whip Inflation Now, swine flu, the withdrawal from Viet Nam, the Mayaguez incident, the Helsinki Accords, and so on. The internecine Republic nomination politics of 1976 essentially doomed him to lose to Jimmy Carter. Then, the amazing life after the presidency and people's changing reflections on his accomplishments. . . . Another well turned work in the American Presidents series. These short volumes cannot go into the depth that I would sometimes like, but the tradeoff is accessible books for people who might not have the patience to wade through a 600 page tome.
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Gerald R. Ford
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