Gerald Ford and History

Write It When I’m Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford
By Thomas M. DeFrank
G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Price: $25.95
Pages: 258
Year: 2007

Gerald Ford was a remarkable politician and president. When Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973 for income tax evasion and other criminal acts he committed while Maryland governor, President Richard Nixon selected House Minority leader Ford to serve out the balance of Agnew’s term. Ford became the first unelected vice president after he was confirmed by Congress.

In August 1974, Nixon resigned over his role in the Watergate scandal and Ford became the first unelected president. He quickly selected Nelson A. Rockefeller as his vice president.

Ford met DeFrank while he was serving as Vice President. One day Ford reflected on his role as Vice President and his poor treatment by Nixon’s White House staff. “They’re angry and they’re bitter because they know Nixon is finished,” DeFrank told Ford. “It’s over. He (Nixon) can’t survive, and you’re gonna be president.”

“You’re right,” Ford said. “But when the pages of history are written, nobody can say I contributed to it.”

After this conversation, DeFrank promised Ford not to print the conversation until after Ford died. The two men began a friendship that lasted until Ford’s death in 2006. They met on and off over the years to discuss Ford’s presidency, the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Ford felt more in common with Carter than Reagan. “There was a bond because they both felt they had been defeated by Reagan,” Ford biographer James Cannon said. Ford held harsh judgment of Reagan because he refused to campaign for Ford in 1976. Ford considered Reagan “lazy,” “naïve” and “inexperienced.”

The most surprising revelation in the book concerns the relationship between Ford and Bill Clinton. As Clinton was being impeached by the House of Representatives, Ford and Carter wrote an op/ed piece for the New York Times in which they said Clinton’s Oval Office affair with an intern did not constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

During the impeachment hearings, Clinton asked Ford to lobby House Republicans on his behalf and to try and end the impeachment process and spare himself embarrassment. Ford said he would help if Clinton admitted lying under oath. Clinton refused to do that and Ford didn’t lobby for an end of the impeachment process.

Later, Ford told DeFrank that Clinton was a “sex addict.” “Betty and I have talked about this a lot. He’s (Clinton’s) sick—he’s got an addiction. He needs treatment. He’s sick.”

Still, Clinton praised Ford on many occasions. In 1999, Clinton awarded Ford the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a White House ceremony.

Throughout the book, Ford comes across as an able and intelligent politician. He was not a rigid ideologue, but a man who believed in compromise. Ford performed admirably, in the White House and as a private citizen, when history called on him. No other politician has gone through the political ordeal Ford managed with grit and courage. Gerald Ford was a remarkable man.

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Jim Patterson, an economist and journalist, is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He worked for President Ford at the 1976 GOP convention in Kansas City.