PAT KINNEY, News Editor | Posted: Thursday, November 27, 2008 12:00 am
Vice President Gerald R. Ford just realized he had made a mistake.
He was being interviewed by Thomas M. DeFrank of Newsweek magazine. It was 1974, in what would be the waning months of Richard Nixon's presidency. Responding to a question, Ford realized he'd made a comment he shouldn't have about the president's future.
Ford, a former University of Michigan Wolverine football player, came around the desk, grabbed DeFrank by the tie, and told him he couldn't leave the room until he promised not to quote his answer.
After standing eyeball to eyeball for what seemed like an eternity to DeFrank, Ford relented a little.
"Write it when I'm gone," Ford said. DeFrank agreed.
DeFrank finally has.
Now the Washington bureau chief for the New York Daily News, DeFrank capitalized on that forced gentlemen's agreement with Ford. He covered his entire presidency from 1974-77 and conducted numerous interviews with him subsequently, the last one coming weeks before Ford's death in late 2006.
Ford's words to DeFrank in 1974 are the title of the book. His interviews and recollections break through the seemingly wooden exterior the public saw of the 38th president to reveal more of Ford's essence.
To some who remember his presidency, Ford was at best boring, at worst an incompetent bumbler. He was like your next door neighbor with the perfectly manicured lawn who sat on his porch, puffing his pipe, rocking and reading the evening paper before supper. Pretty vanilla.
He is remembered for his pardon of President Nixon, which probably cost him the 1976 presidential election, though he fell just short of staging one of the greatest comebacks in the history of American politics.
He is our only president never elected to the office in his own right, yet he is one of the very few U.S. politicians who can claim to have defeated Ronald Reagan - for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination.
Ford, a U.S. Navy veteran, ended the military draft and pardoned thousands of Vietnam draft evaders who had fled to Canada, practically simultaneous to his pardon of Nixon. Both moves were intended to patch up the nation's internal wounds.
He was a terrible public speaker but offered a couple of the most memorable lines in American history or politics. "Our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men," he said after being sworn in as president following Nixon's resignation.
He also reached beyond himself in challenging Jimmy Carter to debates when accepting the Republican nomination in 1976. "We concede not a single state; we concede not a single vote," he said. And his best one-liner of all was the self-effacing, "I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln."
DeFrank's book reveals the fellow the nation thought it came to know in less than three years but appreciated more in the decades following his presidency.
Asked by DeFrank in 1991 how he wanted to be remembered, Ford said, "That I was a dedicated, hardworking, honest person who served constructively in the Congress and in the White House."
Amen. And a president whose greatest contribution to our republic was not winning a war, but healing a nation.