American History Hit - Gerald Ford: The Unelected President

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Gerald Ford is the only person to serve as president without being elected to either the presidency or the vice presidency. He was handed a poisoned chalice and for many he's only remembered as the butt of Saturday Night Live. But there's much more to his story.Don's guest is Professor Kathryn Brownell, author of 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News.Edited by Tim Arstall, Produced by Freddy Chick, Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. The 1970s weren't all bad news. At least there was usually something decent on TV. And on April 17, 1976, surprised late-night viewers tuned into NBC and saw President Gerald Ford

standing in the Oval Office in front of the flag, staring gun barrel straight into the camera, wearing a somewhat glazed expression as he announced, live from New York, it's Saturday night. Cut to NBC Studio 8H, where a young Chevy Chase, the breakout star of SNL, launched into his impersonation of President Ford as a clutz, who if he wasn't falling over or fumbling a glass of water onto himself, was just about to. Real-life president meets exaggerated parody, the commander-in-chief deciding, if you can't beat a joke, then join it. Well, for one line, at least. Hello, listeners, great to have you with us. I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit.

Today, we progress onward with our president's series, as we know. reach number 38. President Gerald R. Ford of Grand Rapids, Michigan, R is for Rudolph. Something central to understanding the boy who became the man. More on that later. Ford's abbreviated presidency lasted from 1974 to 1977. During these years, Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run was released. Remember that well because I'm from New Jersey. Blockbuster movies, The Godfather Part 2, Jaws, one flew over the cuckoo's nest. It was America's 200th birthplace. the bicentennial in 1976, unfortunately concurrent with a stagnant economy and generally diminished morale, thanks to Vietnam and a public hangover from Nixon and Watergate. All this was the backdrop for the Ford presidency.

Ford was a moderate Republican, a respected, long-serving member of the House of Representatives for 12 terms, 24 years. Ford is most famously, of course, known as the man who replaced Nixon's vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, and then the president himself after Nixon resigned. Thus, Ford becomes the only U.S. president to serve unelected by the American people. He is an enigmatic figure in the presidential pantheon for reasons we'll decipher today with Professor Catherine Brunel of Purdue University, who is the director of the Center for American Political History and Technology, author of the book 24-7 Politics, cable television and the fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News. Professor Brownell was the guest for our Watergate episode, number 139, invite you to listen to that.

And greetings, Katie. Welcome back to American History Hit. Thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be back. There is a fascinating biographical fact from Gerald Ford's earliest youth that I alluded to in the opening. And I just want to state that up front because I think it strikes a chord, a theme that is resonant throughout his entire life. Ford was born Leslie Lynch-Kin Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska, July 14th, 19th. 13, but his parents separated weeks later and then divorced. His mom and him moved back to Grand Rapids,

and very soon afterwards in her life, his mom meets a guy named Gerald R. Ford, who is a very respectable guy with a wonderful painting business. And he gives that name to his newly or soon to be adopted son, Gerald R. Ford. And that's how Ford becomes his name. It's a fascinating thing. And I think it's important only to understand at the outset that Gerald Ford always played a role in accommodating disruption. That's my point. And when that is imprinted early on in life, it sticks with you. Absolutely. And that's something that you could see throughout his congressional career. He was really respected as someone that everyone liked, didn't cause a lot of controversy, didn't cause a lot of waves. And indeed, when Nixon had to find an appoint of replacement for Speer Agnew

after he resigned, you know, the Watergate investigation had been heating up. And speaker of the house, Carl Albert, urged Nixon to pick someone that everyone liked. That was really what he urged. And he said, the person I encourage you to do, the one that everyone likes is Gerald Ford. Right. We'll get to all that in detail. But it's important to understand. I mentioned he is an enigma. People sort of never quite understood who he was because he was always kind of in the background of American politics. But that's kind of where it comes from, this psychology. He had three stepbrothers as a result of that remarriage.

He attended University of Michigan and was a star athlete, big time, Wolverine's MVP two years in a row, 1934 and 35. And this becomes important to me. I don't know why, but later on he is incorrectly identified as a clutz when in fact, this man was an astonishing footballer who almost went pro with the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions. They were vying for him. He went the path of law instead. He passes the bar in Michigan after he studied law at Yale, then joins the Navy in World War II, sees a lot of action in the South Pacific on an aircraft carrier called the USS Monterey. I just think it's important to understand this guy had a heck of a life early on and was very celebrated, even at a New York

city model for a girlfriend. I mean, it's so contrary to to the reputation he has later on. He runs for Congress out of Grand Rapids, 1948. He beats the isolationist incumbent Bartel Junkman. Give me an idea of this time after World War II. What is the national politics in terms of the Republican Party? Yeah, so the 1948 elections, especially in Congress, are really significant. You've got a very divided Democratic Party. And so the Democrats are really dividing between their Southern wing. You have the Dixie Cratts that kind of storm out of that convention. And so the Democratic Party is starting to come undone around some issues, especially around race in the aftermath of the war.

The Republican Party is not that much more unified. It also has these disparate wings. You have these more conservative pulses that are critiquing this notion that the United States, States should be an active global leader. And I think that that's something that really kind of comes out. Gerald Ford is on the other side. He's very much part of this more moderate Republican party that is emerging that will coalesce around Dwight Eisenhower in 52 and really gained strength that the United States could and should be a world leader and should not risen from that global stage the way that many this isolation impulse, both in the Republican Party and there's some in the

Democratic Party. But there is an isolation as more conservative impulse in the Republican Party that loses out in 48 and then again in 52. It's so interesting. I mean, I have so value this series that we've done because it's given me perspective on the whole 20th century, really. But what happens after Truman, after World War II and his desegregation of the military, et cetera, right up until Brown versus Board of Education under Eisenhower, that whole period is really the engine of such discord, isn't it? It really splits both parties, really. And it begins to set you up for Goldwater in 64 and then Nixon later on. And everything that kind of ripples through even to modern day starts at that period. Yeah, it really is the beginning of a partisan

realignment where parties go from being more regionally focused and kind of finding common ground economically to really becoming more ideologically different. And in 1948, they were not ideologically different. In fact, there are a lot of ideological differences within parties, a lot of regional divides, a lot of class divides as well. And so you really do, it really is the beginning of the political realignment that you see bursting on the scene in the Republican Party in 64 and then very much on display in 1980. Right. Nixon is going to drive this thing. And Ford had a very tight relationship with Nixon in the Congress. They were good pals. So it's that that really drives the interest and the Congress, as you say, Carl Albert, in choosing Ford as this

replacement for Agnew. Can we talk about that episode and how it works? So Spiro Agnew was a favorite of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. At this time, they were growing. They had been at the forefront of how Barry Goldwater won the 64 nomination for the Republican Party. But if you recall in 64, goldwater gets smoked and it's a landslide election for Lyndon Johnson. But nevertheless, conservatives are starting to gain ground. They're very critical of the social welfare state that many moderate Republicans had bought into and had participated in building and expanding under Eisenhower and Johnson and Kennedy, and even under Nixon in some capacities. And so there's this growing conservative wing that doesn't necessarily trust Richard Nixon. But they

become much more trustworthy of it. They fall into line more so, not completely. There are some that push for John Ashbrook to run in 72 to challenge Nixon, but they fall in line because they actually adore Spiro Agnew. Spiro Agnew is a vocal critic, especially of this liberal media bias, and really was Nixon's attack dog against, you know, the liberalism and, you know, started to kind to turn this anti-liberalism into more of a coherent conservative message. And so that's where Spiro Agnew really played a key role. And so his, when he ultimately had to resign because he was involved in these bribery scandals, this is a really key moment where conservatives are hoping that a conservative would be put in place. And of course, that's not going to happen,

given the realities of the Watergate scandal as it's playing out at the time. Yeah. There's a big controversy brewing, of course, as if it's important to recognize these are two separate scandals. Agnew's whole corruption scandal really dates back to being governor of Maryland and all that stuff that happened then. It's later that Watergate really bubbles up and becomes what it is. But those are two separate things. It just feels like they're together because at the same time period of 72 to 74. In light of those controversies, Nixon also picks forward because he knows Congress is just going to approve him, right? I mean, that's really important that this just happens quickly. Absolutely. He knows, again, this is the fall of 73 after the summer,

the televised hearings. I mean, it's really, Watergate is starting to intensify. It's showing, it's starting to show some very, very concrete links between the higher-ups of the Nixon White House and not just the burglary, but of course, the cover-up. And so, you know, there's an intense political pressure. And Nixon needs someone who is not controversial. And, and that, again, this trust that a lot of people liked him and they trusted him. And so that's really why he decides on Gerald Ford. Right. But I want to underscore that this reputation that he has had has been developing for 20 years. You know, he's always been that guy in between. He's been a very respected member of that of that inner circle of people. Lots of big committees that I think appropriations he was

on or something. There were major committees he was the he was the head of. Not to mention, he's from a major Democratic state, which is in Michigan, you know, big union territory, the auto workers and so forth. So he's really right in there in the strategy of that idea. He was frustrated, as I understand, because Nixon's landslide in 72 actually didn't give them the kind of majority that he was expecting would happen, right? It's still so divided because the Congress is really democratic. Absolutely. And, you know, Democrats had dominated Congress for quite some time at this moment. And this is something that in the 72, if you look at the presidential map, all of the country, except for Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., go for Richard Nixon. And that

looks like a landslide. But the reality is that the Democratic Party was deeply divided on the presidential level. They had over a dozen people that ran in an open primary system. It was a very new nominating system that year. And so the presidential process was very contested, fragmented and divided. However, at the state and at the national level in Congress, they still have a stronghold. You know, what's interesting is that this is done under the 25th Amendment. Of course, the articles of the Constitution have originally ideas of the Vice President stepping in, but they really changed the Constitution or sharpened it, I guess, with the 25th Amendment in light of the Kennedy assassination. Ninety-seven this happened. Yeah, and that's what's really interesting. It's because

in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, there's a lot of attention. to this question of succession and who has authority. But again, it hadn't actually been implemented until this. So it's the first time. So it's making constitutional history because it's the first time that they're following this new procedure, which ultimately says that when there's a vacancy in the office of the vice president,

the president shall nominate a vice president that will have to then be confirmed by the majority of both houses of Congress. Right. This has not been attended to before. And this sets him up, as I said in the opening, to become the only unelected president in our entire history. It's so fascinating. From the moment Ford is inaugurated as vice president, December 6th, 1973, hardly approved by his congressional colleagues, as we said. Watergate then continues to unfold over the next year. Nixon won't

resign until August 1974. So that's 10 months after he's been named to vice president. We're going to run into the moment that Nixon gives up the office. He is, is called secretly on August 1, 1974, by Alexander Hague, who was Nixon's chief of staff, who tells him to prepare. How does Ford go about this? Give me the whole experience that he's going through at this point. Well, again, I think it's important to remember that there was a sign that this was coming. There was a feeling that things were moving and that impeachment was very, very real. And that is the only reason that Nixon was willing to resign because he understood that after in May, the House Judiciary Committee began debating articles of impeachment. And then, of course, there is this legal debate over the tapes.

And does Nixon have privilege over them? Are they his property? The Supreme Court weighs in on the tapes in July. And then it becomes very clear that this is going to be the hard evidence. And then people in Senate, notably Barry Goldwater, one of, you know, again, the leader of this conservative wing, the Republican Party, who had gotten behind Nixon, who as he was in battle, felt that they found common ground. They argued that, you know, it's this liberal media that's out to get Nixon. And so they found this common ground and then Barry Goldwater, when the evidence of the tapes

comes out, he feels that Nixon had lied to them. He felt very betrayed, as did many people across the ideological spectrum in the Republican Party. And so he walks very famously down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Oval Office and tells Nixon that he has lost the support of his most ardent supporters. And so then it becomes very clear that there's going to be this transition and that he's either going to be impeached or he needs to resign. What's really interesting is, you know, of course, Gerald Ford gets this phone call. But one of the really interesting people that I studied in my recent book on cable television is this person called Clay Whitehead. And he was actually part of this team that was assembled of former Nixon advisors,

of people that were really trusted, not because they were outside of the inner circles of this Watergate. And they started preparing for this transition. So they're starting to think, what will a transition look like? And, you know, this is happening throughout the summer of 74. So there's an entire team. It's not just Gerald Ford that's thinking through it. There's an entire team of people that, you know, were not embroiled in the Watergate scandal that were known for bringing, you know, this public service, this commitment to public service, not this partisan politics, this corrupt politics from the Nixon administration that then were helping Gerald Ford prepare.

They were demonstrating that they were serving the Constitution, A number one. That was the top of the list. And I find myself sort of smiling, you know, remembering this time, it wasn't smiling at all. I mean, this was hardcore grim events going on. That was real brinkmanship as far as our national politics go. And territory no one had been into before. This was really scary stuff for my parents. I was all of 10 years old at the time.

But it was really hardcore stuff. Interesting sideline. Gerald Ford and Betty Ford were meant to be the first VP couple to live in the new vice presidential residence, which had been getting made and renovated on the naval base there up until this point, where people lived now, but they were not going to live there. It turned out because it was a week later or something that they were told that this is going to happen. So August 7, 1974, Richard Nixon announces a famous speech, watch it on YouTube, incredible moments.

Effective noon tomorrow, he'll step down. How did Ford feel about Nixon resigning? Did he, had he supported his president in standing up to this, or was he one of those who was advising him otherwise. Ford was not involved in these final decisions that Richard Nixon is making. Indeed, many people who suspected that some deal was struck about a pardon that would come later would fabricate this idea that there was this internal conspiracy. But in fact, the historical records don't show that at all. In fact, you know, Gerald Ford understood that this was likely going to play and that he was going to step in into this unprecedented role. And he focused his time not on influencing Nixon, but on preparing for this very

heavy weight of responsibility that he was going to have to bear by taking up the presidency after something that was truly unprecedented, after a two-year constitutional crisis, and that he was going to be the one, the unlikely leader, to push people to help them grapple with the tragedy, the trauma that they had endured. And so that was his focus, more on the responsibilities that he knew he was going to assume at this unprecedented time. So let's state this outright. Ford has nothing to do with Watergate, but he's going to find it hard to escape its shadow. That's the problem.

Simply because it was hard to believe that there wasn't some kind of deal behind the scenes, that this healer of the nation would also be, you know, a partner of a crook. on August 8th, 1974, he is inaugurated, and he announces our long national nightmare is over. Many of us rolled our eyes. No, it's not. It just started. But thank you, Gerald Ford. He has done what he came to do.

He's bridging us back to normalcy. That's how he sort of saw himself. Yeah, and he, in that same address, he talked about the importance of truth and straight talk. Those are the two terms that he used. And he really pledged that he would be honest to the American people after all of the deception and dishonesty that had been uncovered during the previous two years. But he's dealing with disillusionment. He's dealing with hostility. The political and, well, the media environment is just a completely new, you know, can of worms after the Washington Post is breaking all this stuff.

And it just gets kind of worse and worse. He's the guy who's really sort of standing there going, whoa, whoa, whoa. This all used to work because we kind of got together, you know, over the Congress. But now the executive branch has just become the star of the show like never. Well, not like never before. It used to be under FDR. It's reemerged as a huge focus of Washington politics that hadn't been in my lifetime at the time. It was really a brand new game.

Yeah. By the 1970s, when Ford steps into the office of the presidency in 74, the president is the star in a way that even surpasses what Franklin Roosevelt did because of television, right? So it's not just the voice of the president that people are hearing. They're seeing him on this televised bully pulpit that Ford had actually pushed against in Congress for more opportunities for Congress to have access to television because he and many others in Congress felt that TV had given the presidency too much power, too much power to set the presidential agenda, too much power in the public imagination at the expense of Congress.

So Ford had been pushing in the 1960s for using the equal time clause of the FCC in a way that would allow members of Congress like himself to be on television more. So he understood what this had done in terms of shifting the attention to the presidency. What he didn't understand were all of the behind-the-scenes Mexican. mechanisms that were into the production of the president as a television star. And this is what he struggled with, is that, you know, he had a very small press operations as a representative from Michigan, very, very tiny. And they served many different roles. They weren't just focused on communications. When you go into the White House, you have an entire team of people that are

constantly thinking about your image and your message and the staging and the presentation. And, like, that is a constant focus of the presidency by the 1970s. But it's a constant focus. But it's a lot of the president's, It's not when he was representative. So it's really a significant transition in terms of communications expectations. Just wait to the U.S. Supreme Court lets the cameras in because they're bound to do it because that's exactly what happens. All this press and all this attention has tilted these branches against each other in ways the Constitution could never have predicted, of course.

One month after he takes office, September 8, 1974, he makes the fateful decision, or at least the announcement of the decision. he grants Nixon, quote, full, free and absolute pardon for all offenses. He is motivated to do so, he says, trying to move on from Watergate. Boy, does that backfire. It does. And that's where, again, remembering that people had watched these behind the scenes conspiracies actually play out over the previous two years. They had seen all of these internal efforts to undermine a purpose.

and create political discord, not just with the break-in and the cover-up of Watergate, but remember, the Watergate investigation exposed a range of different, unethical and corrupt dirty tricks that the Nixon administration was pursuing on a regular basis. So the assumption immediately is that, of course, this is the next chapter, that Gerald Ford was nominated vice president because he made this agreement with Nixon, or that somehow along the way, they had this negotiation where they had this agreement that, okay, Ford would step in, Nixon would step down as long as he got that pardon. And so there are many different theories that start to circulate. But historians have not found any evidence that that actually happened, that there was any

kind of discussion or an arrangement or even an understanding between Ford and Nixon about a pardon. All of the documentary evidence really points to this notion that Ford believed it was in the best interests of the country to move forward, not go into another trial, a criminal trial, that he thought that that would have people relive the wounds of Watergate. And really set a precedent that could be destructive down the road as well. Yeah, he's handed a poison chalice, really. I mean, his major problem becomes this image problem that is in this media environment that's new to him and to us, extremely hostile post-Nixon. I mean, really, Nixon kind of released that. hounds as far as the press is concerned. How is it that poor can't manage that well? Is he just

bad at that or has he chosen to close off? What's his strategy that fails so badly? Because all I remember is Chevy Chase fumbling with a, you know, rolling a joint on an SNL. Absolutely. And that takes root because, again, it's this particular moment where people are so cynical. And the press is very cynical. But it's also at this moment when all of his advisors and all of the expectations for presidents are that they present a polished image, right? So there's this constant, and these are the two legacies of Richard Nixon that he has to grapple with, is that the operations of politics more broadly, but specifically the White House, have become a well-crafted machine, focusing on cultivating a very specific presidential image that is then sold.

and packaged and sold to the American people and to journalists. Then, on the other hand, the legacy of Nixon is that this is all a fabrication and it could be hiding, not just, you know, gaps, but those gaps could be insight into a bigger corruption or bigger scandal that might be hidden behind the scenes. And so it's this, he's this pressure to have a polished communication effort as well and more attention, right? The cameras are on him. He's pursuing this Rose Garden strategy to try to bring, restore faith and prestige and integrity to the president. But he does that via the media, right? So he has to have this apparatus.

While at the same time, people are concerned that that apparatus is the problem. It's part of the problem of corruption and hiding misdeeds as well. But then you have the tail wagging the dog problem of media becoming its own big mess. You've written about this in your book. I'll plug you, 24-7 cable. It's an important book because that is really such a huge theme in our society even today. I should point out, I mentioned Chevy Chase. This is the Saturday Night Live for audiences elsewhere who might not understand this.

At the same time as Gerald Ford comes along, this amazing show that's on today, 50 years later, is Saturday Night Live. And the star of that show is Chevy Chase. And Ford was just crosshairs for these guys because he was this nice guy president who was trying to do everything right but doing everything wrong at the same time. somehow, a perfect foil, a perfect, you know, target for mockery. And they, you know, make hay with him and do all sorts of things. He was, you know, this is what I mentioned in the beginning. He was characterized as this klutzy guy who was just sort of falling up and downstairs all the time and doing everything wrong. He was none of those things. He was a very, you know, poised individual, but it was the times. And so he was really getting the fray from what Nixon started. Tell me what,

how they portray him. What does he look like on that show? Absolutely. So it's November of 1975 and Chevy Chase is debuting his new impersonation of Gerald Ford. And if you watch it, he doesn't dress like him. He doesn't try to impersonate the sound of his voice or any of his mannerisms. All he does is knock things over. And he's klepsy. And that's how, and you have, you know, this unpresidential seal that's on a podium. But that's really all that they're doing. But this was really new in terms of, of directly tackling saying, I'm Chevy Chase, right? And that's how he, sorry, I'm Gerald Ford. So this starts in November, and it made Ron Nusson, Gerald Ford's press secretary. It just made him cringe. And then, but then he thought, like, is there a way we can use this? And so that March, he and the president decided that they're going to invite Chevy Chase to perform at the White House correspondence dinner. And the president actually tries to turn the tables and says, I'm Gerald Ford and you're not, right? And so he sees us as a way to kind of tap it and try to reverse the narrative.

It's this battle of co-optation. Al Franken saw Ron Nusson when they were in the New Hampshire primary, and he said, you know, we should have you on the show. And Ron Nusson considered the offer. And ultimately, after the success of that March dinner, when Gerald Ford was in person, you know, kind of turned the tables on Chevy Chase, he decided that he would guest host the show. And so, So Ron Nesson guest hosts the show in April. The opening, you know, that live from Saturday night was something that was pre-filmed from the White House. But Gerald Ford does make an appearance. And, you know, Ron Nusson is really interesting throughout that performance,

which kind of gets to these dynamics that we've been talking about, about that search for more transparency and authenticity, but also this escalation of image construction. Because so Ron Nesson plays the press secretary talking about, you know, how Gerald Ford should deal with this bumbling image, right? So it's his inside look to the Oval Office. And they make fun of all of the, you know, the press secretary not always telling the truth and spinning the truth, right?

And so that's actually a theme of the broader episode. They get a lot of attention, and it becomes exactly what Saturday Night Live does for the next 50 years to a lot of presidents. Exactly. This is the story with General Far. We haven't even talked about him being president. We just talk about him getting to be president and what he does immediately. That's the problem with understanding this particular U.S. President. Let's discuss this.

So he does pretty good things as president. They don't get a lot of attention historically, but he, you know, sets the course for a recovery for the economy. He continues the detente for international relations to move towards what happens under Reagan and, you know, the handshakes with Gorbachev later on. All that begins kind of taking hold with Ford. Even the Israeli Egyptian stuff that happens under Carter later on, Ford has a lot to do with all of that stuff. Yeah, one of the things that I've looked at in my work are, you know, he made regulatory reform a pillar of his presidency. And he really wanted to pursue this to kind of think about agencies that had too much bureaucratic oversight, too much red tape. How could they function more efficiently and not just serve the corporate interest that had kind of gained regulatory control over them or what's called regulatory.

capture. So he's really taking on some powerful lobbying industries in a way that he sees as really making regulations more responsive to citizens and consumers. And so he takes on, I watched him take on in the archives that I've done for my book on cable television. He took on the broadcast lobby, which was incredibly powerful. And really initiated the start of the decentralization of our media landscape that we have today. During his presidency, you had the big three ABC, CBS, and NBC that dominated what people saw on their television screens and fought against any newcomers coming in. And he was willing initially, I should say, he was willing initially to kind of stand up to that and question these regulatory assumptions of power that had been in place for decades. However, I will say that, you know, 1975, you see him take a lot of action.

by early 1976, he's focused all on re-election. By that spring, he's being challenged by Ronald Reagan in primaries, and all of a sudden he kind of pulls back on some of those more assertive measures because he's looking to kind of create political capital and political friends that can help him win re-election. Well, this is the emergence of what you mentioned before, this hard right, which becomes Ronald Reagan, really. And they start to undermine his centrist attitudes and politics.

at this time. And there's some real bad early debate stuff happening in New Hampshire between Reagan and Ford in that election. But the damage is done. But it's important to recognize that it comes from within his party as much as it comes from the outsider Jimmy Carter calling him out. Absolutely. So in 72, the Democratic Party for the first time implements these primaries and, you know, allows different voices to come in and kind of compete for the presidential nomination. And the Republican Party is moving towards that in 76. And, you know, he's trying to make it a more open process. And Ronald Reagan capitalizes on it, especially, you know, he goes to New Hampshire, but also does very, very well in the South where this more conservative wing of the Republican Party understood that their message of small governments and states' rights, that that would play very well in the South with, you know, those Southern Democrats that had left the party, the Democratic Party over the issues of civil rights. And so Ronald Reagan is critiquing

his legitimacy, his leadership abilities. And so, again, a lot of these attacks on Ford begin with Reagan. And then Jimmy Carter is able to, you know, capitalize on them because they're already out there. There are these narratives that have already emerged. And I think, you know, when we kind of talked about this broader media environment, where the press is more cynical, where entertainment like Saturday Night Live or, you know, poking fun at him. Ronald Reagan and his critique is tapping into that and then further escalating that as well. Well, Carter's also running against Nixon. I mean, that's really, Nixon is still the Ford Nixon thing.

And so it's easier for someone like Carter who had never served in federal office. He was the governor of Georgia to sort of point the finger and see, you know, we got to clean this place. I was the old traditional thing to say, you know, I've got to come from outside the Beltway. and Carter plays that to the hilt. Ford Dusses plays a role. He gaffs a bit. He's making mistakes in his debates. But they have that first big debate that's on,

it sort of harkens back to the Kennedy Nixon thing, doesn't it? Absolutely. They're not been a television debate since 1960. And part of that is because those debates loomed large in the mind of Richard Nixon. He firmly believed that he lost the election because of those debates. The reality is much more complicated. but in his mind it was those debates that like that really that triggered his downfall there.

Lyndon Johnson in 64 is not going to debate. He's, you know, he's the incumbent at that moment is running for election, right, as presidents. And so he's certainly not going to, there's no incentive for him to debate. In 68, Richard Nixon sure is not going to do it. And he's not going to do it in 72. And so finally, you have these debates that this question of will debates bring more transparency, more accountability, by, you know, forcing the candidates to answer questions on TV directly to citizens. And there was a consensus that, yes, these are good things. It was about restoring accountability. And, and again, more of this transparency to the political process. And it was the League of Women Voters, right? I mean, they were sponsoring the debates. That

sounded so good in the ERA days. Absolutely. And they're all about getting women to turn out, getting all of these different citizens engaged in the political process. And so, yes, absolutely. The League of Women Voters, they take charge. You know, they sponsor these debates. And both the parties agreed to them because they realized that in this broader environment where there's more scrutiny, this scrutiny was originally seen as essential to ensuring that there's no corruption or unethical behavior.

Of course, this is part of this broader tension, is that you have more. more media scrutiny, but also then more efforts to control images. And so both sides are polling responses and polling issues. So it's actually less authentic. But it was deemed as part of restoring authenticity to politics. And so it's this mass-mediated tension that really comes out of these debates. And as part of this broader landscape that Ford and Carter are both navigating. So the classic bio question, what do you make of Gerald Ford's life? legacy as a president. It's so short-lived. I think that he really is this transition person, a person that attempted to restore

faith and integrity in democratic institutions after they were really called into question. And he really does try to fulfill that role. You know, he says that, look, this is an example that the system works. And he tried to show that, you know, it tried to restore faith in the president. and restore integrity in the presidency. But he's also in this transition role and where media and cynicism and entertainment become more of a factor in how people are consuming politics. And so you mentioned Saturday Night Live earlier, but I think that's actually really significant, especially when we look at our current political landscape, is that he saw this criticism.

And Chevy Chase's performance gained resonance with the American public. because it tapped into this broader narrative of this accidental president, right? And then he actually made him accidental and clumsy, right? But Gerald Ford didn't push back against that. He didn't try to censor that. He tried to embrace it and say, okay, like, I'm going to try to humanize the presidency. He wanted to show that he had a sense of humor. But what he does in that is that he then kind of gives by having his press secretary go on to host Saturday

night live, by appearing as the opening a clip from the Oval Office, live from New York, he's actually legitimizing the role of elevating the role of entertainment in the political process. And so then that actually, you know, that paves away for someone like Ronald Reagan and later on Donald Trump to kind of use their credentials and entertainment as justification for their political qualifications. How interesting. How ironic that someone like Gerald Forge to be the one who, as I say, releases those

hounds. He was very uncomfortable with this, I will say. His team was very, you know, they didn't know what to do because this was new terrain. Having, you know, a late night show impersonate a president that was really new. And so they were trying to deal with this in a way that, you know, showed that he wasn't, you know, trying to control and manipulate images like Richard Nixon had. So again, this legacy of Nixon is looming over him. Right. And we live in that landscape Cape today. I mean, in both the entertainment and the news aspect of media, it is a whole different world than the one I was born into. Professor Catherine Brownell teaches history at Purdue University, where she's also the director of Capped Center for American Political History and Technology

on the Purdue campus. She is author of, as we've mentioned several times, a book 24-7 Politics, cable television and the fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News. We're going to going to have you back, Katie, to talk about that. And for anyone curious, please do have a listen to her expertise about Watergate on the American History Hit episode 139, I mentioned. Go to American History Hit page and hit all episodes, and nearly 300 will scroll forth. But listen to hers first. Thank you very much, Katie. Really appreciate it. See you soon. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. As you've made it this far, why not like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts? American History Hit, a podcast, a

from History Hit.