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Gerald Ford

Though he defended his decision as being in the nation's best interest, Ford's pardon of his predecessor may have contributed to his short-lived presidency.

Gerald R. Ford, Jr., Republican Congressman from Michigan and House Minority Leader, became vice president to Richard M. Nixon under the provisions of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment when, in 1973, Spiro T. Agnew resigned the vice presidency after pleading guilty to tax evasion.
Jimmy Carter was at home in his study in Plains, Georgia, on October 6, 1981, when the call came in a little after daybreak. A reporter was on the line asking for his response to the attempted assassination of Anwar Sadat.

In their surprisingly short history, presidential debates have never lived up to our expectations. Yet they’ve always proved invaluable.

When does a single gaffe sink a campaign?

 

A VETERAN JOURNALIST reflects on how public discourse has been tarnished by the press’s relentless war against presidents, including his own biggest offense.

The “loser decade” that at first seemed nothing more than a breathing space between the high drama of the 1960s and whatever was coming next is beginning to reveal itself as a richer time than we thought.

That’s it,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then U.S. ambassador to India, wrote to a colleague on the White House staff in 1973 on the subject of some issue of the moment. “Nothing will happen.
In this year of the bicentennial of the Constitution, American Heritage asked a number of historians, authors, and public figures to address themselves to one or both of these questions:

Despite his feeling that “we are beginning to lose the memory of what a restrained and civil society can be like,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the senior senator from New York, and a lifelong student of history, remains an optimist about our system of government and our resilience as a people.

My father, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, grew up in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen and is now, at 59, the senior senator from his home state.

The ex-Presidency now carries perquisites and powers that would have amazed all but the last few who have held that office

In October, 1975, a carful of teenagers came cruising down a Hartford, Connecticut, street and rammed into a limousine carrying President Gerald R. Ford.

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