Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford is the only person in American history to serve as both Vice President and President without being elected to either office. He arrived at the White House on August 9, 1974, the day Richard Nixon became the first president to resign, and told a shaken nation that "our long national nightmare is over." Thirty-one days later, he pardoned Nixon — and his presidency never fully recovered from it.

The pardon, which Ford insisted was necessary to spare the country a prolonged criminal trial, cost him the 1976 election as surely as any policy failure. Public suspicion about a pre-arranged deal persisted despite his denials, and the decision defined him through his entire single term. Historians have largely vindicated him: removing Nixon from the criminal courts cleared the front pages and allowed the country to move forward, even if it moved Ford out of office in the process.

Ford's years in the White House were constrained from every direction — a hostile Democratic Congress, stagflation he couldn't tame, and the final collapse in Vietnam he could only manage, not prevent. He survived two assassination attempts in the span of 17 days in September 1975, both in California, both carried out by women with tenuous connections to radical movements, and both largely forgotten by history.

In retirement, Ford's standing grew steadily warmer. The Nixon pardon, once toxic, came to be seen as an act of political courage rather than corruption — a judgment the Kennedy Library formalized in 2001 when it awarded him its Profile in Courage Award. When he died in December 2006 at 93, he was mourned across party lines as a decent man handed an indecent situation and who handled it with more grace than the moment required.