Presidential Biographies | Ford Administration - The Ford Administration Legacy

The Ford Administration Legacy

In 1976 Ford's own pollster found that 61 percent of people polled felt that Ford had done nothing particularly impressive as president, while 41 percent felt that he had not done anything they particularly did not like. The media viewed Ford as a bumbling puppet of Nixon and Kissinger at worst and a nice guy without much influence or vision at best. Members of his own party, including former California governor Ronald Reagan, who would become president in 1981, capitalized on his limited successes in either domestic or foreign affairs to advance their own political careers. And Democrats painted Ford's policies as continuations of Nixon's whenever possible to convince the country that its problems were the fault of Republicans.

When Ford left office in l977 his presidency was widely considered a temporary appointment between a disgraced, but elected, Nixon and the people's next elected choice,...