Gerald Ford

The body of Gerald Ford will arrive on Saturday at the US Capitol in Washington and lie in state for four days.

America awoke yesterday to the death of an accidental president who in 1974 inherited the daunting task of uniting a nation shattered by the Watergate scandal.

Mr Ford, the only unelected American President whose 895 days in the White House will mainly be remembered for his controversial pardon of his immediate predecessor Richard Nixon a month after he took office, died at his home in California, according to a statement issued by his wife, Betty. Flags across America were ordered lowered to half-mast for 30 days.

“My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, has passed away at 93 years of age,” Mrs Ford, 88, said.

As preparations were under way for funeral services in Mr Ford’s home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a state funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington next week, the former First Lady’s announcement that America’s longest-living President had died triggered an outpouring of tributes from across the political divide.

President Bush, appearing on national television, said that Mr Ford, the 38th American President, entered the Oval Office “in an hour of national turmoil and division. With his integrity, common sense and kind instincts, President Ford helped heal our land and restore public confidence in the presidency.”

Jimmy Carter, who defeated Mr Ford for the presidency in 1976 — the two men later became close friends — called him “a man of highest integrity”, adding: “President Ford is one of the most admirable public servants and human beings I have ever known.”

Mr Ford was appointed Vice-President in 1973 after Nixon’s deputy, Spiro Agnew, resigned to avoid prosecution for taking bribes. A veteran Republican congressman who had never harboured ambitions for the highest office, Mr Ford assumed the presidency minutes after Nixon flew into exile on August 9, 1974, to avoid impeachment for covering up a politically motivated burglary at the Watergate complex in Washington.

After his swearing-in, President Ford declared before the cameras: “Our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.” Stolid where Nixon was scheming, and full of Midwest integrity and modesty, President Ford’s standing in the polls nevertheless plummeted when he gave Nixon an unconditional pardon in September 1974.

But even his fiercest critics at the time now concede that the move, intended to spare America the trauma of having its former President tried, was the right one. Edward Kennedy, the Democratic senator and a critic at the time, said recently that the pardon was “an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognise was truly in the national interest”.

President Ford’s time in office was a brief but eventful. He survived two assassination attempts — both at the hands of women — and vetoed 66 Bills from the Democrat-controlled Congress, 12 of which were overturned on Capitol Hill. He helped to mediate a ceasefire between Israel and Egypt, and signed the Helsinki human rights convention with the Soviet Union.

The Vietnam War, already opposed by most Americans by the time that he took office, ended in defeat for the US during his period of office, with the fall of Saigon in April 1975.

His White House also propelled into the political limelight several men who have been integral in shaping the current Administration’s policies. Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, was Mr Ford’s Chief of Staff. Donald Rumsfeld, who resigned as Defence Secretary last month, was also President Ford’s Defence Secretary.

Despite being a star college athlete — he turned his back on a potential career as a professional American footballer — Mr Ford developed a reputation for a stumbling clumsiness that made him the butt of jokes.

“He was an amazing man,” the first President Bush said. “He was one of the most decent men I have ever met.”

Plain-speaking First Lady

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