“Our Constitution works”

Thinking of Jerry Ford recalls a kindler, gentler time in American politics. The irony is that Ford’s ascension to the presidency followed the most mercurial of moments under Richard Nixon. Richard Norton Smith titles his new biography of Ford An Ordinary Man (HarperCollins 2023), and ordinariness was his appeal. He was smart, but not brilliant like Nixon. He was likable, though not magnetic like Kennedy. He was thoughtful, but not as principled as Reagan, and certainly not as telegenic as the former Hollywood star. Yet he occupied the same office they held by being good at everything even if not great at anything. And that was perhaps exactly what America needed in those days after Watergate.

Raised among the Dutch Reformed of west Michigan, his work ethic was his one extraordinary feature, formed at first on the gridiron. His sister warned Betty before their wedding that his mistress would not be another woman—it would be his work. Ford was a whirlwind, everywhere at once, which was necessary early in his career for the recently returned World War II veteran to upset an incumbent congressman in the Republican primary. Advised that the House of Representa­tives was a place for workhorses under the seniority-and-spoils system, Ford worked hard even as contemporaries like Nixon and JFK focused on rising higher.

The House of Ford’s day lacked cable news but otherwise resembles our own, with young guns and rabble-­rousers and a few warm personal relationships across the aisle. Smith has an especially interesting chapter on Ford’s service on the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy. His chapters on the presidential years recount the Nixon pardon, the end of Vietnam and the Mayaguez incident, the economic turmoil of his times, and the 1976 primary challenge from Ronald Reagan. But mostly they show the character of the man, the president whose rock-solid reputation for integrity “guided the nation through its worst constitutional crisis since the Civil War.”

Though often knocked as a moderate, Ford here is shown for his principled conservative stands, in both the House and the White House. His was first and foremost a fiscal conservatism, an ardent skepticism of big government and deficit spending. Smith tells us “Ford’s free-market approach represented a decisive break from his predecessor’s wage and price controls.” Ford was less inclined to break with Nixon’s foreign policy, retaining Henry Kissinger as secretary of state, and his social stances were decidedly less conservative.

Smith writes a sympathetic biography. He admits to first meeting Ford while a member of the Harvard Republicans Club. He wonders who was more surprised—him, that Ford would venture into such unfriendly territory, or Ford, that enough students openly identified as Republicans to form a club. His biography is also comprehensive, which makes it only for the truly interested. And it is specifically a biography of Jerry—though Betty’s presence is woven throughout, she is rightly the subject of her own separate volumes.

Ford’s life put him on the inside at many of the great tribulations of his era: the assassination of JFK, the corruption and resignations of first Vice President Spiro Agnew then President Nixon. The storms did not weather him—his White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld titled his memoir of Ford exactly right: When the Center Held. As Ford himself said on taking the presidency after tremendous upheaval, “Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.”

As America endures trials in our own time, Smith’s life of Ford is a ­welcome reminder—for all the ups and downs of our modern politics, the ­system can work.