QUOTE from President Ford in 1974 shortly after he assumed the presidency: "I grant Richard Nixon a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he might have committed."
Twenty members of the Nixon administration were convicted after the Watergate dust had settled; that's not including VP Spiro Agnew, who resigned after pleading no contest to non-Watergate related tax-evasion charges. And Nixon might have been indicted if he hadn't been pardoned by President Gerald Ford.
The CANDIDATES in 1976.
REPUBLICAN: GERALD FORD.
Ford, as VP, became President on August 8, 1976 - the day Nixon resigned. Ford was chosen as VP when Agnew resigned in 1973 over charges of tax evasion. Ford was a good man and someone who could be trusted, unlike his boss. He narrowly beat out Ronald Reagan for the nomination at the Republican Convention in July, 1976. He chose Nelson Rockefeller for his VP running mate.
DEMOCRAT: JIMMY CARTER.
Jimmy Carter said this about himself: "I am a Southerner and an American, I am a farmer, an engineer, a father and husband, a Christian, a politician and former governor of Georgia, a planter, a businessman, a nuclear physicist, a naval officer, a canoeist, and among other things a lover of Bob Dylan's songs and Dylan Thomas's poetry." He chose Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota as his VP mate.
The CAMPAIGN in 1976.
Ford's decision to pardon Nixon would come back to haunt him. He had a habit of doing and saying dumb things: like stumbling down the steps of Air Force One during official business; like hitting people when driving the golf ball; like saying that Eastern European countries weren't under the control of the USSR; and worst of all was pardoning Nixon.
Carter ran on the theme that he was an outsider coming to clean up Washington. But he also did some dumb things: like admitting that, in his mind, he had committed adultery many times when looking at women; saying that Lyndon Johnson was as guilty as Richard Nixon when it came to "lying, cheating, and distorting the truth." (it was true but it did make for political foolishness); and giving speeches that were so boring that Senator McCarthy of Minnesota called him "an oratorical mortician". The best thing Carter had going for him was that he was running against Gerald Ford.
The WINNER was JIMMY CARTER and he became the the 39th president of the United States.
Carter got 40,830,763 popular and 297 electoral.
Ford got 39,147,770 popular and 240 electoral.
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