An hour with Richard Norton Smith - Encore

today's k pr presents was originally broadcast february twenty fifteen two thousand seven from the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas k pr presents an hour with richard norton smith and kate mcintyre richard norton smith is considered one of the nation's foremost presidential historians he served as the first permanent director of the dole institute of politics having served as the director of the gerald r ford presidential library and museum as well as several other presidential museums simmons gave the eulogy at president ford's funeral service in grand rapids michigan it's time remembering president gerald r ford was the first of the two thousand seven presidential lecture series at the dole institute to pronounce your name with a wide a heavier tonight it's nice to be whole it's clear

that the ideas that sits on isis is an interview are lots of familiar faces thank you so much for coming out on a cold night and by the way this is an unscripted but the character come back here or c here saying what a fantastic job bill and his colleagues are doing that it's one thing to build a building it's another to make it come alive and that's what they're doing and it's wonderful to see a confirmation that you're making a lot of his university in that community but to the state thank you very much richard i have some interesting parallels i first met while reagan who i went on to work with when i was in college you first met president ford when you were in college at harvard i believe actually it i could beat you up because i was a i was an adolescent of annoying for kasich which was a actually a preview of coming attractions i guess it just plain annoying ad of

money away are at the age of eleven i decided i was going to start collecting autographs of political figures and down in december nineteen sixty five i wrote often for thirty or forty people including ronald reagan including a nelson rockefeller and to enjoy what area back one letter from the house minority leader elected in the degree of the goldwater disaster and ah but then we actually cross past the first time about nine years later i was up at harvard and is a seven the eulogy we were surprised at richard nixon's vice president would come to harvard he was a prize that there were enough republicans at harvard a former globe and it was an extraordinary experience and i introduced him i'm being annoying onstage couldn't resist showing him derogatory cartoon caricature

go back thirty five years in and and imagine yourself on the harvard campus students for a democratic society of plastic the place with this with this caricature of gerald ford as a puppet in pay all of the arm of a sinister looking richard nixon and i show it to now what's more gas and a lot of politicians would say ah that would upset about that would've thought they certainly most politicians were voyage he joke he thought was january music and the knee after to get a copy he displayed his office and that's the first time i knew this was not your typical in a politician but a typical dylan leblanc right but he we're focused and i mostly on his presidency but there are a couple of aspects of i'd like you to get into it with humor is rick if i can sum may not know this but the president ford was almost killed or moral issue aboard the uss monterey during a typhoon can you recount that story yeah actually back out on the evening

of august eight nineteen seventy four after nixon announced his resignation of course supports allies were turned upside down and that night but they went to bed and they held hands and they said a prayer from from proverbs that he had were visible way in grand rapids and have used often used the day as a teenager and he discovered that his his birth father was not the man he regarded you know as his father i'll add another occasion another occasion was in december nineteen forty four the philippine sea otters a typo plus one hundred not wins and he al rushed up and the middle of the iphone or more fire broke out on board that the of the monterrey which was a white aircraft carrier ordinary joined with in the navy and have been set to do physical education in north carolina that was a design you're fighting for his country so you every good to get onto a

ship and he got on the monterrey and in the middle of this typhoon a great wave crash over the thing and anne carried whole the way to the edge of the ship and there was a two inch railing or well the ship and that's what we were what saved his wife and perhaps proverbs and thirty years later isn't that a different kind of storm in which he found himself very definitely that he was it was very very clear from from all that time that the candidate grew up on the national scene that that here now ms is for rich corner would close that they were really helpless about battle but she does it in such an incredible impact on his life yeah and i think in some ways it's such a contemporary story people thought afford at first blush and seventy fours is kind of white bread congressman from west michigan and who couldn't possibly be plugged in to like geist you

know and the fact of matter is it by then you know mrs ford was struggling with wit about what we read a word were some addictions to painkillers she was singing a psychotherapist are all sorts of things that you know in those days would have destroyed a political career but you when people talk about before the ground amidst the whole family gets crowded but they were stories august eighth we will remember richard nixon was made for television and they would have you think of nixon you know they're from the checkers speech to a helicopter and i'll do whatever the nixon was just mesmerizing tv presence and for this moment for off camera when you think of august at walt we all think of nixon standing in a helicopter getting ready to leave about yourself wow i wonder what ford said on the way back from a helicopter you know or you say airline i asked him years later he leaned over mrs

ford's ear and said we can do it which tells you want to me this man who was first job was to reassure the country understood the first good reassures what she'd said i carry if we have to i will go with and the white house but i'm too old to change that i have to take me the way i am our citizen who was not to older change was in tears because she said does this mean that i have to give up a blue genes of living in the white house the great story that thousands of adults or ford family that not right because remember the nixons the nation's moved out obviously well to say about it but it was so hasty but the buoyancy we move into the white house for two weeks they went back to the house in alexandria for two weeks every day the president would you know go to the white house go to work and then come back to the suburbs at night they wait on the night of august nine mrs ford is in the kitchen slaving over a hot pan was on the aisle

and he said jerry there's something wrong with this picture you are present in the united states that i'm still cooking and that tells you something about it that relationship and she kept him grabbed the famous sixty minutes interview morley safer said she said you can ask me anything you want my husband will wind famous last words and that morsi said ok i'll tell him you know jerry were a good today she said sure he said it on his way on the ground is worse for best critic aa and that's exactly that you know the kind of relationship than the greatest property for a job would you as president ford what was the worst part of those first few weeks it was an important horrible as that was going to pittsburgh the next they're having a crowd yelled jail for the worst thinking ten days later when mrs ford went into the hospital

for surgery but no one really knew how fast it was going to be no one really knew much all about it he went home that night friday night eisen is the loneliest night of his life and the next day they operated record she had was that the raid are a restaged to cancer it was a traumatized experience or family they all gathered in the hospital and said how we going to handle this how i would ever communicate this and there was no question about it you know the people there that they wouldn't be completely candid it's hard to believe now there are some people here or remember thirty years ago you didn't talk about this or you didn't talk about breast cancer and that silence was in many ways a death sentence and the irony is that mrs forbes ordeal i think more than anything else to transform societies attitudes and she did say that that the one good thing about it was

before she left the hospital she turned on the radio and she heard reports about women all over america would that inspired by her example and went to get checkups and say there was a power and the first lady and then you were sharing our earlier the fact that she was went through a lot here and all of the different funeral proceedings and just recount what you told us a little bit earlier when she was able to do that yeah well you know i mean i think if you saw it with your coverage she's she usually do now i'm in april she's tiny he's frail and i had times when and how he physically manage to get through the week it's a very grueling experience i can tell you it is someone who's sort of in the middle of it but i was exhausted and god knows you know the camera was on me i was on them all the time and if you remember the last day at the time in terminal there's a

very long walk all the leg a light of the ford museum to the burial spot and she was in a wheelchair and insisted on getting out of the wheelchair and making that law and i talk to someone in the office on saturday after they got home as i don't know how she ever did it and she had actually said this i think mrs ford's visit that's what my husband would've wanted which tells you a lot about the kind of person she is and it all the kind of relationship that they had they were married for fifty years it was i think the greatest source of pleasure in the greatest source of pride in his life he was elected to the house representatives in nineteen forty eight and a relatively short i think sixteen years lawyers elected the republican leader the us house and can't remember why it was elected for his readers it because you know he came back a lot of veterans came back from the war is that whole class of forty six and forty eight people like dick nixon jack kennedy you know all these future readers winning

johnson obviously thing about the word was he had been an isolationist before the war at yale he'd actually longer america first and as he goes out the lights in the pacific he has a conversion white his hometown hero arthur vandenberg our senator vandenberg anyway he comes back and he runs for office for the best of reasons because one idea and the ideal is united states can no longer take shelter behind two options we are like a lot a world power and if we actually care about preserving what we have just bled and died for then we will step up to our responsibilities as a world power he took on an entrenched republican congressman a guy who thought the world and that they're somewhere around your old and for him nobody did who oppose the marshall plan will pose for ney who opposed it you know and no one game a prayer and he hustled him out campaigned him he and he

proposed to mrs born in the spring of nineteen forty eight his removal proposal he said daddy i want to marry you but i can tell you when and i can't tell you what i can tell you and the back tears that he wanted to take this to congress and by surprise in the republican primary and he did they were married three weeks before election day he showed up wearing one like you and one rancher and their honeymoon consisted of going to a universe of michigan football game in a hour and then that night drive into a wall so michigan sitting in a cold rainy outdoor stadium listening to hold a time or c doing all right i have a favorite son of a law school and then they came back to grand rapids and the president announced it had some campaigning could do could you make him some sandwiches and he said fifty years later that she had never let him forget

loud and they had many second honeymoon and as a result what he had a very distinguished career in congress is the republican leader in the house ah but he got kind of the point of really decided he probably wasn't a run for election of women as his autobiography he mentions that he wanted to block everything down to more simple gentlemanly life you want a leisurely ward played all four days we can practice all three all of a sudden on october tenth nineteen seventy three spiro agnew resigned from the vice presidency tells a little bit about that and tells why nixon ford it's true he had he had promised this is for what you want to remember you are the president and when the vice president what he wanted definitely was to be speaker of the house and remember nixon in sixty six of them as big comeback after the goldwater disaster and that nixon won a sixty eight and a hundred ninety two seats so i needed to pick up another twenty five seats or so

that he could see his goal finally coming into view and i wanted to say the nixon landslide selling to do getting really close so he decided that point he gave in the mrs ford he'd been washed in twenty four years it's another though the speaker on the island off i can go back and make some money to provide for my family because he had not the report it so anyway so that was the plan he was going one against every to announce his retirement and in january of nineteen seventy four in general nineteen seventy seven he was going to watch an interactive grammar and then along came watergate and spiro agnew vice president who was indicted or was going to be indicted basic way for you not to put to find a point on it taking cash in bags under the table that's how they do things in maryland that was the

defense a way i didn't want to know if richardson was attorney general time ah so it was up now here's how different things were three years ago on that day but i didn't know i knew was leaving nixon who was a very kind of crappy guy i invited for up to see him not in the oval office which did not like nixon like to hide out in the hideaway across the street and the old executive office building and that's when nixon was or we can relax and put his feet up and he'd smoke pipe and out came as close to being relaxes richard nixon probably ever did and he invited for top never told him why never told him that he was leaving just you know shot the breeze for our goes back to the hill and words for the first time that spirit has resigned and all the son understands why the president had invited him up they're for this round round the subject talk

a couple days later the week gerald ford was not richard nixon's first choice for vice president had it been left to his own devices he would've chosen john connolly he was mesmerized by john connolly made swaggering self insured texans who had been secretary of the treasury and nick nixon's kind of guy but probably could not have been confirmed the question in those days nixon was so weak and politically basically that the issue was hoping to confirm he thought about nelson rockefeller but that would've alienated the right wing of the republican party he thought about ronald reagan that when they were in those days there was a left wing of the republican party it would eliminate the rockefeller republicans the democrats on the hill came to the white house and said jerry ford to be confirmed and so basically nixon was back into the selection that he made some are partly but that show you how what a different media climate poor and on the

night of october twelfth i think it is six o'clock the phone rings in the board's haldeman alexander says in four picks up a bone says that it's the white house call it ah the president then new job gets on the fall i treated nixon it was good bette on the phone the other fall and on a white wall short of it is they make the offer and guess what two hours later they have to be in the east room for a nationally telecast introduction which means this is forced to find something the way are the kids all have to get dressed up they ought to be carted off to the white house and introduce to the country for the first time i mean it's just mindboggling to think that just things have sped up in that way and then wesley your waiter richard nixon resigns the

presidency and four becomes president united states talk about his first days as president about his decision this like nelson rockefeller as vice president m and also let's go and talk about the pardon as well your first of all the book the well i never remembers of the speech along as runners over for a cup of the speech i mean you know in many ways he was pitch perfect during those first few days he understood the country desperately needed symbolic inclusive leadership so one of the first beat we call with chollet wrangle was that a very young congressman from all he's a jolly i'd like to meet with the congressional black caucus annie called joins me to be adel sale and we had always to these meetings with people who needless to say have not been in the white house in a long time but the other side of that was he remained what i

say is grand rapids modest and when he heard the wine a long national nightmare is over he wanted to cut because he thought was piling on and that's critical because it illustrates the challenges he faced turning from a congressman in your present and i think the first few months or more very much a transitional period and bob hardman speechwriter wrote those that it was the inaugural address was seven minutes will and bobby hartmann had to get down on his hands and knees and beg and threaten to quit and everything else and finally ford said well maybe you're right hand out he gave a speech of course that's what we all remember people talk about the poem as a defining moment was but before the park two weeks before the pardon was another defining moment which is part of the same an

appalling attempt at national reconciliation he went he had a plan to basically open the door for thousands of vietnam era draft evaders to as he put it work their way back they would set up a clemency board with father has for the tourist board president notre dame as the chair and i think you would advance father has berg was gonna say yes to ninety nine percent of of anyone who will apply which is exactly what he did so this was like any other name amnesty but it is interesting that it was a gutsy thing to say because your base would not necessarily approve the louvre the only thing is where you decided to announce he deliberately chose to announce at before a national convention of the vfw and on the way out to chicago on the plane he said to someone well we some other have to worry about the interrupted by applause jawad and if you look at that if

you look at the day he was a proper id that speech way that a bomb and i think a reason they didn't know was mrs ford was sitting in the front row up on stage next to him but the fact is that was in its own way at least as gutsy attack as the party and now the party the debate goes on and the debate will go on for years i will never forget one of the great experiences of my life was to spend an evening with the president in a hotel room in grand rapids about eighty nine years ago or three hours we argued the party back and forth and i was an agnostic on the part of it i thought that i didn't have strong feelings one way the other but like lots of people i thought you know on balance is probably necessary but that had to have been a better way they hadn't been more

politically one way to prepare the country and you know by the end of that evening i had come to the very reluctant conclusion but under the circumstances given the mood of the country at that time there was no way you could raise a troubling there was no way you could resort to the usual weeks because that the first sign the first hit that you were thinking of this i guarantee it would've been shut down congress and both parties were of announced it and you have to remember what was going on in the first month of the ford presidency here's a guy never expected to be present literally i know it sounds kind of away but until the last week until the first week of august we would never have to pay it was no transition but he becomes president is forced week greece and turkey are about to go to war was psyched as a crisis with the soviet union because the soviets saw song in the pacific and guess what the united states has a

top secret vessel designed by howard hughes called the global markets for whose purpose is to reach out these great pause and grab a soviet submarine an island you know the leaders of the public to know about that i'm king hussein of jordan is scheduled to come for important state doesn't talk about the middle east the inflation rate for the month of july nineteen seventy four was released it was three point seven percent when the us but here they're all this is happening to this brand new president oh and one other thing on the day he was president when they were finally moving his things into the oval office about two more bugs in the walls of the oval office behind pictures and for the first time lost his temper because the first letter he'd given we moved in the oval office is i want every blog out of this

once so anyway you have all this going on and you have the letters you had al haig on behalf of the nixon loyalists who was saying we listen the papers are disappointed when she said all those tapes of sick of it because remember the juniors president's top of papers with them they were there personal property and the nixon tapes you had nixon papers behind the scenes with special prosecutor leon jaworski was telling the white house very articulate and it could be two years before nixon never saw the inside of a courtroom if they decided that he could get a fair trial from here is ford sitting looking out over this notion of troubles the country is obsessed with excess the triggering event in my opinion the triggering event in the burn is a press conference on august twenty eight he goes into naive we assuming that the price is gonna wanna talk about cyprus and inflation and anything but

nixon and although one of our politics now one of the things that people don't know about your forties he had a very sharp temper he had spent a lifetime controlling and controlling it very well but he i mean he had a temper and he lost his temper that night it was he was angry with him so that when they meet the press because if you look at the tape he gives these rambling contradictory because it was appropriate and i think that set in motion and i think he just decided he was an id but the one on in the oval office and that anne barnard and the press secretary was citing statistics and pork it's a very unusual he slammed his hand against a desk he said goddamn he said don't tell me about holes i don't need polls to tell me what's right and wrong and then you went on to say something very interesting he said too many decisions have been made in this office based on politics and i think in that moment he

decided he had no alternative and there was no good time there was no good way it had to be done the obsolete likable on sunday morning september eighth rigorously before he did it he did take a pole he's at a premier un over st john's episcopal church early that morning he sat inside a jaunty took communion and then he came back about eight o'clock in the morning to the white house and take that announcement across the country went into another firestorm overnight he had the biggest drop in poll ratings ever recorded twenty two points from a seventy one percent approval rating to a forty nine percent approval rating in some ways never recovered and thirty years later it's considered an act of political courage thirty years later that one of the wonderful things the president lived long enough to know that not always dollars but that i think the majority

i think the great majority of his countrymen and come to believe not only did he did what was necessary but he did what was courageous and i will never forget again a day i'll never forget in may in two thousand won one the john f kennedy library presented him with a percussive chords which is pretty courageous on their part a factor there is was a very heated debate on the board and down but they went ahead and i think it was an amazing moment in your ted kennedy say i was wrong or president ford was right i mean i think it sort of put a cap on that and you know willie johnson never lived long enough to see you know any reassessment of his presidency of harry truman would just long enough to see one dwight eisenhower didn't really what gerald ford was fortunate that he did and i think it was a source of real or gratification to him yet a lot of foreign policy challenges that occur during that

his relatively short time as president yet solved too along the helsinki accords the fall of vietnam the mayaguez incident your comment on some of george mallory how we handle that is so you know it's funny i get the president on august eighth and he's already scheduled to me it is going to the fiery first american president to visit japan that tells you something about the change in media climate this was just before saturday night live when i'll hear the president i went to japan and the sun god awful reason he had no formal dinnerware on ads and his pants were too short there's like three or four inches of cheering and i guarantee you that's all anyone paid attention to that can be said that for your ego or vice versa like it was like george bush going up and the prime minister's lawyer ah ha and then a lot of vladivostok and it was interesting because they just they cannot later all the night before he met with a

brazen brazen have had a stroke a handout managed to you know to conceal what are they and they rode a train through siberia and and got acquainted before you went the plane air force one stop in alaska reviewing at a friend and present him with the west in coke and through the vladivostok conference president hu was a real cop a maniac a guy kind of richard nixon by admiring he couldn't take his eyes off his coat so at the airport when they left the president in a proper coat he needed to break down who was thrilled and they said no one in taiwan for ill gave me the coat but here's the thing is that salted away and what was done the right thing gets it but you know there was a weapons system in development then

called the cruise missile and i wonder with a cruise missile would work or not and ford was so convinced of its bigger reported spent twenty five years on the air and defense appropriations committee before new military inside out and it was a great believer in the cruise missile and that the soviets pressed very very hard and he refused to do you know and so they made progress on so they never never really were able to close the deal the other great frustration he had of course was with soviet jews i mean we made a deal with the russians but the russians were under a lot of pressure deservedly for their treatment of jews and refuse nixon and then infect prisoners of conscience and they have under pressure son rosa agreed to where as many as thirty five thousand a year of a

great river which israel border got that number bumped up to sixty thousand a year but there is a condition of the condition and that is no one pronounce it so you can get a credit and own to put it on paper before was it had to be a handshake deal so that would abide by it because scoop jackson who was running for president a great it's a big open jackson director agreement which was great politics are which we criticize the soviets for their treatment love love those were religiously persecuted and for all sorts of me indicates upon us so betrayed and in the end i was betrayed and there was a sixty thousand a year before he was just that kind of stuff drove him up a war congress to change me he spent twenty five years in a

body where basically you know at six o'clock huge on partisanship you know you had a drink i your first day basis you shook hands and you you're on to work at how the institution worked what he came up with the first energy policy in american history a hundred and sixty seven page detail blueprint for energy conservation and alternative energy sources along with a deep control of energy prices something to offend everyone but anyway he asked mike mansfield or cooperate with good friends would you please we have a crisis remember the energy crisis we have a crisis would you respond in kind create a joint congressional committee and i ask you the past isn't as they created joint congressional committee exerted imagination so that we can get some things past whatever it is our listener one side that would upset the procedure and we knew anyway they went

back it was already control how you know ninety days whenever they finally came up with a deal a week later they came back to say sorry we can't deliver on a promise that the troops will go on with some and nothing's board had to deal with his present ironically to someone who spends all like in congress he becomes president and he finds himself defending abroad is the executive branch against his colleagues and of course there was a whole influx of watergate babies in the seventy four off year elections that vapor very contentious relationship just for vetoed sixty six spending bills the humming spending bills as george bush vetoed all i don't think he's become more than you know and political one he people city has the vision you visit i'm not even want the government to you know practice pickpocket

economics ie he wanted to restrain the growth of government and he was would use the veto power if that's what it took he's really the last president who made a significant effort to try to restrain the fundamental role of government mark about the us seventy six presidential campaign from a guinea of a cup or three more questions that will get questions and answers alum and the last national convention that really mattered was about an hour away in kansas city when the president barely beat back a challenge from governor reagan bob dole came out of that convention has a vice presidential candidate speak to that issue yeah well let's remember he had that someone's earlier under pressure from the right idea don't know some rockefeller and down and no one knew who was going to be his pick and he had come from behind and won the new hampshire primary and if one foreigner and writer was on the ropes and you know this is this is really critical moment where you discover

four balls and he was against any of the panama canal treaty he was against any real change american policy in africa in black africa and arms control and basically was it was a strong critic of detente and reflective why are powerful want any rate those issues the victories in north carolina and the numbers of the states and in fact at one point lead in delegates defining moment right before the texas farmer may first is a meeting in the oval office henry kissinger is supposed to go to africa and other reason is going africa is to announce a fundamental change in american policy toward africa and that changes united states will no longer support white minority governments specifically interview on its way to becoming zimbabwe and implicitly drought the whole rest of the cod back

tears and it is time for black majority rule on the writing is on the wall for south africa in apartheid and there was a heated debate in the oval office because this was not a policy on the face of it that would win a lot of delegates in texas om and couldn't have read away his trip and the president said no it's the right thing to do and basically went ahead well he was a texas bribery one hundred delegates to zero and dumb as you say came in a kansas city oh oh a hundred delegates ahead of reagan reagan then tried something practically daring some would say desperate he named his own vice presidential nominee and it turned out to be too clever white house because classically you to try to compensate for years for straight into weaknesses

so he'd already being ousted schweikert who was a liberal republican from pennsylvania would be his running mate and the idea was this would open the pennsylvania delegation handout all you needed was to have fewer delegates sin no ego vote on it it was it was risky it backfired but you know it really it was a bold and many wizards preview that reagan was an unconventional conservative reagan was a bold outside the box not a conservative and down and then they and then they try to force that the critical vote at the convention came on the vice presidency there was a lady introduced a resolution to force president born to announce who would be his running mate and i would know this is this is a really this is a vote about who was going to be nominated and endowed by this time not make concessions foreign policy on the platform henry kissinger had smoke coming out of his ears because the republican platform and seventy six not only did not endorse that taught but really back away

from the hole kissinger policy kissinger wanted to fight it out on the floor fourteen court and said look we got bigger fish to fry you know no one cares about the platform around but we care about the nomination anyway so i'll write got the platform they lost that critical procedural vote on the vice presidency and then the question becomes okay who who is either choose to be vice president holes have been taken there were several names in contention <unk> ford was i can't pay for a woman ob she already got college bills into the cabinet she almost got a woman on the supreme court when i just thought was retired and the president chose john paul stevens i am and the er the woman on that shortlist was the armstrong of texas who was that ambassador to great britain and she was seriously considered as was howard baker as was bill ruckelshaus a

name from the past who would've been sort of inoculation against the nixon pardon the watergate having resigned as a point of honor a rather than fired the special prosecutor chiles was in it right up until the un endorsed same actually didn't come in libya into until later on to this day there's a debate over what the reagan people really wanted and didn't want the president was told dick cheney has told me and other people but the president wanted to go over and call on governor reagan once the nomination was decided and begin the healing process because it's been a very bitter contest he was told okay you can come see the governor on one condition and that is in july the vice presidency it was as explicit as could be now i don't think he minded because i don't think at that point he was in a mood to ask ronald reagan to be his running

mate but nevertheless they had a cordial someone you might imagine awkward meeting but he was mindful of the reagan people and the need to heal the perfect the story that i just uncovered is they had discussions it went until four o'clock in the morning nelson rockefeller was in those discussions they could not come up with a consensus dumber vice president rockefeller said was the president the howl of consensus you have now been nominated your own writing you have to listen to all these people you just tell you want an alumni and ford said well let's sleep on it sold for caulking the morning they adjourn they were going to meet again in idaho or in the meantime rockefeller one of his put toys in maine and george him you know while national committeeman from

your went to the breakfast meetings with the other delegates human calls rocket thrown says hey the southerners which were the core the reagan people the southerners say they're prepared to drop reagan as a vice presidential candidate and go with don't run divorce said you know how widely you hearing this and him and said widely he said what he will present so they head back to the hotel and before the ten o'clock meeting rockefeller sees the vice and sees the president and emirates this information meeting begins president ford says it also has something to tell us he relates the story and at that point the meeting was all about bob dole and within the hour it was a sign of the bob dole be the running mate barbara was selected because gerald ford believed that it would help unify the party that would be well received by governor reagan personally by reagan republicans generally it new goal adamantly

he owed bill because in nineteen sixty five when he ran for house minority leader he won that race by three votes and those three boats were supplied by the kansas delegation led by a forty one year old congressman named bobby or so later they had a longstanding relationship you mean you don't like them he and the other in the final thing is critical the base they had no bass they were thirty points down in the polls and there are problems in the farm belt and if a republican is you know running for national office is worried about curing kansas and nebraska and the dakotas and he probably should take as they mock about it so the very first rule politics is secure your base and by choosing barbell or to secure his base not only geographically but the demographic wave project with veterans as you just noted rick the four bowl ticket came out

of kansas at thirty points behind totally untenable position and then proceeded to make what is arguably won the most magnificent comebacks in the history of presidential politics we to that well it's true because people now they are on the video you think of the debate is all about the polish staff and a wonderful story about that years later when we were reviewing the ford museum president ford was wonderful because he wanted the whole story told so when you walk through the borders in the us in seventy six campaign already see a tv screen and it plays endlessly the porch caf which to refresh your recollection he said that yoko and eastern europe has not dominated by the soviet union another will be that it was a gaff of major proportions but it's interesting because if you actually go back and really sad you mentioned three countries including poetry countries he had recently visited three countries that were all trying to ease themselves out of the soviet orbit one was

yugoslavia which had long been relatively free and one was romania and the birds poem he'd gone to those countries after the helsinki accords which were all about establishing human rights behind the iron curtain so many shared said was as a result of the policies of this administration and the helsinki accords i've seen with my own eyes at the people of eastern europe although it may be politically dominated by the soviet union i can tell you i don't feel spirits week dominated by the soviet union if he'd said that you know he would when he won the first debate going away at the end of the first debate by the end of the first debate the first polls show that the gap a nearly ten points and going into the second debate which was for policy and what about all this all the history as an incumbent and he stepped in it on board and i and then he made it worse because he is

a very stubborn man and he refused to admit that he'd screwed up n a day went by today's whereby and three days went by and i finally you know he was prevailed upon to come out tell the press that he misspoke and you know to say what you want how you should have put it if he had you know who knows that those last ten days and people for long memory armor was first how i voted for a presidential candidate like your mommy day by day by day you could sense this thing was was really moving and dumb what happened in the last week and a pole peered our hair is paul appeared the gerald ford had actually taken a one point lead over joe meeker and people talk about a bigger comeback that harry

truman and what happened the last weekend was in november of the first week of november the last week of the campaign they released the unemployment numbers for october and they went from seven point three percent to seven point nine percent and at the very least it suggested that the economic recovery was taking credit for had paused to come to a halt perhaps had reversed and it fit the doubts and i said as a seder and i think what happened was people sort of realize that we can you know what this is that a dead heat this could go either way and they looked in the mirror and said am i really talk about that i want for years and people say the nixon pardon cost him the election there's a poll after the internal polling show seven percent of republicans voted for carter specifically because of the mixing board and obviously that one account

probably for the victory but personally i i will always believe that it was the economy at the very end of the campaign that made people step back and change their minds again and just a handful of votes in a couple states had switched over he would have been reluctant to say it's an incredible struggle high out like your car go by ten thousand votes and white which is a very reliably democratic state was chaired by only three thousand votes but you know he was not the sort of person that you even however it didn't belong there but the morning after he was you know he was his voice it wasn't the white house and he was a voice and the morning after he was in the oval office consoling staffers and asking them what he could do to get them jobs and he was thinking about them and out and it was just it's one reason why it's interesting because you don't know every june before the white house alumni

gathering washington i think it's the only administration when this happens and i've been doing it for thirty years and it's because of the loyalty or loyalty goes up and loyalty goes there and i think people who worked for him in the white house or you know whenever there was a very special kind of attachment that people fell and they went and he would come back he misses for every year to last year was the first year when physically they were unable to get to dc but they won the us open it up to questions or hand do you see a parallel between president truman and president ford in the manner in which they achieved office can have extremely difficult decision to make not only that i think the other parallel goes beyond that i think their character i think god that the bill euphemism is there a plain spoken in the back as they were in select a word eloquent they were and they were great communicators

are also a harry truman had great ideas that your day i'll force thing as a visitor's the president defines himself in a number of ways one of the most obvious ways is whose portrait he hangs in the camera and the day that he became president i joke born lot of the portraits he left lincoln he left eisenhower who i think was his favorite president with people and he removed woodrow wilson who had been a great hero of richard nixon's and he replaced him with harry truman and be out another story when he was a freshman congressman mel watt was a while he was on the public works committee and you can imagine how important that was acceptable white house was falling down the one saturday morning harry truman invited the public works committee to come to the white house and he gave them a personalized chore and a show where migrants piano was coming through the ceiling and you know where a quarter of the east room was propped up and what were

the house was falling down and they basically had a choice they could the place theatre the place down during the white house which would be cheaper now for what the real secret is what was she went with the public money was concerned for me was as tight as i can and up in any other situation he would've taken that the key crude but the majesty of the white house being what it was he said no he agree with president truman who said well got the interior will preserve the walls and will reap ruin will restore the white house and he came away from that experience with a great admiration for harry truman i hear my truman's foreign policy bipartisan foreign policy fighting the cold war the marshall plan nato all that say he was a great admirer of harry truman and i will tell you something i want you to go in the nineteen seventy six indiana the campaign

of boys went to independence missouri the president truman had died by then but vessel's winning all in the truman house to nineteen oct always treat she had the secret service across tradition of what that inside the house ah but they were they are they were they were reported larger something across the street so it came to visit that's and that's what they know that she was voting for gerald ford opera president and joining the top that was the unit was i think george mcgovern's shocker some of you may have seen a one item where it came after the president died when mcgovern wanted to know that he voted in nineteen seventy six for gerald ford and three weeks after the election he was talking to his wife eleanor who said we just passed away about two weeks ago and mrs their governments would rather shave basically that she had voted for gerald ford in the south to tell you something about the mcgovern's in the forties and i supposed to meet her

imagine having a discussion with the board about the decision to pardon and you said that it went back and forth and back and forth and you made the comment that wasn't there something a better way to do this what were the options there are a number of options for example in theory you could've waited permitted to be indicted and then and ironically it for had waited two months some you may remember richard nixon almost die in october nineteen seventy four he went into the hospital for full rights was operated on the operation was a success he went back to his room and and passed out it internal bleeding and he very very nearly died at was the weekend before the seventy four elections and blair was going to be in california and everyone said what value do stay away from morocco

mean the last thing you want to is remind people of richard nixon or an apartment and he called you we and said we're going to you're dead any good for me to come and you we had her mother said it's the best medicine possible so you it to the hospital you remind everyone of the party republicans get shellacked on election day the irony is the happy waited until nixon's was on his called up and he might have been able to pardon him on the grounds of a lot of compassion and got away with it but they i didn't know was do you wait until he was indicted the problem with that was a sad jaworski was telling him that there's no scandal here i can't tell you whether he's going to be indicted i can play with them in a courtroom or not i might you know it's it's that absurd it's that to it and every time he tried to nail down the scenario why can do at this point i can do it at this point or maybe you

go through a trial and when the convicted or found innocent and then turn them but the problem is that the farm an american president in the dark would have so preoccupied and so polarized this country at a time when it was already terribly divided it has decided there's only one way to end this going one person can end this and actually they surveyed physicians for fourteen february eight two thousand seven at the dole institute of politics at the university of kansas it was a presentation of the dole institute's two thousand seven presidential lecture series the recording engineer was lawrence pushed of the dole institute i'm kate mcintyre at our present is a production of kansas public

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