you know, somebody said it as we

were walking and i made the mistake of walking to the back of you all. it is a very back and somebody said it's like a rock concert. everybody's trying to get in. so, so pleased to see so many people. and thank you, brooke. our foundations, dear partner at the ford presidential library and museum. and i join brooke and her team in extending a warm welcome to our live audience in grand rapids, michigan, and to our viewing audience, c-span viewers everywhere. a special shout out to greg ford. i always love it when the family is here. and of course, that makes it tough because he's the original source material. he knows a lot of these stories. so we have him in the front row just to keep everybody honest. and then we have for the foundation chairman, mike

jenner, noah and sue, and many of the ford presidential foundation trustees who are here in the audience. thank you so much for being here. henry kissinger reminds us that according to an ancient tradition, god preserves humanity despite its many transgressions, because at any one period, there exist ten just individual wars who, without being aware of their role, redeem mankind. gerald ford was such a man. so you expect monuments to that kind of an individual, don't you? i mean, here, of course, we have a foundation and library. museum. you have an academic institute at albion, a professional school at u of m. you have a statue in the u.s. rotunda. you've got a freeway, an airport, an aircraft carrier. and now and now a magisterial

biography by richard norton smith, which is 700 narrative pages, is itself a monument. that's it's a monument to gerald hour ford. now, we've been anticipating this book for some time, richard, but i wouldn't have changed the timing of its publication. one day for here at the ford, we are entering a host of legacy anniversaries, 50th anniversaries. think back in your mind, 50 years ago when ford became vice president and then he became president, and then he had to deal with the mess in vietnam, and then he started to run for election on his own. think of all the things that were happening 50 years ago and this country was in such tumult. and richard captures the spirit of that time. all these legacy anniversaries give us admirers of gerald ford, an unparalleled opportunity to draw americans attention to the gifts of our 30th presidents.

virtues and values, his integrity, his bipartisanship, his compassion, his competence. for every one of these characteristics speaks so powerfully to us today. don't we need all of those characteristics desperately today? well, i say this is ford's time now more than ever. he was good then back in the 1970s, and he's even better now. now. his example and message are exactly the message we need to hear today. so i don't think it's an accident that richard's book comes out. now, let me use the word. i think it's providential no one was better fitted to write this book than richard. richard, do president and mrs. ford very well. he interned for president ford. he he wrote for president ford. he directed the ford presidential foundation library and museum, along with a half dozen other similar organizations. he's lived over the ford's burial site right there, river

house, looking down on the the building and the burial site for more than a decade, but not looking down in a sense of pride, but in great humility. he has, you know, to write this book. he spent more than ten years reading thousands of source documents. oh, my gosh. so much that he read conducting more than 170 interviews, writing four drafts, 40 drafts, and whittling the whole down to 700 narrative pages. it's not too much to say that this is the book. i think richard was meant to write. now, in addition to richard norton smith, we are also delighted and honored to host heyneke meyer on this stage. now, everybody in michigan and across the midwest now knows who hank is. he's got some 240 meyer super centers that make up one of america's largest family owned companies. while hank is the co-chair and ceo of meyer. what makes this grosser

different? what makes hank the perfect interlocutor? this evening is that he has a long friendship with richard. they have a great chemistry on stage together. i've asked them to to be on stage for numerous programs and also as a stand alone journalist and historian and writer in his own right. hank is really a serious person to contend with. he wrote this book on senator arthur vandenberg that i think you're aware of. it was a quarter century in the making. talk about dedication. and he also is the long serving vice chair of the gerald ford presidential foundation. are you ready to learn tonight? oh, yes, we are. richard and hank. well, thank you and good evening, everyone. and i've got the easiest job in the house and my job is just to welcome richard to these

friendly confines and get out of the way. but, richard, it's a real pleasure to join you for the debut of something that has been years in the making, eagerly awaited by us. and i guess i would just start out to say, what did you learn that was new or surprising? that might change the way history and friends of ford look at president ford. well, the simple answer is that it took 700 pages to answer your question. but since we presumably we don't have that much time this evening, a couple of ways of answering that. there are all kinds of what i call factoids that add up to reappraisal. some things that we we knew or we thought we knew, whether it's the warren commission, for example, it turns out gerald ford was the first and last member of the warren commission who serious way entertained the possible theory of foreign conspiracy in the death of

president kennedy. the reason we don't know that is because gerald ford outlived all of the other members of the commission by 15 years, which meant he was the go to guy whenever a new book or website or movie. by the way, he once described being a captive audience on an airplane where jfk was being shown and his assessment was as movie making was first rate as history, not so much an and he was concerned that young people would see the movie and think that in fact that's what happened in any event, he had his own theory, by the way, which needless to say, i think for questions of taste, never showed up in the original warren commission report. wait, and why? if he told her oral historian at the kennedy library or he just, you know, suspected that lee

harvey oswald was sexually impotent and that he murdered the president to impress his estranged russian born wife, marina and what things interesting i looked at his diaries, which are very extensive and which have not really been used before, where they're basically death calendars on which he wrote notes. and you can trace day by day by day during the warren commission on the evolution of his thinking. he was very sympathetic, for example, toward marina oswald. initially, he came to have real doubts, so much so that he suggested and this suggestion was not taken up, that witnesses, in fact, all be subjected to lie detector tests. he thought it was very suspicious. how marina, how easily marina managed to get out of the soviet union and come to the united

states. in any event, gosh, where where do you begin? well, at the beginning, the first captive called secrets, which i assure you runs counter to what we all associate with gerald ford, who is the quintessential open book. right. well, turns out like every family, the fords and the kings had secrets. most people don't know much about ford's early years, which in fact, were almost dickensian at one point with uncharacteristic revelation, he told someone that his childhood was little better than an orphanage, which is an interesting observation. neither say it never found its way into print. as you know, he was not born gerald ford. he was born, was waiting. jr. one of the things that sets this book apart are discoveries like.

president ford could have destroyed the papers associated with his mother's divorce case and when i read them, i can see why he might have been tempted to. it was a disaster of marriage, dorothy, the gardener, king. had one of those honeymoons where before it was half over, she obviously was thinking, what did i get myself into? her husband was abusive, physically, emotionally, verbally, and. the marriage was basically over almost as soon as it began. but a woman in 1913 had very, very limited options. and dorothy gardner, king is an extraordinary woman. i mean, gerald ford credited her, among other things, with his life long habit of seeing

the good in everyone, which some people more cynical types took as a form of naivety. in any event, one of the things that i saw for the first time was gerald ford's baby book very poignant entry, baby's first automobile ride turns out to have been taken. two weeks after his birth, two days after his birth father walked into the bedroom with a butcher knife threatening mother and child to two days after that, dorothy faye, on her own, slipped out of the house with her baby, got into a car, drove across the mississippi to iowa, got a train to chicago, where she had a sister who took her in. but as i said, women had very, very few options. and the husband came after her, charmed her path, convinced her into returning to him and but

again, it the marriage was doomed and obviously, after that point, you know, mrs. king filed for divorce, which was quickly granted. the judge ordered child support payments, which predictably, the husband never made ever. well, two years later, now, again, dorothy king ford, or anyone who knew her attested to her christian virtues. she was incredibly generous, kind of matriarch of the neighborhood, always writing, you know, notes to people, baking goods, you know, very active in our church. but in the 1930s, when her son was at yale law school, she

decided to take her former husband to court over all of the unpaid child support. and at one point, actually, her lawyers, they again, they won, repeated court cases and and when he didn't pay, she had him thrown in jail overnight. but it made the point. but in any event, it was that kind of her only wife. today, we would say gerald ford, you know, was from a broken home. and the miraculous thing is that he turned out the way he did because he took to heart the lesson of his mother and not the example of his birth father. now, secret, i am indebted to the former curator of this museum and dear friend don holloway, who tipped me off to

something. and then we had to keep the secret between ourselves for nine years because it was too good to release. gerald ford's adoptive father actually never did adopt him. but the man who ford formally was wayne king jr, always regarded his father. he had a father's name was george ford. he abandoned his family, was a bigamist, killed in a very suspicious to me. still unsolved mystery of a train accident near saint louis. the scandal broke. the ford family had to send a representative to saint louis to retrieve the corpse, which the widow was going to bury without telling them. and the reason that matters is

this because the man who became gerald ford, senior george ford son, told himself at a very early age that he was going to be 180 degrees different from his father. and it was those values that he passed on to the former welterweight king who became gerald ford jr until 1962, when his father died. so those values would have collided with real loyalty that day itself. high school with the the cafe. and when president ford met his birth father, he was 15 years old until he was 15 years old. he answered to judy, the diminutive of junior. but here's the here's the catch. he literally didn't know whether he was junior king or junior

ford, how he was being addressed or to what he should respond. he was about 15 years old working in a hamburger joint across the street from the school, make some money. and one day a stranger came in and stared at him and after a while it was sort of unnerving. and the man came up and said, you're always weak. king he said, i'm gerald ford said, no, you're always king. i'm your father. and he invited him to lunch. and you can imagine how surreal an experience that must have been that evening. ford said he he cried himself to sleep after telling his parents and he only saw his birth father a couple of times to be perfectly honest with you, maybe it was by all accounts, a scoundrel. i don't know how else to to

describe him, but in a way, he was a negative role model. just as george ford turned out in his own way to have an impact, a positive unintentional impact, i suppose you could say so did wesley king, senior. and so we. go ahead. i have to add one thing. yes. well, here's the thing. well, know that the thing about this story is it's it it spools out like, you know, like a roll of thread. so i mentioned the mother and the divorce and the proceedings in the 1930s. okay. gerald ford's elected to congress in 1948. a big upset, one of the first pieces of legislation he introduces would in effect, federalize child support payments. now, this was 1949, and you could imagine the country and the congress certainly were not quite prepared for this. but here's the remarkable

sequel. and this keeps happening in the ford story. in 1975, he's in the presidency in office. he never aspired to one of the first pieces of legislation across his desk is, in effect, an updated version of the bill that he introduced in 1949. but here's the story he signs. it never says a word about his own emotional connection to this issue. can you imagine a modern politician for going the opportunity to wring tears from the television audience the same day? by the way, that he signed that legislation? footnote to a footnote, he vetoed legislation to name a new federal building in grand rapids after gerald ford.

he didn't think presidents should be signing bills, creating monuments to themselves. the building, of course, was named for president ford, but only after he left office. did president truman support that bill in 1949. that's a good question. i don't know. i don't know. you know, truman and truman and ford have a lot of parallels that the day ford became president, you know, presidents define themselves in all sorts of ways. and one of them very, very early on is they decide which portraits of their predecessors they will honor by hanging them in the cabinet room. and, of course, depending on who they accuse, the press gives us reams of speculation as to what this tells us about their inner psychology and political agenda. well, ford, you know, had only

been president for an hour and a half and he's in the cabinet room and richard nixon's the portraits of nixon had had put were still there. of course, while dwight eisenhower was in the place of honor. but the other two presidents, interestingly enough, or the progressive era presidents, theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson, well, ford took them down and in their place, and he defined himself, surprised people by putting up abraham lincoln, who was a lifelong hero. and harry truman and lots of people scratch their heads and wondered why harry truman? well, it turns out they had one in common. they were both plainspoken midwesterners. harry truman always said his days in the senate were the happiest days of his wife. he loved capitol hill, i think, more than he did the presidency. this was 20 years before david

mccullough. so that's right. when harry truman was still very much out of fashion. they were both what i would call charismatic. he challenged. which is to say they they very rarely electrified an audience with their rhetorical brilliance. but guess what? it didn't matter because they had character, they had decency and although each of them was quite capable of being partizan after all, ford had been republican leader in the house. the fact is that ultimately they looked upon the other side as not enemies. and in ford's case that went back to what his mother taught him, that there's good in everyone. and you've got to, you know, i only heard gerald ford ever say anything negative about to

people. one was john dean and the other was gordon liddy. and the most extreme comment he could up with about either man was he's a bad man. and, you know, end of discussion. let's go back to that before there was a political career, there was college. and one of those little factoids is that that iron man in amazing blue actually spent more time at yale. i, i am one of those sort of you stop in your tracks. simon says that opens a chapter. gerald ford spent more time at yale than he did at the university of michigan. so which i don't know. it just doesn't seem it's sort of like about that time, the words gerald ford and supermodel in the same sentence that really rang true. but, you know, gerald ford's first serious girlfriend who he

met while he was at yale, was a part time model in new york there, phyllis brown, pb brown, more popularly known as perfect body. brown. not someone, by the way, whose name you brought up in the ford household. if mrs. ford was around and she had nothing to worry about, i assure you. but any event, phyllis brown is an unknown part of the story here. who took the man she called hayseed? she was a sophisticate, you know, from the east coast, introduced him to the theater asking, went sailing sailing. and they they became very serious. i found an interview with the president. he did about 4000 pages of interviews in conjunction with his white house memoir and his

ghostwriter. and they made trevor armbrister then went out and talked to 50 ford associates members of the cabinet, family members, reporters, you name it. and they were all assured that nobody would ever see these and nobody has ever seen these until now. and i'm pleased to say that those who sadly left us have forfeited, i guess, their claims to privacy. but in any event, eventually historians went out to say, you know, you know, you only get to vote for president once we get to keep retrying the evidence over and over again and deciding with every generation what how rank presidents. but i'm a yale was critical. first of all, you got to remember ford's work quote, i mean, he was coaching.

he was assistant coach. he was a scout. he was a wrestling coach. and he insisted that he could take a full time load of law school classes. and no one believed him. and he finally convinced them. and he was at yale law school and he was one of the founding court. yet at law school who started something called first now america in 1940. bears no resemblance to the more contemporary use of the term america first in 1940 was primarily a phenomenon on college campuses. now, a young gerald ford, young john f kennedy, young gore vidal, not so young. walt disney, lillian gish, norman thomas, frank lloyd wright.

they were all united by disillusionment over america's experience in world war one. remember, we had been promised a lot. we had been promised a war to end wars. we had been promised a week of nations. we had been promised our rationality in place of national when racial, ethnic hatreds. none of which transpired. and of course, by the 1930s it appeared that europe was well on its way to repeating the horrors of the first world war and so forth. and three other yale had. the idea of creating this organization now. but but here's again, this is ford is a much more complicated figure than he appears because of the very same time that he's signing up for the isolationist agenda. why his hometown hero, arthur

vandenberg. he is also literally swept off his feet by an improbable would be republican presidential candidate named wendell willkie, a lifelong democrat, wilsonian democrat. and an internationalist who agreed with fdr about like aid to britain, but a domestic conservative who had fallen out with fdr over things like the sale or the creation of the tva. willkie was a utilities executive, so you could understand his resentment and having government, in effect, go into and into business for itself. gerald ford the weekend that america first was releasing their national manifest, though gerald ford was didn't philadelphia part of the crowds screaming themselves hoarse. we want willkie and in the most exciting american political

convention in history, they got willkie on the fifth of six ballot. and by the way, as you well know, the grand rapids connection because frank mckay, a name that to many people had forgotten in this town, even though it's on a very prominent building downtown, frank mckay was a boss. frank mckay was an old fashioned boss who ran the state of michigan several years in the thirties, and later dominated this city as nobody ever has. and at one point when ford thought he'd like to get involved, you know, in the willkie campaign, his father said, well, you should go talk to frank mckay. and he did. and mckay kept him waiting for hours and some 5 minutes dismissed him and he made an enemy which smart bosses are not

supposed to do. but anyway, the reason why i wonder willkie got nominated in 1940 is because for mckay controlled the michigan delegation and mckay price for the delegation was not surprisingly, federal judges mckay to pick michigan's federal judges. for obvious and willkie said, said fine, he didn't care about the judges. he just wanted the votes. he got the votes, he got the nomination. and it was an extraordinary campaign. in 1940, that was gerald ford's to national politics. but he had already become aware of and engaged by the and time. mckay grassroots effort that was beginning to spring up in the

republican party here in grand rapids. so gerald ford entered politics as an insurgent, someone who was taking on the entrenched party machine. if you will. and then mckay with his father, mckay. i can't prove it. but there is a good deal of scholarship to suggest that mckay was involved in at least the planning of the murder of the state senator. three days before he was to testify in a grand jury against mckay and not surprisingly, gerald ford senior, who had reluctantly agreed to accept the chairmanship of the republican party in kent county with the understanding that when his son came back from world war two, he could relieve him. give you an idea of the tenor of the times gerald ford senior kept a guard and a loaded gun under his pillow until mrs. ford

said, put it somewhere else. and he finally they find a compromise. he put it under a floorboard in the attic. but he knew where to get it. but, you know, a lot of people have either forgotten or never that this was a theory that was boss ridden and thoroughly corrupt. really, the whole i mean, he controlled the state party machinery. it was a state boss. yeah. oh, no, no, absolutely. i mean, there's the stories are legion, you know, he sold insurance well. if you wanted a job with the state, guess where you had to buy your insurance? he got a kickback for every bag of concrete that went into, you know, every dam and every bridge and then the like. i mean, there were, you know, and there were strong arm tactics employed against local merchants. you dealt with frank mckay or you didn't do business.

so young. gerald ford at one point it was right after he got out of the navy, was interested in a career in the fbi. he was. and that's a great story. i found the paper that not been seen before. ford thought, yeah, he had actually was interested. he had quit america first. and i discovered unknown previously that his father had gone to arthur vandenberg to try to get him a naval commission. so this isolationist anti war campaigner is at the same time trying to put a navy uniform. this is, remember, a year or more before pearl harbor as an alternate him to that. he also applied to be an fbi agent and. he got extraordinary recommendations. the local fbi office said this is the best candidate we've ever had. i mean, you should you should read the the paperwork and he was blackballed by edgar hoover

personally. the day after greg hoover heard from the new haven office of the fbi about gerald ford's involvement with america. first, i personally believe that president ford went to his grave not knowing that. and in fact, it's no exaggeration. he was a lifelong pretty much a lifelong apologist for the fbi and admirer of viagra hoover, one of his first proposals as a freshman congressman, was to raise edgar hoover's salary. you don't know what he would think today. we know some things we didn't know then, but he was always a well, he was a strong champion of law enforcement, but he it bothered him. and one of the few things that he would admit to being bothered, you know, the whole stumble, bum klutz thing, i

mean, he laughed at. he really did for the most part. but what didn't bother him was that he was thought as a as a party guy to the exclusion of everything else. and he, in fact, regarded himself as an insurgent and, you know, besides what i've already told you, when he decided to run for congress in 1948, it was as an internationalist. he, like arthur vandenberg, had undergone a dramatic road to damascus conversion, if you will. the experience of the war had completely changed his views. and of course, now in the cold war. so we had a new enemy in the soviet union. but he ran in 1948 against an entrenched republican power. watch how young one. first of all, i had a dutch name, which was a big advantage in west michigan in 1948. he'd gotten 71% of the vote the

last time he ran, he was regarded as invincible and wonderful story by this point, gary decided to settle down and he was seriously dating betty bloomer. warren and and they had a a bizarre proposal which have prepared her for life as a political wife. early in 1948. i think it's in february of 1948. ford proposed to her, if you could call it that. he said he wanted to marry her, but they couldn't set the date and he couldn't tell her why. they couldn't set the date. well, you know, she didn't think much about it. well, what it was was he wanted to take my jarmon by surprise and delay his announcement as close as possible to the republican primary. and in a huge upset, he beat york one, 2 to 1, going away,

which? which tells you what? first of all, the war had transformed our attitudes and it turned out that john brown was yesterday's man and that ford in many ways was the man of the future. it was a formality for a republican in 1948, in the hall, and he it was the lowest percentage of the vote he ever got, 61%. the remarkable thing is if you're a congressman today and you have a safe seat. and you have 61, 65, 68% majorities without spending any money. there's not a lot of incentive for you to go home on the weekends or any other time, for that matter. you have to really work at it in order to to.

but ford was just the opposite. he came home every weekend and it is still i'm sure there are people in this room tonight. i know there are people outside this room tonight whose ranks may be dwindling with time, but there's a lot of folks who still have firsthand recollections of jerry ford. they all talk about jerry ford as a congressman, not as their president. and the the most poignant example of that to jump way ahead when the president passed away at the end of 2006, the secret service in the wake of 911 had been given all kinds of additional responsibilities for state events like inaugural missions and state funerals and there was a secret service agent here in west michigan, and of course, the name escapes me at the moment. but anyway, he was told that,

you know, she would have to give up her holidays to work. the ford funeral and people were commiserating. she said, no, no, you don't understand. and she proceeded to tell the story of her parents before she was born who lived in a trailer in the rural part of the ford congressional district. and her father was a world war two veteran, disabled as a result of the war. and we're bidding on government checks. and something had happened. the bureaucracy screwed up. whatever the checks stopped coming and they grew progressive every more desperate. and then finally someone said, well, you know, you should contact your congressman. well, they never contacted jerry ford. ford showed up in person with the check and made sure that they would be getting them

regularly. the sequel to the story is their daughter, who had to give up her holidays to work. the ford funeral said, you don't understand. this is my way of paying president ford back. now you multiply that story and i know you can multiply that story by literally hundreds, you know, throughout the district. and you can begin to understand he became kind of a legendary figure. and i don't know, i mean, it's hard not to feel nostalgia in a lot of ways for for that as opposed to now. but that that actually took a toll on his family. well, you're absolutely right. and it's only fair to point out, i you know, it started with constituency service, but of course, gerald ford was an

ambitious guy. he wanted to be speaker of the house. that was his lifelong goal. his office partner just across the hall was a young congressman named john f kennedy. another world war two veteran who had been converted from isolationism. they used to ride the subway together over to the floor of the house with their votes canceled each other out on domestic issues, but not on foreign policy. and interestingly enough, when jfk became president, it's remarkable. ford is in the pictures. he's the only republican in the pictures of the white house signing the foreign aid bill that he supported unpopular as foreign aid was. in any event, by then ford had a modest national reputation. even in 1960, he actively campaign to be richard nixon's running mate. and he said later on he said,

you know, forget about me. he said, i would have been a hell of a lot better than henry cabot lodge, which is an understatement. i'm committed. and he cultivated young richard nixon as a potential kennedy, didn't he? it came to grace nixon, in fact. yeah. the old row hotel. i keep saying that someone should put a plaque outside because because of two things early, early in 1951, it was the lincoln day dinner for the republican party. and arthur vandenberg, as you know, was literally on his deathbed not far from here. so the task of finding a speaker fell on congressman ford. well, he came with his acquaintance. i wouldn't call him a close friend at that point. newly elected senator from california, richard nixon, who came and wowed the crowd, showed a side of him, a warmth, an ease

around people that ford said you didn't often see. at one point in the middle of his speech, the lights went out and lots of people would be sort of discombobulated by that. and nixon made a joke about it, went on and anyway, he he left a really impression and that really i think that night was the beginning of the the kind of bond that existed between believe at the house and saint lucia didn't seem. what's that they stayed up late that the parents house in saint lucia and later on of the fords mother hung a sign over the bed. the vice president had stayed slept here. by the way, just to finish the other event that it seems to me warrants commemoration. i was john f kennedy campaign here in 1960 against richard nixon. and so the the old road to me it's the old royal hotel has a

very significant place in our history. you talked about ford being gerald ford being an insurgent. he certainly was when he asserted his ambition to leadership in the republican caucus. well, you get it. ford arrived in washington. the only word is liberal. he was a liberal republican. he had a strong civil rights record. he supported much of the truman program, not the domestic program, but he was strong. for example, the korean war, a real champion of naito and the like. the united nations. at one point, i'll bet you this is new was news to me. gerald ford was one of i believe it was 88 members of the house of representatives who signed a petition for government of world federalism. and as i say in the book, might as well have suggested esperanto

was a language for the united states. needless to say, he outgrew that level of internationalism. but yeah, i mean, he well, the insurgency. in 1965, the republican party had survived barely the goldwater debacle. by the way, there's a one derful. i found a telegram the last days before the 64 election. the goldwater and johnson race. i know some of you have seen it. remember it. there was a famous broadcast by a relatively unknown actor from california named ronald reagan, and the speech was famously of course, the time for choosing. there's a telegram i found from gerald ford to the goldwater campaign manager over, the whelming republic response. best thing i've ever seen. you got to run this again before

election day. i think he would harbor different attitudes later on in his relationship with ronald reagan. but that's that's how it began in anyway. in 1965, the party was desperate for change and. so ford, good old jerry, you know, the don and sergeant, they get along, go along. guy. what you see is what you get surprised everyone by taking on the current republic. minority leader charlie halleck and beating him, beating him with the help of donald rumsfeld, congressman from illinois. and bob dole, congressman from kansas. dole delivered the four votes that provided the margin of victory. as i say, 11 years later, ford repaid the debt with compound interest when he put forward on

the ticket in 1976 and ford really came to national prominence then with the evan jerry show. what was his relationship up with everett dirksen? yeah, everett dirksen was great showman. and as a young boy, he'd met william jennings bryan and they never got over it. i mean, he was william jennings bryan reincarnated. you know, he'd get up and give these great full throated speeches extolling the virtues of the barrick gold, you know, as the national flower. and but but bob or carnival, who was a friend of ford's and an excellent congressman from upstate new york, said in an interview that i found that, you know, that dirksen would have walked over his grandmother for two federal judges and lbj took. his measure seduced him, you know, long before ford appeared on the scene, the dirksen ford

relationship was not warm. part of it was generational, part of it as dirksen himself said, was, i am a friend of president johnson's, and i am a friend of charlie halleck. and so, you know, ford had two strikes against him beyond that everett dirksen was a generation that believed that a president took us to war. there was not much role for congress to be debating the strategic execution of that ford was a generation younger and he believed strongly that either escalate war, go all out, you know, bomb haiphong harbor, etc., etc., or pull out. but, you know, this kind of half way war, as he saw it, was

costing american lives and was not getting us any closer to do anything, recognize visible as a victory. so dirksen and ford were not close. ford was not jealous. dirksen monopolized the spotlight. he was born for the spotlight. he was very good at it. if you've ever heard his. he was known as the wizard of ooze and being heard. his voice sounded like an oil cam and and this great tousled hair. i mean, he was he was a character. he was he was a throwback. there's no one in the senate today remotely dirksen. ian. well, and now we're in the 1970s and president and gerald ford has been a congressman for almost a quarter century.

his hopes, the ambitions of being speaker of the house have not been realized and don't appear on the horizon. what's he thinking about his future? well, you know, i just touched on i didn't really fill out the the price that was paid by his family, by mrs. ford, and by the children, because he was on the road 200 nights a year. and in i think to be very honest with you, we never discussed it, but i think i know enough to and i know him well enough. i think he felt real guilt. i think he felt his absences in some way contribute to her problems. there was this extortion. every scene i want to say it's in 1967, it's a sunday afternoon. and actually ford is on the potomac with president johnson going down the potomac river to mount vernon.

and susan, who at this point is, what, maybe ten years old, along with the housekeeper, clara powell, remarkable woman in her own right, is there alone in the house, mrs. has what you and i would call a nervous breakdown. and it must have been just a horrifying thing for for any child to see of their parent. and they managed to get a hold of congressman ford and alert him and, you know, one thing led to another. but. it was clearly a situation where it wasn't only mrs. ford who was paying a price, but the kids, you know, they are at the age you know, you want to know. it is true, to be fair to ford, he would have his secretary mark off every football game that

jack or mike or steve played in. and those were sacrosanct. those weekends he would stay home and, you know, cheer on his boys. but but those were exceptions. so anyway, by 1972, that was going to be the year. remember, richard nixon carried every state by one in my home state of massachusetts. and what nobody knew and i discovered for the first time, there was a secret agreement. there were 17 democratic house members, mostly southern conservatives, who had at least pledged if republican. this got close to a 218 majority, they would switch parties en masse. and so, you know what body had

that cognitive pocket? well, it turned out on election night, nixon swept the country and the republicans only picked up five seats in the house, which left them at 197, 20 short. so much for the deal. and then at that, ford decided in consultation with mrs. ford. okay, you know, let's face facts. i'm never going to be speaker. so they decided that he would run one more time in 1974 and then he would step down from the minority leadership, serve his last two years as a and we've we've capitol hill, we've public service. at the beginning of 1977. now, the reason why the whole business with agnew and the potential vice presidential vacancy matters is because it coincided. this was two months after the

election. ford's ford knows he's never going to be speaker, but all of a sudden there's a possibility that he could end his career in a very honorable and not particularly demanding position as vice president, which would also have the added advantage of providing a platform, a springboard, if you will, for a post congressional career as a lawyer and lobbyist and so the plan was mrs. ford would finally get her husband back in 1977 and he would split his time between washington and grand rapids didn't work out that way. and so i want to leave some time for questions as well. but skipping ahead so he becomes president. there is there is a speech we all remember where he talked about our long national

nightmare is over. and one of the little asides that you've touched on is that a speechwriter for that may not have been properly well. and this is one of those factoids that i'm glad bob happens a lot around. bob hartman is a fascinating character. so frankly, if someone should write a book about bob hartman, he was a very divisive figure. there are people who just literally didn't understand why ford, in effect, put up with him. and again, it tells you a lot about ford. i remember talking about vice to vice president cheney who had to sort of man the hartman watch. someone told me he was new to the staff. he was talking to the president and he said that bob's a good man. but he says, you have to talk to him before 1:00. and this person said, why? and the president said he drinks. well, he didn't drink enough to lose his job, although there

were any number of people around the president who thought, you know, he ought to. well, here's what's fascinating. gerald ford saw the in everyone. bob hartman saw the bad and everyone together, the perfect politician. i mean, hartman was a conspiracy theorist when they moved over to the executive office building of the vice president's office, the vice president had a big office that many years earlier, been occupied by general pershing after world war one. and bob hartman claimed for himself the office occupied by assistant secretary of the navy frank woody roosevelt. but they didn't have meetings in fdr or they met informally out in the hall because hartman was convinced. and who knows, maybe he was right that the nixon people were bugging them. where is precedent for believing

that. but anyway, the ford hartman relationship is a get one small example of the complexity. why, anyway? hartman you know, sort of dined out for years, understandably, on the very, very successful speech that he wrote for president ford. i mean, he had a gift. he had a real he he write how ford talked and it sounded like ford. nobody heard ford speak and say, well, you know, someone else wrote that. and that's that's a real gift. i in an earlier life was a speechwriter. and i can tell you it's it's a demanding trade and are lots of people who profess to be speechwriters and who were not very good at it. well hartman was very good at it but the line that everyone can

remember my line so memorable that on his very last show, some of you may remember when david letterman called it a call it a career on cbs. he opened with a clip of gerald ford saying, our long national nightmare is over. that's the line with which bob hoffman will forever be. but it turns out in an interview that i found, another speechwriter by the name of milton friedman, not the economist, another milton friedman said bob hoffman didn't write that line. i did know. who knows? well, and there's so much we talk about because we've taken president ford right up to the presidency. but want to leave time for questions. so of i just wanted to ask you this book is dedicated to someone that a lot us may have forgotten about if we'd known the name in first place. but you did equate it to oliver.

yeah, it's the first of the surprises i've already been had people come up to me and say who's all of a symbol and and then some people, you know, it's sort of the the jeopardy daily double they they know on september second, 1975, gerald ford was in san francisco there a lot of people in his white house staff who didn't want him to go. but a very good reason because two weeks earlier he'd been in sacramento and the target of an assassination attempt by a. kooky character and manson family member named squeaky, an aid. as you can imagine, the secret kind of freaked out at the prospect of going back to northern california where radical politics were at their peak and ford was adamant, i'm not going to be a prisoner of

the white house. so he went well, they gave him speech. he met with the world affairs council, the tape to television interview, and then coming down to the lobby. the secret service said out front of the hotel, there was a crowd of about 3000 people and it was not a very friendly crowd. he said, you know, mr. president, you really need to go the back entrance and go right to the car and don't shake any hands. this time. and he said, fine. so he exited the back of the san francis hotel just a short walk to the car. and just as he got to the car, shots rang out. so who's oliver sipple? all of a symbol was a 33 year old honorably discharged vietnam veteran who by happenstance was out walking that day, found drawn to this crowd.

they said the president's hotel, he might out this they didn't know might come out this way. so he plonk himself in the crowd. now they were only about 40 feet separating these folks from the limousine next to him. he noticed a rather nondescript working, middle aged woman who had a handbag. and as the president emerged, she opened the handbag and took out a 38 smith and wesson. and oliver sipple had the presence of mind. he was the only person who noticed to deflect her shot. and if you go out there today, you could still see the bullet hole. and in the wall of the st francis before she get off a second shot to san francisco, cops jumped her and then, of course, the secret service, they dragged her into the locked out. they shoved the president into the limousine and on top of him

is don rumsfeld and a couple of secret service agents, and they take off at 80 miles an hour for the airport and they get halfway there. and this muffled voice says. oh, darn. you're awfully heavy. get off of me. and the remarkable thing, this is the second time in two weeks that had narrowly escaped death. and by all accounts, it didn't seem to to faze him. he called mrs. ford, of course, he wanted to reassure her. he did say later on, of course, mrs. ford was out of, you know, a very vocal campaign for the era and associated with any number of of women's issues. and he did say to her in jest, those women lousy shots. and. it was probably a good thing. i know.

one quick thing and then hopefully we'll hear from questions. when you look at the ford presidency, we've talked about lots, you know, minor discoveries and revelations. ultimately, it seems to me what justifies his book and the real surprises about this book is historically, we now know almost 50 years later that ford a much more consequential and relevant president than we thought. in 1977, he went to his grave believing that his legacy was his effort largely successful to restore some degree of confidence in american presidency, which had been tarnished not only by watergate but vietnam and a whole, you know, a decade, the assassinations and social upheaval. that's what he believed.

in 1975, he signed something called the helsinki accords, civil, really criticized from the right, the left for supposedly conceding the empire in eastern europe. now, we know that the helsinki accords were, in fact, a major milestone on the road to the collapse of the soviet union. we take economic deregulation for granted. we may not be happy with all the consequences. it's hard for people today to believe that there was a time not so long ago when bureaucrats in washington decided what it airline routes would be, how big a train crew could be, where you could get a mortgage or not. all of that was part of the regulatory regime, which was really an outgrowth of the new deal, quite understandably,

under the circumstances forward. and this is this is maybe the best example of why he's so and why we'd be entitled to feel nostalgia. ford believed in economic deregulation. it was than a campaign line. and when he became president and he set about doing something about it, he called in a staff counsel named rod hill, who, by the way, is married to carla hills, who was his hud secretary. and i interviewed both of them. and rod told me, ford said, i think the time is right. i want to know the bipartisan limits are up on the hill. and i want you find out for me which, man, at first going to talk to senator kennedy, who expressed some interest in air

deregulation. well, senator cannon was interested in trucking deregulation. one thing led to another. they created a task force. people on capitol hill in both parties came to the white house and, vise versa. they hammered out legislation. and before he left office, ford got the railroads and the financial services industry deregulated. the next time you go to an atm machine, think of ford, because that was one of the offshoots of his deregulation. what really makes us significant is he wrote airline deregulation. he wrote other deregulation that was picked up in a bipartisan spirit by the administration and then by the reagan administration. so deregulation became and then margaret thatcher christened it privatization in britain. so it literally became a global

transformation. all effort in the economy. now, those are just two examples of things that guarantee you. i don't i, i remember i delivered one of the eulogies and the president funeral and we sure didn't talk about deregulation and we didn't say much about helsinki. and there any number of examples. the new york city fiscal crisis. remember the famous headline for the city drop dead, which of course, he never said the here's the irony and then i'll shut up. the governor of york, a democrat, and you carry who in public was ford's partner throughout the new york city fiscal crisis, which basically boiled down to ford's willingness to commit the united states government to loan guarantees to prevent new york from going bankrupt, while, in theory, new would get its house in order, etc., etc., etc. ford thought the way that new york was going to be forced into

making those kinds of changes was a kind of tough love approach. he held until the end, and in the end he got what he wanted. but here's the sequence in 1976 that good democrat hugh carey voted for gerald ford for president, against jimmy carter, the nominee of his own party. and hugh carey told me, you know, gerry ford's never gotten credit he deserved for saving new york in the 1970s. is that's a couple examples of. what we don't know about gerald ford and why this book is 700 pages long. thank you. more than. that, we do have a little bit of time for questions. we are c span and so we would ask you wait a moment for mike

to arrive when you have a question. but richard, we're ready for a sequel already and we can start with some questions now. after having to deal with a whole series from the republicans as roosevelt democrats and having to clean up after richard nixon's mess and losing to jimmy carter and not appreciation appreciated ronald reagan and being very disappointed. the george w bush presidency in, how that turned out. and i could see gerald ford, this character,y cle to donald trump. when would it when he had the very departed you know it's it's a fair question. it is they predictable that no no and i'm but i'm not sure it's i'll tell you my best stab at answering that. okay.

in 1980 when it became clear, you know, ronald reagan owned, the republican party, he was gerald ford, political career was basically over. he sat down for a long, very revealing interview with a reporter he trusted implicitly who asked a lot of good questions. but one of the best was to invert the usual question, which is, you know what are the qualities in a successful president? the reporter said, identify the single most disqualifying attribute, personal characteristic, whatever, and they would be president and ford thought. he said arrogance. and then then he immediately followed up. he said, not that the american people would ever elect an arrogant president, but he said, but i'm i'm talking vicious arrogance. those are his words. he said then god help the

country and i'll it at that. question. christine, thank you. thank you so much i've really enjoyed what shared here earlier this week, the astronauts for the upcoming nasa's artemis mission were announced and one of the astronauts is from grand rapids. how wonderful. wondering if you could comment on president's words, feelings and involvement with the established that it's a great. i'm so glad you asked, because that is another little known of i have to be careful how i put this. gerald ford. was not wild about having statue of himself in front of the museum. i mean, i think in all candor

would be is as impressed. anyone with gill's work. but that's why the space man was out there and people thought, why is there a space man in front of the gerald ford museum? well, guess what? gerald ford was on the original commission that established ford, a lifelong, you. no interest in the possible of the space program, by the way, that's the first of these that where you work with wendy johnson, who made chairman of the commission and who had a habit of basically dictating pretty much whatever the commission did. so i guess ford was prepared later on. but anyway, the space program was very significant to him. and of course, he grieved along with everyone else when and the great tragedy in 67, i believe roger chaffee, native of grand

rapids, whilst his wife in the apollo. so i'm particularly pleased to hear that that someone from from grand rapids is going back into the outer space. and gerald would be very happy to. that. look at the research find terms that the missile crisis, another unknown chapter ford in 1950, the one he'd only been in congress a couple of times, was told day by one of the old bowls who ran the place in those days may tomorrow be outside such and such a room at such and such a time. no one structured what turned out he was being recruited for the most select committee of. all five members, world bowls

and one promising youngster who had already demonstrated that he could be trusted, that he wouldn't run off his mouth in search of a headline and had demonstrated maturity, etc. it was the commission charged with oversight. the cia and other intelligence agencies. so in other words, from a very early time in his career, ford had been sort of singled out in a bipartisan way as someone who, you know, who could be who could be trusted. in those days, there was no staff in the room. no one took notes. it was very simple. the head of the cia, those days, well, allen dulles, for much of the time, would come and sit there and answer our questions until they were through asking questions. so ford knew about for example. he knew about the u-2 plane before the plane was shot down

over the soviet union in 1960. he knew about the bay of pigs preparation there by the classic ford when the bay of pigs turned out so disastrously and there was a temptation on the part of partizans to pile on, ford put out a statement supporting the president who just because you happen to be a democrat, deserved, in ford's view, the same reflexive national support as dwight eisenhower would have. for example, i mean that was, you know. the cuban crisis in 1962 was foreshadowed old early that summer. senator najaf senator keating from new york actually made a speech in which he raised the possibility of soviet offensive, i.e. nuclear weapons being stationed on the island of cuba,

90 miles from american shore. ford simultaneous way. in part i think because of what he knew from his, you know, intelligence oversight, he was very concerned that there were not adequate american surveillance flights over cuba. he went to john mccone, who was then head of the cia, to voice his concern. mckone agreed with him. he also talked to robert mcnamara. now, mcnamara is in sort of bad odor because of vietnam but ford and mcnamara each other because, of course, mcnamara had been a whiz kid at ford motor company before he became defense secretary. they they trusted other in fact, the reason that gerald ford was on the warren commission was because robert mcnamara and dean rusk, lbj of state told president johnson, if you want a

republican congressman who is serious and who can be trusted, you ought to consider gerald ford. well, anyway, in in the middle of what became the cuban missile, ford obviously top secret, you know, is trying to do his best to ignite a sense of urgency at pentagon and to some degree at the white house in terms of stepping up the surveillance flights. they stepped up in time after the whole thing was over. mccollum privately credited with a major part in making certain that the kennedy had the evidence, the photographic evidence that it needed to take to the u.n. and and worldwide. and that, of course, turned out to be essential to a peaceful resolution. but he had a ford that ford never talked it. you won't find a word of in his memoirs.

you know, as a historian, i can his capacity for keeping secrets without emulating. well, we're so and we're so glad that he saved them for you to. unearth and one last thing. this war tradition. this i promised only to read one thing and it's not long, but it's the ultimate unknown. jerry ford the bison tennille. in 1976. i'm sure there are people here who remember it and. think of the difference in the mood in the country in the summer of 1976. from the summer of 1974. okay. ford hopscotched and down the east coast that weekend gave a number of speeches, but for my money the best speech he gave that weekend in fact i think best speech he gave as president. came on the 5th of july when he flew by helicopter to to

monticello, jefferson's mountain top estate in charlottesville to preside over a naturalization ceremony for 150 new americans. and this is what said he he welcomed everyone and he said what made america unique was it was a country based on an idea and in fact, an idea that had never been fully realized. but that was in the process constantly are being realized. he talked about growing up in grand rapids and having a sunday school teacher who told about joseph's many colored, and he used that as a metaphor for america. these are ford's words black is beautiful. it was a motto of genius which uplifted us far.

its first intention. once had thought about it and perceived its truth, we began to realize that. so a brown, white, red and yellow, beautiful. i believe americans are beautiful individually in communities and freely joined together by to the united states of america. i see a growing danger in this country in conformity of thought and taste and behavior. we need more encouragement, protection for individuals to take the wealth we of cultural, ethnic, religious and racial traditions are valuable, countable answers to the overpowering sameness and subordination of totalitarian society. it this and this is how he concluded his remarks on jefferson's front on. you came as strangers among us,

and you live here. citizens equal and fundamental rights equal before the law with equal share in the promise of the future jefferson did not define what the pursuit of happiness means for you or for me constitute, and does not guarantee that any of us will find it. but we are free to try. richard ability. yeah. thank you. welcome to white house history