Word: forde
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Even as his faith inspired him to save Nixon, he refused to use it to save himself. Ford's discretion would be tested as the 1976 campaign took shape. Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was a Southern Baptist who taught Sunday school, did mission work, filled in for preachers when they were on vacation and told the crowd at a backyard reception in 1976 that he had been born again. His sister Ruth Carter Stapleton was herself an evangelist who used to minister to reporters in the back of Carter's campaign plane and wrote letters to the faithful enlisting...
...Ford flatly refused. "You told me a long time ago we're not going to take advantage of our faith to get elected," he reminded Zeoli. Ford declined to allow Zeoli to lend his name to preachers' committees for Ford. "He thought he'd be using his chaplain to get votes," Zeoli recalled. Ford later revealed that he found Carter's discussion of his faith unsettling. "I have always felt a closeness to God and have looked to a higher being for guidance and support," Ford explained, "but I didn't think it was appropriate to advertise my religious beliefs...
Carter won by fewer than 2 million votes out of 81.6 million cast. But Ford never had any regrets about the pardon or his refusal to name Jesus as his running mate. His oldest son Jack told him, "You know, when you come so close, it's really hard to lose. But at the same time, if you can't lose as graciously as you plan to win, then you shouldn't have been in the thing in the first place...
...which Ford noted, "I couldn't have said it better myself...
...honor guard prepared to carry Gerald Ford's coffin into Washington National Cathedral, you could hear the august music of Hail to the Chief. Inside the church, George W. Bush and three of his predecessors were gathered. But for the moment, there was only one chief who mattered, the man who once helped the nation weather a grievous shock to its system. In his eulogy, George H.W. Bush said it best: "Gerald Ford's decency was the ideal remedy for the deception of Watergate...