Word: forde
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...person who helped maintain Ford's common touch amid his political tribulations was his wife, Betty. She brought candor and originality to the White House, a freshness not seen since Jacqueline Kennedy. She kept the Executive Mansion real. "I took all the art off the walls - there's enough around - and put up family pictures," she told TIME in 1974. "I brought in Jerry's old blue leather lounge chair and his tobacco things." Until her husband succeeded to the presidency, the Fords had never lived in a house larger than eight rooms. Betty took delight in the incongruity...
...Outside the home, however, Ford's domestic record was spotty, largely because of the standoff between the White House and Congress. He had originally announced he would not run for President in 1976, but his sense of work left undone made him change his mind. Although Reagan won some Republican primaries, Ford arrived at the G.O.P. convention in Kansas City assured of the nomination. His Democratic opponent, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, ran energetically against Washington and the eight previous years of Republicans in the White House. Ford's aides at first planned to conduct a so-called Rose Garden...
...campaign's most memorable moment was, again unfortunately, an apparent Ford gaffe. During the second televised debate between the candidates, in San Francisco, the President said, in response to a question, "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford Administration." The tortured explanation for this statement emerged slowly over the next few days. Ford had not meant to deny Soviet military domination; he was simply unwilling to concede, probably as a sop to his party's right wing, that political domination was and would be a fact of Eastern European life...
...election was surprisingly close. Carter won, with 297 electoral votes to Ford's 241. The President, who had campaigned ferociously in the final days, was hoarse and teary when the results were announced...
...office, Ford continued to speak and tour energetically on behalf of his party. He toyed with the idea of running again in 1980, but even his close aides showed little enthusiasm. As the G.O.P. nominee, Reagan considered naming Ford his running mate. But Betty Ford had by then courageously made known her problems with drugs and alcohol, and former CIA director George Bush got the place on the ticket...