Word: forded
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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 March 1976 that he had been born again. His sister Ruth Carter Stapleton was herself an evangelist who used to minister to reporters on the back of Carter's campaign plane and wrote letters to the faithful...
...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 less than 2 million votes out of 81.6 million cast, capturing slightly more than half of evangelical voters. 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...
...nation's political establishment, 3,244 strong, filed solemnly into the Washington National Cathedral for a service, as the program put it, "in celebration of and thanksgiving for" Gerald Rudolph Ford, President of the United States in the tumultuous post-Watergate years. Bob Michel, Al D'Amato, Paul Laxalt - the mourners, who now get together only for conventions and funerals, vividly evoked a very different time in American politics, and a very different Republican Party...