Word: forded
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...President Richard Nixon under the terms of the recently ratified 25th Amendment to succeed the disgraced Spiro Agnew. Less than a year later, on Aug. 9, 1974, Nixon resigned rather than face a Senate trial on three articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives, and Ford took the oath to be the 38th President...
...That was a preposterous development in the career of a politician who had never run for office beyond the confines of the Fifth Congressional District of Michigan. In his first televised statement after his swearing-in, Ford acknowledged his anomalous status: "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers...
...request found a receptive audience. For nearly two years, the accelerating Watergate scandals had polarized Washington, dominated news coverage and poisoned public discourse. Even to his loyal defenders, the increasingly embattled Nixon did not radiate trustworthiness and candor. On TV that August afternoon, Ford seemed the anti-Nixon: square-jawed, plainspoken, keeping steady eye contact with the camera. "My fellow Americans," he said in his reedy Midwestern tones, "our long national nightmare is over...
...That verdict was premature, but people believed it because they so desperately wanted to. Besides, Ford looked like an honest, decent man, and that, as people who knew him readily attested, is exactly what he was. Frank Capra might have made a movie of Ford's wholesome life to date, although perhaps without the improbable fade-out in the Oval Office...
...couple of unusual details along the way. He was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha, Neb., in 1913. Two years later his parents divorced, and his mother moved with him back to her hometown, Grand Rapids, Mich., where she met and married a businessman named Gerald R. Ford. She changed her son's name to that of his stepfather, and he did not learn his true identity until he was, as he later recalled...