Word: fording
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...That is when I read a statement that I could no longer defend the Administration or participate on the President's behalf," recalled Ford. "I looked over at Nixon, and he was shocked. I wasn't sure what would happen. Then the strangest thing of all took place. Instead of blowing up or criticizing me, Nixon complimented me for taking exactly the right position. I would not say he was mentally incompetent then, but he was strained emotionally...
...Ford has watched with interest over these 25 years as the books, movies, plays and television programs have rolled forth about Watergate and Nixon, the good, the bad and the unspeakable. "The people who do these things are exploiting the worst part of Nixon's personality," says Ford. "It is unfair. He had many achievements." The latest piece of Nixonmania is Dick, a movie of the absurd in which two teenage girls are Deep Throat, the long-dead Nixon dog Checkers is transposed to the White House and detests his President, G. Gordon Liddy looks like a yuppie Groucho Marx...
...Ford has said very little over the years about the Nixon tapes that thrust him into the presidency. But there is a part of them that still upsets him. "One of the most disappointing things about Nixon was that language he used as revealed in the tapes," recalled Ford. "I knew Dick Nixon for 25 years, and I never heard him use that kind of language, not in conversations with me. I was so shocked by it that I asked Henry Kissinger if he had ever experienced Nixon using such foul language. He hadn't either. That opened...
...Ford is resigned to history's continuing struggle to sort out the Watergate tangle, including the shadow that follows him over his pardon of Nixon. Few people who know Ford believe he is hiding a great secret about that decision, or about anything else. He is a stranger to guile. Just last week he was chuckling again over the most famous line he uttered as President: "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over." It was not his line, and he almost rejected...
...When I felt it was pretty certain Nixon was going to resign, I asked my aide Bob Hartman to write a speech for my swearing-in," said Ford. "He was a late-night operator, and he brought me a draft the morning before. I wasn't sure I wanted the 'nightmare' line in the speech. Bob blew up. He stamped toward the door and said, 'To hell with it. If that line is not in the speech, I'm quitting.' I read the speech over a few more times, and I got to like that line better. So I used...