【The Impotent King (2005) in English Subtitles】

Editor's note: This is The Impotent King (2005) in English Subtitlesthe 38th entry in the writer's project to read one book about each of the U.S. Presidents in the year prior to Election Day 2016. Follow Marcus' progress at the @44in52Twitter account and the44 in 52 Spreadsheet.

Man, poor Gerald Ford.

That's all I could think after completing Douglas Brinkley's book on Ford for the American Presidents Series -- one of the few biographies available on a man generally seen as a caretaker president.

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Ford was in an unenviable position. He ascended to office in the wake of the biggest scandal in the history of the presidency, and had to figure out whether to pardon his predecessor's criminal acts. Meanwhile America was reeling from the loss of a war for the first time (in Vietnam), not to mention a slumping economy and rising inflation.

This man was basically handed a tire fire and told to put it out. And, yet, most of what I know of him -- as is the case with most of my generation -- comes from Chevy Chase's imitation of Ford's clumsier moments.

Granted, he was clumsy. Or at least, the former college football player simply suffered from a lack of ability to fall gracefully.

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Sure, there was reason enough to believe that maybe he wasn't the smartest man ever to take control in the Oval Office -- but while he may not have conveyed the wit of JFK or charm of Reagan, Brinkley reveals, there was more going on under the surface than many knew.

From the beginning of his political life, Ford recognized the drawbacks and limitations of the presidency. He set his sights on the House speakership, seeing Congress as the real seat of power.

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He would never make it. He took over as Richard Nixon's Vice President once Spiro Agnew resigned under his own cloud of scandal. He thought he was helping out -- but it was his dedication to Nixon that would, eventually, sink Ford's own presidency.

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Ford believed Nixon, even during the dying days of the Watergate scandal. He took Nixon's proclamations of innocence to heart, speaking publicly in defense of the embattled president when few others would.

He would be burned for that loyalty when evidence from the White House tapes showed Nixon's guilt in the Watergate cover-up.

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A month after he took office, Ford made the controversial decision to pardon Nixon for his role in Watergate. The decision cast a toxic pall over Ford's presidency, leading to unfounded accusations that Ford agreed to pardon Nixon in exchange for Nixon's resignation.

If Ford had been handed a tire fire, the pardon of Nixon was him adding gasoline. In 2016, a year that has seen hundreds of GOP members contort themselves to stay loyal to their party and/or their party's nominee, Ford's dedication to Nixon is fascinating -- and surely a reason some accuse him of having been a little dim.

It's incredible to imagine a president who never received a single vote in a Presidential election (Agnew was on the ticket with Nixon both times). Even if he had been elected, poor Ford was embattled as any accidental president has ever been, managing the Mayaguez incident -- officially, the last battle of the Vietnam conflict -- and ducking two (!) assassination attempts.

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As a last bit of mud in the eye, he very nearly lost the GOP nomination in 1976 to a challenger within his own party: former California governor Ronald Reagan. It's hard to imagine now a political party collapsing to the point of a challenger taking on an incumbent from his own party. (And yet ...)

Reading the book on the road, as my wife drove us across the country, I felt as disjointed as Ford must have felt: surrounded by change, yet stuck in a kind of stasis -- each day blurring into the next until you finally reach the end.

Despite a flirtation with being Reagan's VP candidate in 1980, Ford's political career was pretty much done when he lost to Carter in 1976. He occasionally returned to the limelight in later years, even coming forward in support of gay rights. Ford died in 2006.

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Ultimately, Ford was a man out of time, a man who had the presidency thrust upon him -- rather than clawing for it throughout his career like nearly all of his predecessors and successors.

He's the first half of a strange one-two punch with Jimmy Carter: two men who became president more out of circumstance than anything else; both are viewed alternately as having failed presidencies, and of being given an unfair shake.

Could they have done better in any other time? Maybe, but that's not how history unfolded.

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