President Gerald Ford

President Gerald Ford

In that moment, many Americans saw Ford for what he essentially was: not a visionary or an ideologue, but a decent, straightforward man who had been dropped into the presidency almost by accident and was now trying to steady a battered system. To understand who he was and what kind of presidency he offered in the wreckage of Watergate, you have to go back to a much messier, more unsettled childhood than his later wholesome image suggested.

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