IT’S ABOUT TIME we get to know Gerald Ford. We know his predecessor, Richard Nixon, who handed his vice president the presidency by resigning during the Watergate proceedings in 1974. We know the man who defeated him in the presidential election two years later, Jimmy Carter, and the man who in turn defeated Carter, Ronald Reagan, and went on to redefine the Republican Party.
Ford has been left to us as the bumbler from Michigan who stumbled into the Oval Office for a brief stint, pardoned his shamed former boss just to please the Republican Party, and then pardoned Vietnam War draft dodgers.
The historian and biographer Richard Norton Smith is trying to change that impression. He spent 10 years researching and studying the life and presidency of Gerald Ford, culling from numerous documents not previously available and conducting 170 personal interviews, including enough personal
