The American Vice Presidency

by Jules Witcover

  On October 20 in an act of open defiance, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson flatly refused and resigned, as did his deputy William Ruckelshaus for the same reason, in what came to be known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.” The deed was then done by the third in command at the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork. The Supreme Court ordered that the tapes be turned over to the Senate investigating committee, and the Ford confirmation finally went forward.

  In late November the Senate overwhelmingly endorsed Ford, and a week later the House completed his confirmation. He was sworn in with Nixon present, even as new Watergate pressures continued to imperil Nixon’s own security as president. The new vice president identified himself as “a Ford, not a Lincoln,” a modest comparison with which most in the chamber, knowing him well, could agree. William Greider of the Washington Post, one of the nation’s most perceptive and fair reporters, wrote of him, “The more they thought about Jerry Ford, the more they thought of him.”20

  Nixon told Ford he wanted him to attend cabinet and National Security Committee meetings and be his chief liaison with his old colleagues in Congress. But under the threatening circumstances to Nixon, Ford was put to work shoring up the Republican Party around the country for the next eight months. As the year dragged on, there were disclosures, including the embarrassing eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in one of the tapes being transcribed by Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods. Ford’s travels became virtually a nonstop defense of the man who had put him a heartbeat from the presidency. He found himself repeatedly insisting he believed in Nixon’s innocence of covering up his administration’s and his own involvement in the whole sordid affair and its aftermath. But Ford’s defense of Nixon was a limited one, in that he kept saying Nixon was “innocent of any impeachable offense.”21

  As the Washington Post reporter covering Ford’s vice presidency, I interviewed him in early July 1974 aboard Air Force Two about the noose tightening around Nixon’s neck and the difficulty of defending the man he might well soon succeed. He did not want even to talk about the prospect, as if doing so would be an act of disloyalty. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that he was probably hurting himself politically with his continuing profession of Nixon’s innocence but said anything less would be taken as abandonment of him.

  On the final weekend of this salvage mission, as Ford was campaigning and speaking in Mississippi and Louisiana, key Republicans, including the Senate minority whip Robert Griffin of Michigan, learned of the “smoking gun” tape of June 23, 1972. On it, only six days after the Watergate break-in, Nixon spoke of efforts to cover up the White House involvement. Word was flashed to Ford, and on returning to Washington he issued a brief statement saying it would serve no useful purpose for him to say anything at all regarding the possible impeachment of Nixon.22 As Ford’s longtime aide Bob Hartmann wrote later, “No longer was [Ford’s task] to save the president who appointed him but to save the presidency he might inherit.”23

  On August 1, Haig came to Ford’s office and asked him whether he was ready to assume the presidency “in a short period of time.” Ford said he was, and according to him a discussion ensued of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and also of the presidential powers of pardon. Ford wrote of what Haig told him: “According to some on Nixon’s White House staff, Nixon could agree to leave in return for an agreement that the new president—Gerald Ford—would pardon him. Haig emphasized that these weren’t his suggestions.” Ford went on to note, “Because of his references to pardon authority, I did ask Haig about the extent of a President’s pardon power,” and Haig cited a White House lawyer as saying, “A President does have authority to grant a pardon even before criminal action has been taken against an individual.”24 Intentionally or not, Haig seemed to have planted the notion in Ford’s head.

  On the night of August 8 on nationwide television, Nixon announced that he would resign the next day, rationalizing his reason for doing so: “I hope I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.”25 It was hardly a confession of wrongdoing, attributing his decision to loss of sufficient support in Congress to go on. The next morning, after Nixon had made emotional farewell remarks to his staff and others in the East Room of the White House and flown into California exile, Ford took the presidential oath in the same room and declared to a relieved nation, “Our long national nightmare is over.” Aware that he had just become the first president not elected by the people after having been the first vice president not elected by them, he said, “If you have not chosen me by secret ballot, neither have I gained office by secret promises. I have not campaigned either for the presidency or the vice presidency. I have not subscribed to any partisan platform, I am indebted to no man and to only one woman, my dear wife Betty, as I begin the most difficult job in the world.”26

  To fill the vacancy caused by his ascendance to the presidency, Ford chose the former governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, soon confirmed. On Sunday morning, September 8, Ford announced the unconditional pardon for all of Nixon’s alleged Watergate sins, saying neither Nixon and his family nor the country at large could stand the drawn-out ordeal that a criminal prosecution would have entailed. “My conscience tells me it is my duty,” he told a shocked nation, “not only to proclaim domestic tranquility but to use every means that I have to insure it.”27

  The first protest came from Ford’s newly appointed press secretary, Jerald terHorst, previously the Washington bureau chief of the Detroit News, who instantly became a hero to many in the press corps for submitting his resignation on the spot to his old Michigan friend. Around the country, the conclusion was drawn: that a deal had been struck whereby Ford had agreed to pardon Nixon before becoming president himself. Ford flatly denied the allegation and testified before the House Judiciary Committee investigating the matter.

  In any event, Ford served in the Oval Office through the remainder of the second term to which Nixon had been elected. In 1976, despite saying earlier that he would not seek a term of his own, Ford did so. He turned back a strong challenge for the Republican nomination from the former governor Ronald Reagan of California in that year’s primary elections and at the party national convention in Kansas City. But the long shadow of the Nixon pardon hung over his general-election campaign against the former Democratic governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, and he lost narrowly that November.

  In gaining the Oval Office, Jerry Ford far exceeded his earlier quest to become House Speaker. But in his eight months as vice president he was unwittingly reduced to the role of a bit player in what is generally considered to be the worst American political scandal up to that time. Years later, his pardon of Nixon was judged by many as wise as well as compassionate, yet would remain the most controversial if memorable act of his presidential tenure.

  In retirement, the still robust Jerry Ford lived an active physical life, playing golf and skiing at homes in Rancho Mirage, California, and Vail, Colorado, and lecturing for nearly thirty more years. He died at age ninety-three on the day after Christmas 2006 and was buried at the Ford Presidential Museum, in his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER

  OF NEW YORK

  In the country where it’s said that every mother’s son can become president, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was one of the relatively few who could legitimately say, as he did later in life, “When you think of what I had, what else was there to aspire to?”1 One of the five grandsons of John D. Rockefeller, touted as the richest man in the world, Nelson fell one rung short as the forty-first vice president. After failing to be elected to the presidency and famously saying he wasn’t built to be “standby equipment,” he finally accepted appointment to the second office in 1974 by President Gerald R. Ford, himself elevated to the highest office upon Richard M. Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal.

  Rockefeller’s early notoriety came to him as an heir t
o the millions of the founder of the Standard Oil Company, but his roots also sprang from political soil as the maternal grandson of U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island. As Senate majority leader, Aldrich was regarded the prime defender of the nation’s great trusts and combines and was dubbed “the arch-representative of protected, privileged business” by muckraker Lincoln Steffens.2 He used his influential position in the Senate to become a multimillionaire himself through the sale of his trolley lines in Providence to the New Haven Railroad. Young Nelson’s advancement rose initially through the Rockefeller name and empire, and he turned to elective politics only after a series of appointive positions in government, including those in the administrations of the Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt. They convinced him that the power he sought had to be attained through his own political enterprise. While Nelson Rockefeller never achieved the one goal he thought worthy of his aspirations, he brought a high degree of progressivism and public service to what came to be known as Rockefeller Republicanism.

  He was born in Bar Harbor, Maine, on July 8, 1908, to Abby Aldrich and John D. Rockefeller Jr. during their summer vacation there. Nelson was a lusty nine and one-quarter pounds, a hint of the stocky and rugged man he would become. As fall approached the family moved back to the Rockefeller mansion on West Fifty-Fourth Street in Manhattan, where Nelson and his siblings had Central Park as their playground.

  Nelson was not a particularly studious boy, more inclined to mischief and a gregariousness that made him popular but a bit of a trial for his parents, who naturally had high ambitions for him. He finished high school in the lower third of his class and could not qualify for admission to Princeton to follow his older brother, John. Instead he went to Dartmouth, whose president, Ernest M. Hopkins, was a family friend. There he buckled down and in 1930 made Phi Beta Kappa, graduating cum laude.3 By this time he had met and courted Mary Todhunter Clark, granddaughter of George B. Roberts of Philadelphia, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The marriage, immediately after Nelson’s graduation, pleased both socially conscious families. The couple embarked on a nine-month cruise around the world, a wedding gift from the groom’s grandfather, John D. Sr., along with twenty thousand dollars in pocket money.4

  Young Nelson had written to his parents that he didn’t want “just to work [his] way up in a business that another man has built” and gain control only many years later, but that’s what happened.5 While his father was building the new Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, Nelson obtained a real-estate broker’s license and set about finding business tenants for what would be the world’s largest office complex. He lured tenants by offering bargain rents, to the point that he was sued by competitors, unsuccessfully. His enterprise led his father to naming Nelson president of Rockefeller Center in 1938.

  Three years earlier, Nelson had made an investment in a Standard Oil subsidiary, the Creole Petroleum Company in Venezuela, then became a member of its board, and began to build his own fortune, along with forming a deep interest in Latin America and its art.6 During an intense inspection trip of Creole Petroleum’s facilities and the surrounding countries, Rockefeller developed a strong concern over the plight and living conditions of its workers. He went among them political-campaign style in his open and glad-handing way, which later would be a trademark of his political success at home. News of his grandfather’s death in 1937 brought him flying home, after which he lectured the top Standard Oil officials about their social responsibilities to their workers.

  Rockefeller also became involved in promoting modern art, a passion of his mother. He survived an early fiasco when the celebrated left-wing Mexican artist Diego Rivera painted a huge mural for Rockefeller Center depicting a Moscow May Day scene and a likeness of the communist icon Vladimir Lenin. Amid a public protest, it had to be destroyed.7 After an apprenticeship on a junior advisory committee, in 1939 Rockefeller became president of the family’s Museum of Modern Art, known as MoMA, and navigated his way through other disputes in the tempestuous art world. “I learned my politics at the Museum of Modern Art,” he joked later.8

  On return from another trip to South America in early 1940, Rockefeller met President Franklin D. Roosevelt and raised his concerns about Nazi infiltrations there. He presented elaborate plans to FDR for coordinating U.S. economic policies throughout Latin America. The president was greatly interested but had already named a dynamic New York lawyer, James Forrestal, as his eyes and ears in South America. But Forrestal was more focused on intelligence and military aspects, so a new federal position, coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, was concocted for Rockefeller.9

  After Pearl Harbor, all four of Rockefeller’s brothers were in the armed services, and in August 1942 Nelson went to Roosevelt and told him, “You’re my commander-in-chief. Any time you want me in the Army, I’m ready to go.”10 The president told him he wanted him right where he was and would tell him if that changed. In 1944, Secretary of State Cordell Hull resigned in ill health and was replaced by his undersecretary, Edward Stettinius. He shook up his top subordinates, and at Roosevelt’s urging Rockefeller was made assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs.

  But Rockefeller’s efforts to achieve greater regional unity among the South American states were seen by some within the State Department as undercutting its prime focus on creating the United Nations Organization. When Roosevelt died in April 1945, Harry Truman assumed the presidency and named his old Senate colleague and friend James F. Byrnes secretary of state. In August, Rockefeller was dismissed, only thirty-seven years old, and still determined to make his mark in international affairs, particularly in Latin America.

  He returned to his family’s enterprises and, in concert with his brothers, achieved generational transition of control. As a private citizen, Nelson undertook a sort of independent Marshall Plan for Latin America, creating the American International Association, focused on strengthening the region’s health, education, and agricultural infrastructure as a broad philanthropic, nonprofit undertaking. He also established the International Basic Economy Corporation, which provided shipping and heavy farm equipment at low prices to fishermen and farmers, sinking millions of his own money into the enterprise and losing it.11

  In 1952, with the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower elected to the White House after a twenty-year GOP absence, Rockefeller proposed to him a sweeping government reorganization and recommended three names to head it, not listing his own. The new president bought the idea and put his brother Milton in charge with Nelson as an associate. One product of the review was the new Department of Health, Education and Welfare, created in June 1953, with Rockefeller as undersecretary. Once under the Eisenhower administration tent, Nelson got the president to name him special assistant for foreign affairs in 1954. One of his chief contributions was the “Open Skies” proposal for aerial inspections over the United States and the Soviet Union to reduce the prospect of a surprise military attack, an idea of a young Rockefeller consultant from Harvard named Henry Kissinger. Eisenhower presented it at the 1955 summit conference in Geneva to wide national and international acclaim.12

  At year’s end, with only one year left in Eisenhower’s first term, Rockefeller returned to New York and formed America at Mid-Century, a special-studies project to examine future national problems. He gathered the best minds he could find, which was a distinctly Nelson Rockefeller practice.

  It had become abundantly clear to Rockefeller by now that to be truly effective he had to hold the public office where the power resided. The state Republican chairman Judson Morhouse clearly wanted Rockefeller to seek the governorship in 1958, but it was a hard sell. Many Republicans in the state doubted whether the Democratic incumbent, W. Averell Harriman, could be defeated and whether Rockefeller as a member of one of the America’s richest families could ever be elected, especially with the GOP reputation as the party of the rich. According to Rockefeller’s account of Tom Dewey, “He slapped me on my knee and laughed out loud and said, �
��Nelson, you’re a great guy but you couldn’t get elected dogcatcher in New York.’ ”13

  Nevertheless, with Malcolm Wilson, a twenty-year state assembly veteran taking him on a personal tour of nearly all of the Republican-strong upstate counties, Rockefeller was nominated on the first ballot at the state convention.14 Overcoming a stilted speaking style with his ebullient, back-slapping manner, he campaigned across the state, greeting everyone on big-city and small-town streets with a robust “Hiya, fella!” expressing his appreciation for their reception with an effusive “Thanks a thousand!” as if to avoid any reference to his own fortune of millions. He was easily elected.15

  As governor, Rockefeller went to work, swiftly asking for and receiving a major gasoline tax and income and other tax increases to fund his ambitious spending plans. Continuing his formula of tapping into the best available minds on any subject, he formed as many as fifty task forces in his first two years in Albany. They addressed needs in such areas as fiscal policy, labor, education, job retraining, rent control, economic expansion, and hospital and schoolroom construction.16

  Rockefeller’s auspicious start encouraged press inquiries about a possible presidential candidacy in 1960. But Richard Nixon as the vice president under the hugely popular President Eisenhower had by now built a commanding lead in the polls. In the fall of 1959, when Rockefeller undertook a series of speaking engagements across the country, what he heard was not at all encouraging to his chances for the Republican nomination. On the day after Christmas he surprised the political community by making a “definite and final” announcement that he would not be a candidate for president in 1960, adding, “Quite obviously I shall not at any time entertain any thought of accepting nomination to the vice presidency.” Besides, it was clear he was having a great time as governor. He said he intended to keep working to strengthen the party and expected to support its 1960 nominee, without mentioning Nixon.