Ordinary Man, An

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For many Americans, President Gerald Ford was seen as a genial accident of history, known for controversially pardoning his Watergate-tarnished predecessor and presiding over the fall of Saigon. However, Richard Norton Smith reveals Ford as an underrated leader whose tough decisions and personal decency gain significance over time. Drawing from hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents, Smith recounts Ford's challenging childhood in Michigan, his early anti-establishment politics, and his lifelong relationship with Betty Bloomer, whose cultural impact he believed would surpass his own. As president, Ford navigated the nation's worst Constitutional crisis since the Civil War and addressed the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, achieving these feats with little recognition until later honors, like the JFK Library's Profile in Courage Award. Ford's administration served as a bridge between the Republican pragmatism of Eisenhower and Nixon and the more doctrinaire conservatism of Reagan. His push for economic deregulation transformed the American economy, while his support of the Helsinki Accords contributed to the Soviet Union's collapse. This definitive biography, illustrated with sixteen pages of black-and-white photos, offers a fresh perspective on a man whose warning about presidential arrogance remains relevant today.