Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be ► Vice Presidents We Have Known

It seems only fitting this morning, after last night’s Vice Presidential debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Congresschild Lyin’ Ryan, to remind people that on this day in 1973 President Richard Nixon nominated Gerald Ford to replace Spiro Agnew as VP. Agnew was forced to resign ahead of pleading nolo contendere (no contest) to charges that he accepted bribes as governor of Maryland and tax evasion before becoming Nixon’s one-breath-away-from-the-presidency pick as Veep.

After Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Gerald Ford, who had been a Congressman, was elevated to the office of the presidency, despite having not been elected to either office.

“Some people say” that Ford’s massive gaffe during the Presidential Debate against Jimmy Carter doomed his reelection. There are others that say it was his own clumsiness, or perception thereof, that doomed his reelection. Then there’s a whole passel of people who blame Chevy Chase’s portrayals of Ford on Saturday Night Live as the reason Ford wasn’t reelected. I’ve never listened to those “nattering nabobs of negativity” because I’ve always believed Ford lost reelection because he pardoned Richard Nixon.

This turn of events made Gerald R. Ford the only appointed President of the United States, until George W. Bush in 2000.

About Headly Westerfield

Calling himself “A liberally progressive, sarcastically cynical, iconoclastic polymath,” Headly Westerfield has been a professional writer all his adult life.