Although Gerald R. Ford was never elected as vice president or president and served for only two-and-a-half years, didn’t get the United States involved in many foreign adventures, and inconsistently muddled through in combating the stagflation created by his two predecessors, he was a far more critical president than one who merely filled in during the second term of the disgraced Richard Nixon, who had appointed him vice president and then resigned.
Ford was so consequential because of one decision: his unconditional and blanket pardon of Nixon to prevent his likely indictment and possible conviction for crimes he committed in office.
Ford defended the pardon by saying that any indictment, trial and conviction of Nixon would have distracted the American government and public from important problems, domestic and foreign, that the country was facing. He made other statements that insisted he was trying to reunify the country after the national nightmare of Watergate.
