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U.S. History 1877-Present 12.10a: Peanut Farmer for President 9 Views


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Description:

Gerald Ford was the president we never knew we needed. No, really, we didn't even vote for him.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

The cards were stacked against President Gerald Ford [Cards dealt to Gerald Ford]

00:06

from the start his first strike was that literally no one and we mean no one

00:11

voted for the guy seriously not even his own mother wait we thought this was a

00:14

democracy our presidents supposed to be elected well yes but also no.. it all [Gerald Ford's mother shrugging]

00:20

started when Nixon's first vice president Spiro Agnew resigned under

00:23

criminal charges related to the mountains of bribes he took after Spiro [Spiro spiralling]

00:28

spiraled into shame and disgrace Nixon appointed Gerald Ford the house Minority

00:32

Leader as vice president yep the president can just appoint somebody if the

00:36

VP dips out as long as the house says its cool well after Nixon's career got nixed [Nixon swooped off his chair]

00:41

by the Watergate scandal Ford found himself sitting in the Oval Office

00:43

without ever having run a presidential race and maybe thought he was lucky but [Gerald Ford standing beside a rainbow]

00:48

that probably only lasted for like ten seconds nobody was thrilled with the

00:53

idea of an unelected president and many were downright irate when Ford gave Nixon [Nixon running with arms in the air]

00:58

a full pardon for any crimes he might have committed well the nation was still

01:03

fuming at Nixon and by forgiving his crimes court gave up any chance of being [Nixon riding a hummer and tomatoes thrown at the car]

01:07

covered in the steep of government corruption and that stuff is really hard

01:10

to get out of your clothes another thing that doomed Ford was his die hard stance

01:14

against government's intervention being light on the tiller isn't necessarily a [Gerald Ford at a desk on the phone]

01:18

bad thing for a president but it didn't work out well for Ford. By refusing to

01:22

steer the boat he let it slam straight into the rock which if you've never [Ford driving a boat into a rock]

01:26

steered a boat is kind of the opposite thing what you're supposed to do in his

01:30

short 15 months in office he vetoed more bills than any other president before [Ford flapping pieces of paper around the office]

01:34

him. This veto frenzy made it pretty hard to get things done in Congress it

01:39

couldn't even order a pizza without forward slap in a box with a veto stamp [Ford open a pizza box]

01:42

Congress push forward to increase federal spending and reduce taxes to

01:45

give the economy a boost for its refusal went to the deepest recession America

01:49

has seen since the great depression unemployment was [Gerald Ford sinking in a boat]

01:52

at a record high in 1975 and the federal deficit wasn't far behind and bad

01:56

economies do for presidential approval ratings what bad breath does for blind

02:01

dates i.e nothing good in the foreign arena Ford tried to follow Nixon's example and

02:06

keep peace with China the Soviets and the Middle East. Henry Kissinger stayed on as [Ford surrounded by USSR, China and Middle East flags]

02:11

secretary of state and tried to secure stability in the Middle East. His

02:13

traveling between Egypt and Israel forged an uneasy peace between the two

02:17

nations that laid competing claims for the Sinai Peninsula territory while this

02:22

should have been a check in Fords row column the nation instead focused on the [People booing Gerald Ford]

02:25

Foreign Affairs failures the 1975 South Vietnam officially fell to the

02:30

communists making our decade of time money and most importantly human lives

02:34

being completely pointless in Cambodia followed soon after a vicious bloodbath [Cambodian taken hostage by soldiers]

02:39

in the nation OPEC the Middle Eastern oil cartel was threatening a worldwide

02:44

boycott of the oil we depended on for survival in America's international

02:48

image was deteriorating the more we medaled in the affairs of other nations [Giant hand trying to pick up a building]

02:52

and perhaps the worst thing of all S&L's pension for making Ford look like

02:57

complete goon it's kind of hard to get reelected president with chevy chase

03:01

making everybody think you constantly trip on stuff and to be fair though it's [Gerald Ford rocking in a chair and falls off]

03:06

also hard when we actually do tend to trip on stuff

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