ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
U.S. History 1877-Present 12.10a: Peanut Farmer for President 9 Views
Share It!
Description:
Gerald Ford was the president we never knew we needed. No, really, we didn't even vote for him.
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
Full Transcript
- 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
Up Next
Ever heard of a "living document"? They eat and breathe just like the rest of us! They even walk around on their own two legs. Okay, fine—maybe t...
Related Videos
If the Puritans had gotten their way, religion would play a much larger role in lawmaking these days. Want to know more? Watch the video for all th...
What happened between the creation of the Articles of Confederation and the ratification of the current U.S. Constitution? This video analyzes the...
The Modernists thought the world had a lot of problems, and they were intent on fixing them—or at least talking about fixing them. Unfortunately,...
This video explains Federalism and the quest for a fair balance between state and national power. It covers the progression and compromises of Fede...