This year’s dispiriting presidential race increasingly resembles 1976’s. Both elections featured two weak candidates, an “insider” and an “outsider,” and a defining event one candidate could not overcome. The real possibility also exists that, just as in 1976, this year’s winner will immediately look very weak in office.
Forty years ago, the two candidates had taken circuitous routes to their nominations. Republican Gerald Ford had gone from House minority leader to vice president (December 1973) and quickly to president (August 1974). The only unelected vice president or president, Ford was the consummate Washington insider. Democrat Jimmy Carter had been a one-term Georgia governor, but lacked Washington experience. Carter accentuated his outsider status, casting himself as a peanut farmer from the small town of Plains.
The two candidates’ contrast was accentuated by the race’s defining element: Richard Nixon and Watergate. This also produced the race’s pivotal point: Ford’s full and unconditional pardon for Nixon just one month after taking office. Ford’s action ended Watergate for America, but not for him. Ultimately, it loomed large in his narrow defeat: 48 percent to 50.1 percent in the popular vote and 240 to 297 in electoral votes. – READ MORE
