GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Few remember this now, but President Gerald Ford might have been more justified in refusing to concede defeat when he lost a presidential election than Donald Trump was.
Ford was understandably bitter. He had fought a hard and valiant battle against Jimmy Carter and had staged an astonishing comeback. Polls at the start of the campaign showed him behind by 30 points, and ahead only in his native Michigan.
But he closed the gap. Election night was a cliffhanger. The networks finally declared Carter the winner shortly before 4 a.m.
The next morning, however, the gap had narrowed. Jimmy Carter, the former governor of Georgia, had only 272 electoral votes to President Ford’s 241, with Ohio still undecided. There was only a 7,000 vote difference in Hawaii, the state which made the difference.
Carter was winning the popular vote, but by a considerably smaller margin that Joe Biden now has over Donald Trump.
Had fewer than 4,000 votes switched in Hawaii and 6,000 in Ohio, Ford would have won.
The President might have demanded recounts or raised questions, even asked for investigations into possible voter fraud.
It never occurred to him. “It was a blow, but you move on,” he told me during an interview years later at his California home.
The next morning, after he reviewed the returns, White House photographer Dave Kennerly looked at the President and said “I’m afraid we’ve had it.” (Imagine that in the Trump White House.)
Sadly, anguish on his face, the President soon stood mute before the cameras, his voice gone from incessant campaigning, as his wife Betty read the telegram he had sent to President-elect Jimmy Carter. “It is apparent now that you have won our long and intense struggle for the Presidency. I congratulate you on your victory.”
“I want to assure you that you will have my complete and wholehearted support as you take the oath of office in January. He added a pledge that “I, and all members of my administration, will do all that we can to insure you begin your terms as smoothly and effectively as possible.” He followed through on that, as virtually all outgoing Presidents have during our lifetimes.
Eleven weeks later, after taking the oath of office, the first words President Carter said were to thank President Ford “for all he has done to heal our land,” which clearly moved the outgoing leader.
That was a model of how leaders who have been defeated are supposed to behave. Four years later, when it was his turn to taste bitter defeat, Carter not only graciously conceded to Ronald Reagan in almost the same words (“I congratulate you and pledge to you our fullest support and cooperation”) he irked Democrats by conceding too early, while polls were still open on the West Coast.
The only other President to lose a re-election bid in modern times, George H.W. Bush, was also just as gracious.
“Here’s the way I see it, here’s the way we see it and the country should see it – that the people have spoken and we respect the majesty of the Democratic system ….there is important work to be done, and America must always come first. So we will get behind this new President and wish him well.”
For at least a century, there has been an unbreakable tradition that those who lose a race for the Presidency admit defeat and warmly congratulate the winner as soon as the results are clear.
In the oddest twist on this, Al Gore called George W. Bush to concede defeat in 2000, but took it back when it was clear that network projections that he had lost Florida were premature.
Eventually, after the U.S. Supreme Court essentially awarded the election to Bush, Gore was gracious, telling the nation that he had again called his rival to concede, and added wryly, “I promised him that I wouldn’t call him back this time.”
I can’t claim to have known President Ford well, but I never dreamed of asking him in my interviews with him why he hadn’t refused to concede defeat for one simple reason: It never occurred to me that he might not have done so.
And after following his career for many years, I feel certain that not admitting defeat didn’t occur to Gerry Ford either.
The world has changed a great deal since President Ford and Jimmy Carter’s election. Nearly twice as many people voted in this year’s presidential election as did in that one. Politics has changed too. More than half of the states that voted for Republican Ford voted for Democrat Biden this year. More than half the states that voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 voted for Donald Trump in 2020.
But if anything, there is more of a need for graciousness, decency and healing this year than ever. Despite feeling rejected and humiliated, President Ford told President-elect Carter “I believe we must now put the divisions of the campaign behind us and unite the country once again in the common pursuit of peace and prosperity.”
Those are words that this time, we haven’t gotten to hear.
(A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade)
