An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford

  

An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford - Richard Norton Smith

In the past 10 years or so, I've read and posted reviews of close to 600 books. Of those books, probably 20% of them have been about U.S. Presidents or other influential world leaders, and I find myself repeating myself when writing my reflections.  What I thought I would do for this review, is to take a slight detour and explain why I tend to state what I do when I review many of these offerings.  If you don't care to read my reflections and simply want to quickly know how this book was, I'll summarize by saying this book was good overall, but could have been better.  If you want elaboration, read on; but first, some explanation about my reflections is necessary.

For most of my life I have been employed as a professional trainer. A big part of my job is classroom training, and I have spend many days in the past 25 years standing in front of a group of people and talking to them for 8 straight hours.  Let me give you some helpful advice if you're ever asked to do this: People get bored very quickly.  A big challenge I have is keeping people engaged.  I need to present my material to where people feel they haven't wasted an 8-hour day listening to a speaker drone on all day while pretending to read sloppy PowerPoint slides.   It's not an easy gig, and most people, even some that do it for a living, simply aren't very good.

Oftentimes I'm asked to coach presenters who don't do such a thing regularly.  A big mistake I see people make over an over again is that they see how much time they have on the agenda, and they think they need to completely fill their time slot. So if they have a 30-minute time slot and they only have 20 minutes of material, they think they have to "pad their material", "add more PowerPoint slides", or worse "talk slower".   They are often amazed when I tell them that none of this is necessary.  If you have a 30-minute slot and you finish in 20 minutes, your audience will LOVE you!

So what does all of this have to do with a biography about the 38th U.S. President?  Well, it seems as though the author, sadly, does just what I instruct novice speakers not to do.  It seems as though he had a "page commitment" and had trouble filling his book with relevant material, so he pads the book.  Sadly, it doesn't work to the reader's favor.

Gerald R. Ford. If there was ever an "ordinary man" to hold the office of President, Ford fits the bill almost better than we all wish.  He's the only president who was never "elected". He didn't get elected to the office, nor was he an elected President's Vice-President on a ticket.  In the midst of the turbulent Nixon administration, Ford was pushed into the role of Vice President after the current office holder Spiro Agnew was indicted for taking bribes and forced to resign.  Then, about a year later: Watergate.

It's plain to see that Ford probably never could have been elected for such a visible office as President had he ever decided to run. He was simply too ordinary.  Not that this is a bad thing. Sometimes we need a lot more substance and far less style when choosing a Commander in Chief, but voters are fickle and we're not programmed to think quite so rationally. But....well.....an "ordinary" man probably  shouldn't warrant an 800-page retrospective, which is what we sadly have with this biography. 

To be fair, the last 100 pages are indexes, footnotes, etc. but still, 700 pages is way too much page space devoted to an "ordinary" man never elected to the presidency, who essentially served 1/2 of a 4-year term. Literally half the volume is devoted to Ford's presidency, and this is the half that the reader struggles to remain conscious while reading.  This is a shame because the "other" half is quite rewarding. Even though Gerald Ford is ordinary, it's at least interesting to read about his life, and had the author shaved 150 pages off the 'presidential' portion, the overall book would have been far more rewarding.

It's ironic because when Gerald Ford was running for re-election against Governor Jimmy Carter in 1976, many voters were asked to list one thing that Ford had accomplished during his short tenure in the oval office.  Many couldn't.  That's not surprising.  I doubt they could have had they read.....or attempted to read....the accounts in this book.  It's simply unbearably boring.

So, yes, the highlights are told very well here.  Most notably is the reason why he was chosen to be Vice-President in the first place. (Those who were intelligent on Capitol Hill knew Richard Nixon's career was on borrowed time.) So the politics involved in his selection and confirmation are well told here.  The biggest thing that Ford is remembered for is his pardoning of Richard Nixon. Again, the detail in this book is well told, and although most argued that this decision doomed Ford's political career, hindsight many years in the future indicate that it the move was probably for the best.

There was also an entire chapter on Ford's participation the Warren Commission in 1964 after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and although interesting, the book seemed to wander a tad, and it times I felt as though I was reading a book about conspiracy theories and speculation about what really happened in Dallas as opposed to reading about the intended subject matter.  Still, it made for interesting reading which, sadly, wasn't always the case as I've mentioned.

Once 1976 arrives and Ford is replaced by the voters, we read very little about the remainder of Ford's life.  I guess it felt as though the author should have taken his time with Ford's pre and post presidency and not so much laborious thick detail during his short tenure.  This book was rewarding but definitely had its limitations.

I have to also state that I thought James Cannon's biography of Gerald Ford (written about 10 years prior) was much better.  In fact, when I saw that this book had been written, my first thought was "Do we really need another one? Especially so soon after the last one?"   Well, sadly, we really didn't.   I can't imagine many people wanting to read a biography of Gerald Ford, and if you're one of those people, I would go with The James Cannon one.