Ford Remembered As a Realist

This White House file photograph, provided courtesy of the Gerald R. Ford Library, shows President Gerald Ford, center, as he confers with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, left and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Oct. 8, 1974. Ford, who declared "Our long national nightmare is over" as he replaced Richard Nixon but may have doomed his own chances of election by pardoning his disgraced predecessor, died Tuesday Dec. 26, 2006. He was 93. Ford's golden retriever, Liberty is in the foreground. (AP Photo/White House,Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Library, David Hume Kennerly) (David Hume Kennerly - AP)

Regrettably, they violated that pledge, Ford said, and "equally unfortunately," Congress refused to maintain South Vietnam's military strength.

"The net result was, it was inevitable under those circumstances that Saigon would fall." he said.

There, too, Ford discerned the "very adverse impact" Watergate had on getting Congress to cooperate.

Much as he had tried to put Nixon and Watergate behind, he also sought to encourage Americans to look beyond the disaster in Vietnam.

"America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam," Ford said. "But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished."

Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said, "it was time to look forward to an agenda for the future, to bind up the nation's wounds."

After Ford's death, looking back on those troubled times, Sen Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said it was hard to remember how divided America was over Watergate, Vietnam and Ford's pardoning of Nixon.

"He made unpopular but important decisions to keep this country together," Durbin said. "That will be his legacy."