About this Book

With unrestricted access to Gerald Ford's papers, James Cannon chronicles Ford's rise and Nixon's ruin with unprecedented depth, objectivity, and clarity. Here is the last word on Ford's ascent to the White House and on the Watergate scandal. As he fell from power, Richard Nixon caused the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War, and an obscure, stolid Middle American named Gerald Ford emerged to struggle with a foundering Federal government and a nation losing faith in that government. Time and Chance reveals how Nixon, by his own hand, ended his public career, and how and why powerful men in Congress replaced him with Ford, a man they could trust. Time and Chance also uncovers the early life of Ford, the thirty-eighth President. Born to wealth, rejected by his brutal father, reduced to poverty but saved by a courageous mother, the young Ford created a new identity and strove to reach his dreams. Through determination and good luck, he succeeded. Coming of age, he loved a captivating woman, lost her to his own ambition, loved another captivating woman, and almost lost her as well. To begin his political career, Ford confronted a corrupt political boss, beat the odds, and won. Quietly, doggedly, he worked his way up in the House of Representatives, winning loyal friends among Washington's most powerful, including Richard Nixon. He failed in his plot to become House Speaker, but won a greater prize - which he had never sought - the Presidency. Once he was in the White House, Ford prevented the trial of Nixon and saved him from prison. Was there a deal between Nixon and Ford? Why did Ford pardon Nixon? Time and Chance offers the first categorical answers to these questions. Italso recounts two quintessentially American sagas, opposite yet intertwined, with trenchant insight and unstinting grace.