Would Gerald Ford have been a successful President if elected in 1976?

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I don't know anyone who would've voted for him and then said "wow Carter was the better pick." I think he would've done average.

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I don't know anyone who would've voted for him and then said "wow Carter was the better pick." I think he would've done average.

I have to partially agree. All of the failures of the Carter administration, i.e. stagflation and the diplomatic/military failures in Iran, were all outside caused by factors that a Ford presidency would have failed to mitigate.

On the other hand, the Rs would have been blamed the the late 70s problems so we would have had to go through years of more Dem failures before we had the strongly conservative direction that took us out of our failiure.

Just a thought.

If things were as bad for Ford in 1980 as they were for Carter, Reagan would've won the GOP primary and been seen as different enough from Ford that he'd win the presidency as well.

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If things were as bad for Ford in 1980 as they were for Carter, Reagan would've won the GOP primary and been seen as different enough from Ford that he'd win the presidency as well.

Reagan might well have won the nomination in 1980, but he would have probably lost the race to a Democrat such as Glenn, Askew, Jackson, or Hollings.

Maybe and maybe not. It depends on just how bad things would have been. We're talking about a double if at this point though. It would've been very interesting to see a second term for Ford.