Saturday, November 27 · 2010

Confirmation of Gerald Ford as Vice President

The Articles of Confederation (Currently showing newest illustration.)

Preamble

Nixon wasn’t having much luck by 1973. Watergate was getting serious, the press was getting sniffy, and his jowls were stubbly as ever. Suddenly, unrelated to any of this, his Vice President (and go-to “elitist” hater) Sprio Agnew plead guilty to tax evasion, and quit. Ha ha! This meant Nixon had to dust off the 25th Amendment, and name a guy to fill the spot (well, only until he’d resign, 10 months later). Ignoring pleas to pick some governor called Reagan, he settled on plucky Minority Speaker Jerry Ford, who everyone liked. Hooray! This would be the first and last time Richard Nixon did a clever thing.

Here in Time

December 06 1973

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Source: Nixon Presidential Materials Project

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About

This is a place for me (hi, incidentally; I'm Jon) to share some bite-sized stories of American history with you. Our National Archives, here in Washington, DC, publishes a handy, educational RSS feed called "Today's Document." From those Documents, you'll see me make drawings here. Some of them have cows. There's really no better source of creative inspiration — or sense of civic place — than our own American story. So let's jump in.

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