Gerry Ford

By Dave Winer on 1/2/07; 2:12:29 PM.

I watched a bit of today's funeral for President Ford. 

Like so many people who were alive then, I met Ford myself, when I was an undergrad at Tulane University in 1975. He came to give a speech, and they needed students to sit behind him while he spoke. For some reason I was chosen. He announced that the war in Vietnam was over, as far as the US was concerned.  

A story people aren't telling about Ford is a gaffe in a debate during the 1976 campaign against Jimmy Carter, who would go on to win the presidency. He said: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration." He was given a chance to retract the statement, which was not true, but he didn't.