How Do We Rethink Leadership Today? | Steve Ford

- [Pre­sen­ter] We believe and have always believed in this coun­try, that man was cre­at­ed in the image of God, that he was giv­en tal­ents and respon­si­bil­i­ty and was instruct­ed to use them to make this world a bet­ter place in which to live. And you see, this is the real­ly great thing of Amer­i­ca. It’s time to dis­cov­er what binds us togeth­er and find­ing it has the pow­er to trans­form our world. That’s what I believe. How about you?

- Well, hel­lo every­one. I’m Doug DeVos and wel­come to ​“Believe”. We’re thrilled to have you join us again. And today we have a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty for a great con­ver­sa­tion with a great friend, Steve Ford and we’re talk­ing about lead­er­ship. What a great top­ic. In our world today, you’re always look­ing for great lead­ers. You’re look­ing for peo­ple of char­ac­ter and, you know, Steve Ford had a dad who we all looked up to and Pres­i­dent Ford, who we got to know for those of us in Grand Rapids and just admire our whole com­mu­ni­ty has a love affair with Pres­i­dent Ford, Mrs. Ford and Bet­ty Ford and the whole Ford fam­i­ly. And that’s con­tin­ued on. Steve has served for many years as a chair­man of the Ger­ald R Ford Pres­i­den­tial Foun­da­tion. And what a great oppor­tu­ni­ty we have to talk. So Steve wel­come. We’re thrilled that you’ve tak­en a lit­tle time to join us today.

- Doug, thank you. It is just an hon­or to be on your pro­gram. I’m excit­ed for your pod­cast. I’ve seen a cou­ple episodes. I love what you’re doing. You’re get­ting peo­ple to kin­da rethink issues and rethink a sec­ond time. Keep up the good work.

- Yeah. All right. Well thank you, my friend. I appre­ci­ate that. And you know, we talked about the, you know, ​“Believe”, that was the title of my dad’s first book that he wrote. And the whole idea is to talk about things that stand the test of time. What are the prin­ci­ples? What’s the ideas that stand the test of time, that apply in peo­ple’s lives. And cer­tain­ly you got a front row seat of watch­ing your dad live those prin­ci­ples, but before we kind of get into that, I’d love to just make sure every­body knows you, you know, so there’s a fun sto­ry of when I think you’re in the White House still at the time when you had a path to choose in life and you made a choice that you’ve joked about. That was kind of inter­est­ing. So why don’t you tell us about that and tell us what that path has led you to where you are today?

- Well, I’m not sure this is a sto­ry about char­ac­ter though, Doug, but I was an 18 year old kid at the time when dad became pres­i­dent. And all of a sud­den I got 10 secret ser­vice agents, which trust me is not the group you’re hop­ing to hang out with when you’re 18 years old, but I’d been accept­ed to Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. I was three weeks away from going to Duke Uni­ver­si­ty in August, 1974. And I was try­ing to fig­ure out how in the world am I gonna move into the fresh­man dorm at Duke, with 10 guys with machine guns and radios. And did­n’t real­ly feel like the right way to go. So I lit­er­al­ly walked into my dad’s office, the oval office and said, ​“Dad, I’m not ready to go to col­lege right now. I wan­na take a year off. I’ll go back to school next year”. And he, like any good father, he says, ​“Okay, what’s your plan”? Right? He wants to know you got plan, right. And, and I said, ​“Dad, I’ve always had this dream to go out west and be a cow­boy”. And he’s like, ​“What”?

- I love it. And this is in the oval office, right?

- We’re stand­ing in the oval office and it’s not like he does­n’t have more impor­tant things like the ener­gy cri­sis or the war in Viet­nam, or some­thing but his 18 year old kid does­n’t wan­na go to col­lege. And so he says, ​“A cow­boy”, I said, ​“Yeah”. And that was like one notch above start­ing a rock and roll band in the garage. Right? But thank­ful­ly they let me take off and I head­ed to Mon­tana and Utah and start­ed work­ing on ranch­es and cow­boy­ing and the rodeo. And in real­i­ty, it changed my life. I went on to study agri­cul­ture. I was a ag major. I thought I was gonna run a big cat­tle ranch. And I loved it. I rodeoed for 35 years and had hors­es. And it, you know, it was fol­low­ing my heart is real­ly what it was.

- Well, fol­low­ing your heart, absolute­ly spec­tac­u­lar. And you’re still fol­low­ing your heart today, still involved with hors­es and that world?

- Not so much today.

- Okay.

- The old body’s kind of wear­ing out, too many back surg­eries and not quite rodeo­ing any­more. I quit a few years ago, but still fol­low­ing my pas­sion, just in a dif­fer­ent way. I spent 35 years work­ing as a TV and film actor and movies like. ​“Black Hawk Down”, ​“Trans­form­ers”, ​“When Har­ry met Sal­ly”, stuff like that. And dur­ing that time, prob­a­bly the biggest thing that hap­pened to me about 29 years ago, I went through alco­holism and had to get sober. It was a time in my life when I did­n’t have char­ac­ter and did­n’t have integri­ty and had to learn those prin­ci­ples. And it was life chang­ing 29 years ago, grace of God, and a good 12 step program.

- Wow. Wow. Well, and that, you know, when you talk about your expe­ri­ence, between act­ing and being a cow­boy, being out west, how did you, and the chal­lenges you faced per­son­al­ly, how did you reach those deci­sions to apply the char­ac­ter that you want­ed in your life, in a way to go through by the grace of God, through a 12 step pro­gram to make those deci­sions and to move for­ward? Help us under­stand a lit­tle bit, what did you believe about your­self that, you know, that got you to a point of apply­ing those prin­ci­ples in a way that you wanted?

- Well, I think, you know, I’m gonna relate back to a won­der­ful speak­er we had at Dad’s muse­um years and years ago, and Bil­ly Gra­ham came there and spoke.

- Sure.

- And Dad relayed a sto­ry he told in the green room before he was get­ting ready to go out and speak. And Bil­ly Gra­ham said the great­est chal­lenges for Amer­i­ca in the new mil­len­ni­um is it’s not gonna be sci­ence. It’s not gonna be tech­nol­o­gy. It’s not gonna be math or med­i­cine. He says, it’s gonna be tam­ing of the heart, tam­ing of the spir­it. And that real­ly hit me years ago because my spir­it, my heart is where my val­ues lie, where my char­ac­ter, my integri­ty lie. And 29 years ago, when I was hav­ing the time of my life as an actor and liv­ing in a self­ish way, there was no delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion in my own life. And was­n’t real­ly serv­ing oth­ers. That’s when my life came crash­ing down because of alco­holism and God put a stop to it and said, ​“You’ve got­ta re-look at your life and try to trans­form your­self”. And again, I’m a grate­ful alco­holic because if it weren’t for my alco­holism, I would­n’t have learned the prin­ci­ples I learned about char­ac­ter and integri­ty. And thank God, lis­ten, Doug, you and I have great parents.

- Right.

- We had a big safe­ty net. I had a big safe­ty net. So, you know, I just com­mit­ted to going to AA meet­ings. And I don’t know if you know this, when I was get­ting sober 29 years ago, my dad and mom, you know, we talk all the time. And my dad sent me a book that your dad wrote. And he said, this is my friend Rich. And you ough­ta read this book. It’s got a lot of great prin­ci­ples and basic ways to live your life. And I’ll be hon­est with you at that time I did­n’t know a lot about your dad. I knew who he was, but that book, your dad spoke a lot of truth. And so I was always very grate­ful for the things I read that he wrote. It was pret­ty sim­ple for­mu­la, but again, it goes back to, we had a good safe­ty net. I had seen what char­ac­ter is, I had seen what integri­ty is. I just had­n’t lived it. And the ref­er­ence I would make, Doug, is today char­ac­ter is hard work. And it is deep­er. It is like stain to wood instead of paint, paint you can chip off, but char­ac­ter gets in the wood and stays and that integri­ty does­n’t go away. So that’d be my best exam­ple of it.

- Yeah, absolute­ly. That’s a great illus­tra­tion, has to be who you are from the inside out.

- Yep.

- And Steve, you talked about your chal­lenges, but your mom talked about hers as well. And in many ways there’s so much impact that your mom has had when she talked about her chal­lenges, when she start­ed the Bet­ty Ford clin­ic and maybe help us under­stand that peri­od of time a lit­tle bit as well. And maybe how it impact­ed your journey.

- Well, I think Mom would tell you that she used to call her­self an ordi­nary lady in an extra­or­di­nary time. And, you know, I think it first start­ed actu­al­ly, when they were in the White House. And two weeks after we moved into the White House, she got diag­nosed with breast can­cer. And at that time breast can­cer, she was gonna have to have a mas­tec­to­my. Women did not talk about it. It was a clos­et dis­ease. And I remem­ber my mom and dad stand­ing on the front lawn of the White House, hold­ing hands say­ing, ​“Gosh, we’re gonna take the shame off of this dis­ease”. And so that was her first chal­lenge and women real­ly ral­lied around her for help­ing them. And the next chal­lenge was after the White House, when she too went through a prob­lem with alco­hol and pre­scrip­tion drugs, and lis­ten, here you had a first lady rais­ing her hand say­ing, ​“My name is Bet­ty, I’m an alco­holic”. That was unheard of.

- Right.

- And so I think God just put her in the right place at the right time to deal with two big issues that every­body deals with in their fam­i­lies. And she was a great inspi­ra­tion. 10 years lat­er, when I raised my hand, it was great to have her as a resource. And I did­n’t get to go to the Bet­ty, you know, she start­ed the Bet­ty Ford center.

- Yeah.

- And every­body thinks I went to the Bet­ty Ford cen­ter and it’s not like we had a fam­i­ly wing or some­thing, you know, where you got every­thing. I could­n’t go to the Bet­ty Ford cen­ter. So, but she was a great inspi­ra­tion. And the way Dad loved her through both of those was a great inspi­ra­tion to us as kids.

- Isn’t that a great, great sto­ry. Great exam­ple. And I know many of the times worked with the foun­da­tion, the sto­ry of your mom and your dad’s sup­port for her, it was just, you know, new maybe for the coun­try to see, or the world to see that lev­el of trans­paren­cy, that lev­el of open­ness and that lev­el of gen­uine affec­tion. I love the quote in front of the muse­um in Grand Rapids where I’m behold­en to no man, and only one woman. Yeah.

- Yeah, that’s right.

- You know, when he talk about tran­si­tion­ing the presidency.

- Think about this, Doug, Mom got hun­dreds of thou­sands of let­ters from men and women around the world for both the breast can­cer and the alco­holism. The let­ters that inspired me the most were the ones that Dad got that said, ​“Dear Mr. Pres­i­dent, thank you for show­ing me how to stand next to my wife if she goes through a tri­al”. So that, yeah, Dad was, he was beau­ti­ful with Mom. He loved her.

- Wow. Wow. That’s spec­tac­u­lar. Great. Thank you. Thank you for shar­ing those, you know, per­son­al sto­ries and things that are part of your life. I’d love to hear now, switch this tran­si­tion a lit­tle bit, and talk about your expe­ri­ence to be the son of a pres­i­dent espe­cial­ly when you moved into that role quite quick­ly, under some pret­ty inter­est­ing cir­cum­stances. Help us under­stand that jour­ney and what that was like for you and your fam­i­ly at that time, because for years you’d lived in DC, you’ve been part of the, you know, the com­mu­ni­ty there. And we’ll talk a lit­tle bit lat­er about the, maybe the com­mu­ni­ty that exist­ed then in Wash­ing­ton, DC, that does­n’t exist today, but walk us through your jour­ney for you and your family.

- Well, our jour­ney hap­pened lit­er­al­ly overnight. It’ll nev­er hap­pen like this again in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. Just to give your audi­ence who was a lit­tle younger, some back­ground infor­ma­tion, my dad had been a Con­gress­man for 24 years from the dis­trict in Grand Rapids, Michi­gan. He was the house minor­i­ty leader, head of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. He was get­ting ready to retire. They were gonna move back to Michi­gan and start his law prac­tice again. My moth­er was excit­ed. She did­n’t like being in pol­i­tics. And then Richard Nixon’s vice pres­i­dent, Spiro Agnew, got in trou­ble. He got caught in a bribery scan­dal and had to step down. And my dad’s name was put on a list with three or four oth­er men that Nixon might pick as their next vice pres­i­dent. And nobody thought Dad’s name was on the top of that list, Doug, it was the top of that list was peo­ple like John Con­nal­ly, for­mer demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor of Texas turned Repub­li­can, Nel­son Rock­e­feller, for­mer gov­er­nor of New York, more lib­er­al of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. And nobody real­ly thought Jer­ry Ford, Con­gress­man, Grand Rapids was gonna be the next pres­i­dent. And the way it hap­pened was Nixon called in Carl Albert and Mike Mans­field. Carl Albert was a demo­c­ra­t­ic speak­er of the house. Mike Mans­field was a demo­c­ra­t­ic leader in the Sen­ate. And Nixon asked him who he could get through Con­gress to be the next vice pres­i­dent. And basi­cal­ly Carl Albert and Mike Mans­field were so upset with Nixon and Water­gate and wor­ries like that, that they told him if he tried to nom­i­nate John Con­nal­ly it’d be a blood bath in Con­gress. He’d nev­er get him through. And Nixon asked him, ​“Who can I get through”? Because the Democ­rats con­trolled Con­gress, both the House and the Sen­ate and Carl Albert and Mike Mans­field said, ​“Jer­ry Ford is a guy that we trust, has great char­ac­ter. We know we can work with him. He’s will­ing to cross the aisle every once in a while and com­pro­mise and work on deals”. And so that’s how his name came up as vice pres­i­dent. Nixon appoint­ed him. Con­gress passed that. And 10 months lat­er, we all know our his­to­ry. Water­gate brought Richard Nixon down and Dad all of a sud­den found him­self Pres­i­dent. Now, think about this, Doug, overnight Nixon resigns. We’re stand­ing there on the front lawn of the White House as Nixon boards the heli­copter to fly away. And Dad was gonna go take the oath of office at that time, to give your view­ers a lit­tle his­to­ry. The stock mar­ket had lost 60% of its val­ue in the last six months, the price of oil had gone up three to 400% from $3 to $4, a bar­rel to $12 a bar­rel. There was an ener­gy cri­sis, a war in Viet­nam, cold war with the Rus­sians. And we had a eco­nom­ic reces­sion and unem­ploy­ment was close to 10% and infla­tion, think about this though. Infla­tion was 14%. That is what dad inher­it­ed as he walked into the east room of the White House to take the oath of office. And the last point I’ll make, he’s the first man to become pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States that did not go through a gen­er­al election.

- Right.

- He was nev­er on the tick­et with Nixon. That’ll nev­er hap­pen. Most coun­tries where you get a new pres­i­dent and there’s not an elec­tion, usu­al­ly you have troops in the street.

- We found a way to do it. So that’s how we lit­er­al­ly got cat­a­pult­ed overnight into the White House.

- Right. And so what’s that like to you? You’re 18 years old. You’re get­ting ready to go to school. You’ve already had a bit of a trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ence 10 months ear­li­er, where you’ve tak­en the step in the vice presidency.

- Yep.

- What’s that feel like.

- It was just unbe­liev­able because 10 months ear­li­er, I used to walk by the White House like any­body else, look­ing through the big fence, won­der­ing what the heck they do in there. And here I was stand­ing there now. I still did­n’t know what we were gonna do in there. It’s just a unique moment in his­to­ry and we were so blessed to be part of it. What scared me the most was what I just talked about, was what was fac­ing Dad, the war in Viet­nam, the cold war with Rus­sia, the econ­o­my was in shambles.

- Right.

- And it was not a good time to be an Amer­i­can pres­i­dent. And then with­in weeks, as you know, Dad had to make the tough­est deci­sion in his whole polit­i­cal career and that was the par­don of Richard Nixon.

- Boy, we could spend a whole top­ic on that. And that was real­ly, prob­a­bly one of the truest tests of char­ac­ter, because he put the needs of the nation first. There was a lot of anger and he could have focused it all on Nixon, but he put the needs of the nation first towards heal­ing, did­n’t he?

- It real­ly was a deci­sion. Every­body around him told him, you can’t par­don Richard Nixon. They’ll cru­ci­fy you for this. You’ll nev­er win in anoth­er elec­tion. He knew that they fig­ured the Nixon par­don would cost him any­where from 10 to 15% of the vote lat­er on. But I’ll tell you the thing I think changed Dad’s mind the most. And it’s real­ly a sto­ry of hav­ing grace and mer­cy. Nixon was guilty. These things hap­pened. But he called in Leon Jawors­ki who was a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor. And he asked him, he said, because once Nixon resigned, Doug, there were still crim­i­nal charges pend­ing against Richard Nixon. And he called in Leon Jawors­ki and he asked him, how long can Richard Nixon drag this out in the courts? And Leon Jawors­ki said, ​“Three, four, maybe five years”. And I think at that moment, Dad real­ized the coun­try just could­n’t go through anoth­er 3, 4, 5 years of Richard Nixon in the head­lines. We had to get out of Viet­nam. We had to heal the reces­sion. We had to deal with the cold war. There were big­ger things on the plate. And he decid­ed there was only one per­son that could get him Nixon out of the way. And that was him as pres­i­dent to par­don. It cost him an elec­tion lat­er against Jim­my Carter. You know, he only lost by 1% of the vote. And then the par­don prob­a­bly cost him 10 to 15. But to me, it was real­ly a sto­ry of grace and mer­cy to heal at the right time. I remem­ber he pulled me aside. We were talk­ing about the par­don one day and he said, ​“Some­times a pres­i­dent has to be like a father of a fam­i­ly”. He says, ​“One of your kids gets out­ta line. They break the rules”, and he says, ​“There’s con­se­quences and a father has to make a deci­sion of what those con­se­quences will be and how severe”. But he said, ​“A father some­times real­izes that to keep the whole fam­i­ly togeth­er, he has to have some grace and mer­cy on that child, or it’ll tear the whole fam­i­ly apart. And so he gives that child, grace and mer­cy for the bet­ter­ment of the whole fam­i­ly”. And that was, I think what he was think­ing long term, Doug, not short term, not an elec­tion. He was think­ing long term health of the coun­try. And I think his­to­ri­ans have reward­ed him with, he made the right deci­sion, here we are 40 years later.

- Yeah, yeah. You know, we won’t go into it, but that’s you know, to make a deci­sion to put your­self 10 to 15 points behind in a nation­al elec­tion for the pres­i­den­cy of the Unit­ed States and to say, ​“It’s the right thing for the coun­try so I’m gonna do it”. What an incred­i­ble test of char­ac­ter. And I know we were involved togeth­er when the film was made with that title, ​“A Test of Char­ac­ter”, you know, about your dad’s life. And you talked about the speak­er of the house at the time when Nixon was look­ing for a vice pres­i­dent, the speak­er of the house and the major­i­ty of the Sen­ate say­ing, ​“This is some­body we trust, this is some­body we can work with. This is some­body who stands on prin­ci­ple”. How did you see that beyond the par­don and beyond just being select­ed and going through that process, how did you see him car­ry that out in life, whether its dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy or after, how did you see some of the things he lived, the prin­ci­ples he lived by just to con­tin­ue to show? Maybe there’s a few sto­ries or mem­o­ries that you may have of how he just stood on his prin­ci­ple, no mat­ter what the cost.

- Well, I always say to young peo­ple when I speak to them and I speak in pris­ons and juve­nile deten­tion facil­i­ties and halfway hous­es about my sobri­ety and par­tic­u­lar­ly young men, and I tell ​‘em, you know, char­ac­ter, we live in this soci­ety that if you got a prob­lem, you just down­load an app, right? You get a new app. That app only works for about six months and then you got­ta down­load a new one. I said, ​“This idea of char­ac­ter it’s not an app you can just down­load. This is some­thing that takes years of build­ing”. And I think when you think of Dad, where it came from, I would trace it all the way back the fur­thest link is to his moth­er. A lot of peo­ple don’t know, Dad was brought up in a abu­sive fam­i­ly. His bio­log­i­cal father used to lit­er­al­ly beat his moth­er. He beat her on their hon­ey­moon night. That’s how bad it was. And when Dad was orig­i­nal­ly born, his name was not Ger­ald R. Ford. It was Leslie King and his moth­er, Doug, was such a strong woman back in 1915, 1914, when Dad was just a baby, she fled in the mid­dle of the night one night with dad, they lived in Oma­ha, Nebras­ka, and he’d just attacked her with a butch­er knife. She took Dad as a baby and fled across the riv­er to Coun­cil Bluffs, Iowa, and hid out for three or four days until her father came down on a train to pick her up and take her back to Chica­go. She got a divorce. Now, Doug, you know, back in 1914 women…

- That did­n’t happen.

- No.

- That just did­n’t hap­pen then.

- No, they would’ve said, ​“Well, what’d you do to make him beat you”? I mean, women did not have any rights. And she was a strong enough woman. She got a divorce, took Dad as a baby, moved to Grand Rapids, Michi­gan. And in Grace Church there, met a man named Ger­ald R. Ford, senior, and they mar­ried. And he took dad under his wings and his step­fa­ther made sure he had the right church pas­tor, the right foot­ball coach, the right boy scout leader, Dad’s still the only Eagle scout to ever be a pres­i­dent and invest­ed in him. And I think that’s where the roots of that char­ac­ter and integri­ty are, it’s Grand Rapids. It’s the Mid­west, it’s kind of where it starts from.

- Wow, that’s a pow­er­ful sto­ry, Steve, of your grandmother.

- Yeah.

- You know, and what she did and of her hus­band, of your dad’s step­dad, of how he invest­ed in and taught those prin­ci­ples and char­ac­ters. And we’re talk­ing about it now over a hun­dred years later.

- Well, and you think about it, it proved to me that it’s that idea of love, not blood that rais­es kids, because his step­fa­ther was not a blood rel­a­tive. He’s a man that made a deci­sion to invest in my dad’s life and that made it, that changed my dad’s life.

- Right, right. Wow. Pow­er­ful sto­ry. Thank you for shar­ing that. And you know, so many ways and again, anoth­er quote I remem­ber at the muse­um from Tip O’Neill, you know, said, ​“God loves Amer­i­ca” or again, I may not get it right. And in the dark­est times he gave us Abra­ham Lin­coln and the civ­il war and he gave us Ger­ald Ford. So the char­ac­ter that he just exud­ed was seen, so it was seen on the foot­ball field, it was seen at uni­ver­si­ty, it was seen in his ear­ly days of Con­gress. Why do you think peo­ple saw it? What was it, you know, that they just saw in him, why would the speak­er of the house and the major­i­ty leader from the oth­er par­ty say, ​“He’s the one”. What did they see?

- Well, I think that gen­er­a­tion, that whole gen­er­a­tion was like that. You know, that was the great­est gen­er­a­tion. I remem­ber read­ing in Dad’s book of the day Pearl Har­bor got hit and he was dri­ving home from his law office in Grand Rapids and turned on the radio in his car and Pearl Har­bor’s been bombed. And the first thing he did was dri­ve to his moth­er’s house and say, ​“I’m gonna join up in the Navy Mon­day morn­ing”. And he did.

- Right.

- It was a gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who knew how to serve. And so his way of work­ing with peo­ple, which I think made him a good pres­i­dent in the end was as the house minor­i­ty leader, he was about join­ing peo­ple togeth­er. If you’re the major­i­ty leader or minor­i­ty leader, you’ve got­ta get coali­tions to get bills passed. And the Democ­rats, his col­leagues trust­ed him. They saw that he was will­ing to work across the aisle. And Doug, I’ll tell you the one sto­ry I think speaks at all, the day after he par­doned Richard Nixon, I mean, the coun­try was on fire with anger about that. Every­body want­ed a pound of flesh from Richard Nixon and Dad called up the lead­ers of Con­gress, both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans, and said, ​“I have cleared my sched­ule this week. I will come and tes­ti­fy in front of any pan­el you have about any ques­tions you have about the Nixon par­don”. And think about this, Doug. He was the first pres­i­dent since Abra­ham Lin­coln to vol­un­tar­i­ly ask to go in front of Con­gress and be grilled on any issue. Usu­al­ly you get subpoenaed.

- Right. There’s a process here. You don’t nor­mal­ly vol­un­teer for some­thing like that.

- You don’t just show up in front of a house judi­cia­ry com­mit­tee after the Water­gate. And he told him, he says, ​“I’ve cleared today”. He says, ​“If you need five days, I’ll clear the rest of my week to sit there and answer any ques­tion”. And I believe he under­stood what Amer­i­ca need­ed at that time was trans­paren­cy that, you know, I’m here, I’ll answer ques­tions. And that one sto­ry right there, I think speaks for who he was.

- I remem­ber see­ing some of that video and I remem­ber, I saw it not that long ago. And I was just shocked. How can a sit­ting pres­i­dent put them­selves in that sit­u­a­tion? And again, it was ser­vice above self, whether it’s, as an Eagle scout and how he car­ried those prin­ci­ples through. Steve, talk a lit­tle bit about, and again, in our world today, we have chal­lenges. You talked about the chal­lenges your dad faced when he moved into the White House. We still have chal­lenges today. In fact, kind of go through that list of stock mar­ket, oil, ener­gy, war, you know.

- Yeah.

- Like yes, in our world. But there seems to be a sense in a lot of ways, not just in Wash­ing­ton DC, but this lead­er­ship gap where lead­ers are kind of more out for them­selves, you know, talk about that esprit de corps, those char­ac­ter­is­tics that you saw him dis­play in Con­gress. And maybe just give a per­spec­tive, do you see that today? Or why don’t we see that today? Things seem so divi­sive, con­gres­sion­al approval rat­ings are as low as they’ve ever been and in many ways, my opin­ion, I’m curi­ous your per­spec­tive, you know, my opin­ion, they’ve kind of in many ways, abdi­cat­ed their role to make law or take a lead­er­ship posi­tion. They’ve kind of del­e­gat­ed it if you will, to the exec­u­tive branch and all the agen­cies that make admin­is­tra­tive law and do things or they put so much into the Supreme court because the courts will solve it rather than get­ting togeth­er and mak­ing laws about some of these issues we’re fac­ing, espe­cial­ly when there’s some issues that there tends to be broad sup­port in the pub­lic. What’s your per­spec­tive when you see that, how do you feel about that? Or what are the things that come to your mind?

- Well, it’s inter­est­ing if you go back and I think you’ll agree on this, the pen­du­lum kind of swings. When Water­gate hap­pened, you saw Con­gress take a lot of exec­u­tive pow­er away and it swung back to Con­gress, to the leg­isla­tive branch. And then it tends to swing both ways and move around. You know, Dad, he loved being a pub­lic ser­vant and he was a mod­er­ate Repub­li­can. He was a con­ser­v­a­tive, fis­cal conservative.

- Right.

- He want­ed bal­anced bud­gets, all those things, he was more lib­er­al or more mod­er­ate on social issues. I’m afraid to be hon­est with you, Doug, I’m afraid he’d have a tough time find­ing a place in his own par­ty today. And I think John F. Kennedy might have a tough time find­ing a place in his own par­ty today.

- Right.

- It changed so much. He again, used to trav­el around the coun­try, cam­paign­ing, try­ing to get more Repub­li­cans elect­ed, and he’d have to go to Arkansas or New York or Ore­gon or what­ev­er. And he said the Repub­li­can par­ty has to be a big enough par­ty that you can wel­come the pol­i­tics of a gov­er­nor from Arkansas, and also have a may­or in New York city, that’s a Repub­li­can, nei­ther one of ​‘em could get elect­ed in the oppo­site state.

- Right, right.

- Still our tent has to be big enough to fit ​‘em all under there. So I think that was his view and vision. And his best friend was Tip O’Neill, the demo­c­ra­t­ic speak­er at the house. Right. Tip O’Neill and there’s a fun­ny sto­ry. They would bat­tle all day on the floor of Con­gress, ham­mer­ing out some bill. And then that night Tip O’Neill would be at our house for din­ner. I mean, that’s just the way it went. And Dad, when he was pres­i­dent was play­ing golf with Tip O’Neill and Tip put his arm around my dad and he said, he goes, ​“Jer­ry, God dang it this a great coun­try”. He says, ​“You and I can be best of friends, dif­fer­ent par­ties, be out here play­ing golf”. And he says, ​“13 months from now, when the cam­paign starts back up, I’m gonna be trav­el­ing around the coun­try, try­ing to kick your butt”. There was a respect and yes, pol­i­tics is a tough game, but lis­ten, I think you have the same view I do. I’ve got a lot of friends that still live in DC and they tell me Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats don’t meet, they don’t sit down to din­ner. They don’t break bread. They don’t find out, you know, where’s your daugh­ter going to col­lege? What’s your dog’s name? It’s rela­tion­al. And I think that’s Dad and your father the same way. It was all rela­tion­al. It was­n’t just about pol­i­tics. And today it’s just got­ten so tox­ic. I wan­na remind you of a story.

- Okay.

- About your dad and my dad and your dad told me this sto­ry. He said, when my dad was a young Con­gress­man, prob­a­bly 1948, brand new Con­gress­man. He says, your dad said they were announc­ing a new prod­uct they’d devel­oped, and they were doing it out of their back of their house, a garage or some­thing. He said, ​“I thought I would call our young new Con­gress­man, Jer­ry Ford and see if he’d come over and cut a rib­bon at our house”. And so he called Dad and my dad, you know, when you’re a young Con­gress­man, you’ll show up for anything.

- You’ll do any­thing. Absolutely.

- So your dad told me, he says, dad came over and they stood in front of the garage or the back­yard and cut some rib­bon for a new prod­uct that Amway or who­ev­er it was at that time had. And I thought, ​“My gosh, did­n’t both of these guys do pret­ty good”?

- What a great sto­ry, what a great mem­o­ry. And I remem­ber, you know, we had anoth­er event lat­er on, your dad was still in Con­gress. It was I think 73. So just before things changed, he cut anoth­er rib­bon when we opened our head­quar­ters build­ing. And that was the first time I met him. I was, you know, a kid in school. I remem­ber I got out­ta school to go to the event. So I was pret­ty excit­ed about that.

- Exact­ly.

- Then lemme ask you this, Doug, let me ask you this. And I knew this show was gonna be on char­ac­ter. And I laid in bed last night think­ing about it. And my thought is that char­ac­ter is kin­da of like tax­es. You don’t like pay­ing it. It’s hard to pay but the way tax­es are, you know, if you stop pay­ing tax­es, all of a sud­den, there’s no mon­ey for the fire­fight­ers to come and put your fire out at your house or the roads don’t get paved. And the pot­holes get big and police don’t show up. And if you don’t pay tax­es for a while, life starts get­ting kind of bumpy and rough and there’s not a lot of safe­ty net. And char­ac­ter is the same way. If you don’t pay the tax of char­ac­ter, of try­ing to make the right choic­es and val­ues and integri­ty, that’s when I found I became an alco­holic. I did not make the right choic­es to have char­ac­ter in my life and my life got pret­ty bumpy and final­ly crashed. And it’s a tough tax to pay, but it feels good in the end. If that makes sense.

- It’s a good, invest­ing in char­ac­ter, think­ing about it, pay­ing atten­tion to it, to estab­lish, you know, what you believe. That’s what we talk about on this pro­gram. What do you believe and what do you believe about your­self and what do you believe about your poten­tial and what do you believe about the oppor­tu­ni­ties that are ahead of you in your life and your deter­mi­na­tion to work through it? And let me ask you this, or ask you to talk about this, the for­give­ness of hav­ing a tough time, but mak­ing a dif­fer­ent deci­sion and mov­ing to a new place. A as you said, you made a deci­sion 29 years ago, that you weren’t liv­ing the way you want­ed to. And you made a deci­sion. At your dad’s funer­al, Pres­i­dent Carter was there and spoke won­der­ful­ly about your dad’s faith. And it was a incred­i­bly pow­er­ful, I think they had an agree­ment togeth­er that who­ev­er passed first, the oth­er would speak at the funer­al and Pres­i­dent Carter, again, here’s a rela­tion­ship with the guy who beat him in the nation­al elec­tion to be pres­i­dent. And yet they had a remark­able rela­tion­ship and the gen­uine affec­tion that Pres­i­dent Carter had for your dad, just showed through. And he talked about his faith beau­ti­ful­ly. Is there any­thing you want to share on that per­spec­tive that you saw with your dad?

- You know, Dad used to tell the sto­ry at the din­ner table, when the pres­i­dent of Egypt, Anwar Sudat died, they were gonna send a del­e­ga­tion for the funer­al. And they sent a del­e­ga­tion, was gonna be for­mer Pres­i­dent Nixon, Pres­i­dent Carter, and Dad. They were all for­mer pres­i­dents and Dad used to joke. They were gonna put ​‘em all on Air Force One and send them to Egypt for Sadat’s funer­al. And Dad said, you know, ​“More than one ex-pres­i­dent on Air Force One, is one too many”. And he said he was dread­ing the flight because how is this gonna work Nixon, and Carter and every­body. And he said, after the funer­al, Nixon went on to Europe some­where to make some speech­es. And he and Jim­my Carter flew home togeth­er. And he said it was the most won­der­ful flight he ever had. He got to sit down with Jim­my and they talked about a lot of things, besides pol­i­tics. They talked about fam­i­ly, they talked about their faith and they found that they were ground­ed in many of the same beliefs and this friend­ship devel­oped. And it was a life­long friend­ship. Then I think it’s a great exam­ple of, you know, how to do pol­i­tics. And it’s rela­tion­al again. It’s exact­ly what we talked about ear­li­er, but yes, they had a deal, who­ev­er passed away first, the oth­er guy had to do the eulogy.

- Yeah. Yeah. Well, Pres­i­dent Carter spoke just beau­ti­ful­ly and the affec­tion that they had. I love the sto­ry. I can imag­ine, where do you go on an air­plane for all that time, with too many, with all those ex pres­i­dents there, what do you say, ​“Hey, so how’s things going”?

- It was like a 12 hour flight and, you know, there’s one pres­i­den­tial cab­in and who gets to use that and, you know, yeah. He said it was kin­da awkward.

- I’m just think­ing through the logis­tics of that. Even when you’re a for­mer pres­i­dent, you’re going, ​“Oh man, this is gonna be ugly”. There’s got­ta be a dif­fer­ent flight I can take or do some­thing like that. Wow. Oh my, you know, Steve, you talked a lit­tle bit about your dad in a ser­vice in World War II and you talked about Pearl Har­bor and then he went on to serve in World War II. And we had some time recent­ly togeth­er at the launch­ing of the Ger­ald R. Ford, the newest air­craft car­ri­er in the fleet. How do you, you know, what sense of pride did that give you to see your dad’s name asso­ci­at­ed with the men and women in the US Navy who were so com­mit­ted to defend­ing our coun­try and real­ly those in the armed forces who he was a part of and he admired. How do you see that as part of your dad’s legacy?

- Well, if we talked ear­li­er, he got hand­ed one of the tough­est jobs, which was bring­ing the troops home from Viet­nam after we had lost 50,000 men in Viet­nam over years and years. When he served in the Navy, he served on a air­craft car­ri­er. He was a Lieu­tenant Com­man­der. He was a nav­i­ga­tor. He got caught, their fleet got caught in the still the worst typhoon or mar­itime dis­as­ter in the Unit­ed States Navy. They got caught in a typhoon going through the Pacif­ic and the ships were pitch­ing, rolling, they’re right in the mid­dle of this typhoon. And Dad got called to gen­er­al quar­ters, up to the bridge. And as he was climb­ing the lad­der, a rogue wave hit the ship and it pitched the deck of the air­craft car­ri­er and he went shoot­ing across the deck. He thought he was gonna just end up in the sea and around an air­craft car­ri­er there’s a lit­tle two inch lip around the whole edge to keep tools from going off. And his heels hit that lit­tle lip, pre­vent­ed him from going in the Pacif­ic. He regained his strength and walked across the deck, climbed up into the bridge. And what had hap­pened dur­ing the typhoon was because it was war time, all the planes were ful­ly fueled and down on the flight deck and they had bro­ken loose, and there was a fire down below. And so he had to go lead a team to fire fight. They lost two boil­ers. The ship was idle in the mid­dle of this typhoon. They final­ly got the fire put out and they saved the ship. But when Dawn came, they looked out and they had lost two destroy­ers in the mid­dle of the night, had rolled over and they lost a thou­sand men to the sea. And it’s still the largest mar­itime dis­as­ter ever. Now, Dad’s heart was in an air­craft car­ri­er. He went through all that. And so for him to see his name on an air­craft car­ri­er, and it’s a new gen­er­a­tion, it’s a Ger­ald R. Ford class. That was a pret­ty proud moment, that made him very, very happy.

- And I think that was one of the pieces of news that hap­pened short­ly before he passed. Is that correct?

- Yep.

- He was aware of that?

- Dad, last month of his life, when it got passed by Con­gress that his name would be on that air­craft car­ri­er, Don Rums­feld, Sec­re­tary Rums­feld called up, I was down with Mom and Dad in Palm Springs. And he said, ​“I’d love to come over and see the pres­i­dent and let him know we’re nam­ing an air­craft car­ri­er after him”. So we got Dad all set up and Don Rums­feld came over on, it was East­er week­end. Oh, excuse me, Thanks­giv­ing week­end and came through the front door and I’ll nev­er for­get my dad yelling. ​“Rum­my”. He was a long time friend and sec­re­tary Rums­feld let him know there’d be an air­craft. It brought a lot, that was about a month before Dad passed away. So that was a great moment for Dad.

- That’s won­der­ful. And your dad’s ser­vice in that respect and the sac­ri­fices so many who served in defense of our coun­try and defense of our constitution.

- Yeah.

- And the respect and admi­ra­tion that he had for, you know, liv­ing that char­ac­ter in so many ways. Maybe one more sto­ry. And I think we, again, through the foun­da­tion made a film about your dad’s foot­ball career.

- Yeah. And inte­gra­tion, I think it was ​“Black and Blue”, if I recall, the movie about your dad’s refusal to play because a black play­er was not allowed to play in a game, if I recall. Can you share with us again, anoth­er sto­ry of him stand­ing up on his char­ac­ter and principle?

- Yeah, I will. And even before I do that, I’ll give you one of the oth­er tough­est deci­sions Dad made con­cern­ing the mil­i­tary, was after the Viet­nam war, after he’d got­ten all the troops home, he gave a con­di­tion­al amnesty to all the young men that fled to Cana­da and decid­ed not to serve. And he caught a lot of grief from that, from the mil­i­tary. And he gave a speech in front of the vet­er­ans of for­eign wars and said, ​“If I can’t give this speech here, then I should­n’t give it at all”. He says, ​“These young men need to know that it’s time to heal from Viet­nam. And we need to bring these young men home. They’re gonna have to do some pub­lic ser­vice to earn their cit­i­zen­ship back, but we need to wel­come ​‘em home and heal this wound to Viet­nam”. So that’s one thing where he stood on this prin­ci­ple. The Willis Ward sto­ry, Dad was play­ing at Michi­gan. He played on two nation­al cham­pi­onship teams. It was his senior year, 1934, Michi­gan was play­ing Geor­gia Tech. And at that time, Geor­gia Tech was an all white school. And Michi­gan had one black play­er on its team, a star, guy named Willis Ward. And he and Dad were best of friends. They roomed togeth­er. And Geor­gia Tech found out that Willis Ward was on the team. And they said they would­n’t take the field if Willis Ward suit­ed up for the game in Ann Arbor. Now, this was kind of a tra­di­tion when the South­ern schools came North, this is in the 1930s, the North­ern schools, a lot of time would bench, you know, their black play­ers so the South­ern schools would come play ​‘em, it’s the old Jim Crow, laws, and dad and sev­er­al oth­er team mem­bers were so upset at that, that they threat­ened to quit the team and not play the game against Geor­gia Tech. Now, Willis, after talk­ing with the team, the coach and every­thing decid­ed not to play and sat the game out. And I think he encour­aged every­body to go play and Dad played the game. And now that year Michi­gan’s record was one in eight. They won one game and lost eight. But the only team, the only team they beat was Geor­gia Tech. I think it was nine to two and they kicked their butt pret­ty good. But dad and Willis Ward were long time friends and Willis went on to be a lawyer, a judge, I think. And he had a very suc­cess­ful career, ran for Con­gress, things like that. But yeah, that was a long time ago, 1930s.

- Yeah. But just speaks again to your father’s char­ac­ter and rela­tion­ships, friend­ships, and how you do things togeth­er, how you bring peo­ple together.

- Yeah. And Steve, you did that a lot as well in your role lead­ing the foun­da­tion, I had the hon­or of serv­ing as a trustee and watch your lead­er­ship as you brought peo­ple togeth­er around the foun­da­tion, tak­ing things for­ward, con­tin­u­ing to build on your dad’s lega­cy and expand­ing it to reach future gen­er­a­tions. So a con­ver­sa­tion like this can impact peo­ple’s lives going for­ward. So a sto­ry of your dad and your life and how we all, you know, imper­fect­ly, but we all try to apply these prin­ci­ples and these ideas in our life. And so you two have just done a won­der­ful job of liv­ing out these val­ues that I’ve seen and just grate­ful. So maybe in the time that as we kind of come to an end here, just your reflec­tions on maybe the work of the foun­da­tion and how we con­tin­ue to talk about these things and how we con­tin­ue to share. You talked about how you speak reg­u­lar­ly with groups and talk about these sorts of top­ics. Maybe just we can kind of wrap on that.

- Well, I’ll tell you the great­est joy for me is speak­ing to young peo­ple and par­tic­u­lar­ly young men. And I know I got con­fused as a young man, and I think Doug, we live in a soci­ety today that there’s been a con­fus­ing mes­sage that has been sent, whether it’s from movies, TV, pop, cul­ture, what­ev­er, and par­tic­u­lar­ly to young men and kids and young adult men. And when I sit down and talk with ​‘em, I tell ​‘em, I got con­fused. And I con­fused the idea of male­ness with being a man. And I told them, I said, Male­ness is just some­thing you inher­it, it’s a trait. You haven’t done any­thing to get it. Male­ness is all those qual­i­ties of, you know, strength and dom­i­na­tion and ter­ri­to­r­i­al and con­quer­ing and aggres­sion, but being a man is the idea of tak­ing those traits, that we did­n’t do any­thing to earn, and using them for the good of oth­ers. Those that we’re try­ing to help, because I get scared when just those traits of male­ness oper­ate with­out char­ac­ter, with­out integri­ty and are untem­pered, that they vis­it dam­age on oth­er peo­ple. And young men in this coun­try have lost that idea of the dif­fer­ence between just male­ness ver­sus being a man and being a man is some­thing you got­ta earn. I had to go earn it. I did not have it. And thank God I had some great role mod­els and I got sober and trans­formed my life. And I’ll leave you with one thought here. I was in Africa work­ing for a group that was over there tak­ing care of kids. Their par­ents had died of aids. We were work­ing with church­es over there, and I’m stand­ing in the African desert and this won­der­ful man, Tan­zan­ian guy says to me, he says, ​“Matu­ri­ty is not how many books you’ve read, how many mes­sages you can repeat. It’s only how much it has actu­al­ly trans­formed you”. And it just brought it home. Like if you haven’t changed or trans­formed, does­n’t mat­ter all those books you read, it’s about chang­ing. And I think you and I both agree. We’d love to have a big impact on young peo­ple and the DeVos Learn­ing Cen­ter at the muse­um does that, they’re work­ing well with kids, they teach ​‘em about civics and char­ac­ter and integri­ty. And hope­ful­ly it works out.

- Well it’s worked out because your lead­er­ship, your lead­er­ship of your fam­i­ly, and cer­tain­ly the lega­cy of your dad and your mom. And so Steve Ford, I’m grate­ful for tak­ing us through some lessons of char­ac­ter. And when we have wor­ries about where the lead­ers have gone, maybe they’ve gone before us, but we can still learn from them and we can still apply those things in our lives like you have and like we all try because those as you men­tioned, those val­ues, you know, that ideas of char­ac­ter, and integri­ty need to live in all of us, that needs to be our belief sys­tem. So we can have a pos­i­tive impact in the world.

- Well, thank you.

- Yeah, go ahead.

- I was gonna say, thank you for doing this show because again, you’re get­ting peo­ple a chance to hear things, rethink their lives and keep up the good work.

- We’ll keep at it. Thank you, my friend. So for all of you, who’ve joined us. Thank you for being with us. Thanks to Steve Ford, for his engage­ment, his exam­ple, and for shar­ing sto­ries that he’s learned over the course of his life as well. So we’ll look for­ward to see­ing you all next time on the next episode of ​“Believe”. Thanks everybody.