Former President Gerald Ford once warned what would happen if a woman became president
Voters will decide in November whether to elect a woman president for the first time.
Does it matter?
Hillary Clinton, the first female nominee of a major U.S. political party, lost in 2016 to Donald Trump, who is running again. And Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris was in metro Detroit for a rally Thursday as she campaigns against Trump.
A majority of adults, 64%, didn’t think it mattered much whether a woman was elected in their lifetime, results from a Pew Research Center survey last year found. Although about 18% also said it was “extremely or very important” to them whether a woman was voted into office.
Interestingly enough, however, Gerald Ford, a Republican from Michigan who became president 50 years ago Friday, offered some thoughts after he left office about women winning the White House. He not only gave a prediction about how a woman would win, but issued warning to future male candidates seeking the office.
Vice President Gerald R. Ford with Gov. Bill Milliken and Senator Bob Griffin in August 1974.
Ford was in West Branch, Iowa, where former President Herbert Hoover was from, for a 1989 conference for former presidents. He spoke to a group of school children, and one of them, a girl, asked him a question: “What advice would you give a young lady wanting to become president of the United States?”
More: 50 years after Gerald Ford became president, scholars ponder modern parallels
Ford’s response, recorded on video, has had some relevance in these past few months, and recently has been circulating on social media. Ford gently told the girl that he hoped that at some point a woman would become president.
“I can tell you how I think it will happen,” he said to her, although he added he didn’t believe such an event would happen through the “normal course of events.” He said he thought a woman might become president “sometime in the next four or eight years.”
His prediction:
“Either the Republican or Democrat political party will nominate a man for president and a woman for vice president, and the woman and man will win,” he said. “And in that term of office of the president, the president will die, and the woman will become president under the law, our Constitution.”
But Ford didn’t stop at forecasting how the first woman might become president, he added that “once that barrier is broken, from then on, men better be careful because they’ll have a hard, hard time ever even getting a nomination in the future.”
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: President Gerald Ford’s prediction on a woman winning the White House
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