The N.Y. Times and the WaPo report that former first lady Betty Ford has said that former President Gerald Ford has passed away. He was 93. Ford died at 6:45 p.m., on Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, his office said in a statement.

Ford took office from an embattled Richard M. Nixon, he was the only unelected president in America’s history. Ford “picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th” president.

“My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age,” Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband’s office in Rancho Mirage. “His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.”

Gerald Ford occupied the White House for “896 days — starting from a hastily arranged ceremony on Aug. 9, 1974, and ending after his defeat by Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election.”

But they were pivotal days of national introspection, involving America’s first definitive failure in a war and the first resignation of a president.

After a decade of division over Vietnam and two years of trauma over the Watergate scandals, Jerry Ford, as he called himself, radiated a soothing familiarity. He might have been the nice guy down the street suddenly put in charge of the nation, and if he seemed a bit predictable, he was also safe, reliable and reassuring. He placed no intolerable intellectual or psychological burdens on a weary land, and he lived out a modest philosophy. “The harder you work, the luckier you are,” he said once in summarizing his career. “I worked like hell.”

Gerald Rudolph Ford was born on July 14, 1913, in Omaha to Leslie Lynch King and Dorothy Ayer King. He rose to House minority leader in 1963 and served in the House until 1973, when Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned, and President Nixon appointed Mr. Ford to succeed Mr. Agnew.

When Mr. Ford took the oath of president in 1974, the economy was in disarray, an energy shortage was worsening, allies were wondering how steadfast the United States might be as a partner and Mr. Nixon, having resigned rather than face impeachment for taking part in the Watergate cover-up, was flying to seclusion in San Clemente, Calif.

There was a collective sense of relief as Mr. Ford, in the most memorable line of his most noteworthy speech, declared that day, “Our long national nightmare is over.”

Two years later, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination and began a campaign that would end in his first failure in an election, Mr. Ford scarcely seemed to be indulging in hyperbole as he recalled what it had been like to take office as Mr. Nixon’s heir.

“It was an hour in our history that troubled our minds and tore at our hearts,” he said. “Anger and hatred had risen to dangerous levels, dividing friends and families. The polarization of our political order had aroused unworthy passions of reprisal and revenge. Our governmental system was closer to stalemate than at any time since Abraham Lincoln took that same oath of office.”

Ford was the “accidental president,” he was hand picked by Nixon to be his successor. He was “as open and straight-forward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.” There is some irony in that, but the irony served Nixon well, when Ford pardoned him and that single act was “widely believed,” to have cost Ford the election “to a term of his own in 1976.” That single act also won him “praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.”

I never cared much for politics in the days of Gerald Ford, I was simply relieved that Nixon was through, as so many were. Ford served a purpose… he was — “Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.”

Ford was “acutely aware,” as he said “in his inaugural address, that he had not been elected to the position he held, and he asked Americans “to confirm me as your president with your prayers.” He said he had neither sought the presidency nor made any “secret promises” to attain it.”

“In all my public and private acts as your president, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy at hand,” he said.

“. . . Our Constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy.

“As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the Golden Rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and hate.”

President Bill Clinton conferred the Medal of Freedom on Ford in 1999 and he also received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

AP reports that “Ford was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.”

Clifford, an adviser to presidents since Harry Truman, summed up his legacy: “About his brief presidency there is little that can be said. In almost every way, it was a caretaker government trying to bind up the wounds of Watergate and get through the most traumatic act of the Indochina drama.

“Ford … was a likable person who deserves credit for accomplishing the one goal that was most important, to reunite the nation after the trauma of Watergate and give us a breathing spell before we picked a new president.”

UPDATE: Linked by USA Today’s Blog post: Remembering President Ford: Blogosphere reacts

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