Nearly 35 years ago, former president Gerald Ford stood in a room full of schoolchildren in West Branch, Iowa, and faced an unexpected question.
“Mr. Ford, what advice would you give a young lady wanting to become president of the United States of America?” a bespectacled schoolgirl in a pink sweater and ponytail asked Ford in 1989, well after his own presidency ended.
He chuckled.
“I can tell you how I think it will happen — because it won’t happen in the normal course of events,” said Ford, who succeeded Richard M. Nixon when he resigned in 1974 in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal.
Ford went on to detail a scenario where a female vice president would reach the Oval Office — if the male president died.
“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. So we’ll end up with a president, a male, and a vice president, a female,” Ford said.
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“And in that term of office of the president, the president will die, and the woman will become president under the law, our Constitution,” he added.
The video is resurfacing on social media, with many noting the parallels between Ford’s prediction and 2024 — as Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, who is rallying a groundswell of support from her party and is likely to be the Democratic nominee.
At the same time, there are key differences. A woman has indeed secured the nomination of a major party — in 2016, when Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination, though she lost the election to Donald Trump. And of course Biden is still very much alive.
Ford also said he could probably see a female president — at least under the conditions he outlined — happening in the next four to eight years. More than three decades later, there still hasn’t been a female president.
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Given the specifics of the prediction Ford laid out, it’s worth a reminder, too, that Ford himself is the only American to become president without winning a general election for president or vice president. He won the Republican nomination in 1976 but lost the election.
A few years before Ford spoke at the event in Iowa, Democrat Geraldine Ferraro made history in the 1984 presidential election as she became the first woman to be nominated as vice president by a major party. She served as the running mate for Walter Mondale, who lost to President Ronald Reagan.
The next female vice-presidential nominee would come decades later in 2008, when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate but lost to Barack Obama.
In 2021, Harris became the first female vice president of the United States.
Ford predicted that once a woman ultimately did become president, men would struggle in the competition for the top job. “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,” he said.
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