AHC: Gerald Ford, our greatest president

Have Ford successfully face down a major threat to the whole world, something like the Cuban Missile Crisis on steroids. Perhaps a coup takes out Brezhnev, threatens massive aggression against the West, a Cuban Missile style crisis which Ford both successfully avoids whilst at the same time succeeding in smashing USSR power for good and ending the Cold War.

Averting the end of the world and defeating the US' greatest ever enemy would put Ford up to Lincoln/FDR levels.
 
Nixon snaps. He releases massive blackmail folders on all of the Democrats in Congress he hated collected from Hoover, along with some Republicans, especially far-right types who caused him trouble, and then he commits suicide on live TV. Ford is not accused though, and when he becomes President, he doesn't have to pardon Nixon, and in the chaos he becomes the one figure everyone trusts and manages to win reelection in a landslide on a reformist mandate, as people blame the "just as dirty Democrats" for "hounding Nixon to death".
 
Gerald R. Ford: The American Presidents Series: The 38th President, 1974-1977, Douglas Brinkley (professor of history at Tulane), 2007.

https://books.google.com/books?id=A...oviets to an even tighter definition"&f=false

' . . . The U.S.-backed formula did not lay the "symmetrical" groundwork Kissinger had favored but instead held the Soviets to an even tighter definition of "equality" in number of weapons, regardless of their size or type. Yet, in the end, the bargaining session was successful, and the Soviets were more accommodating than Ford had imagined.

'Ford felt pleased and optimistic about leaving Vladivostok with a framework for a SALT II treaty. . . '
Advantage United States. Maybe the Vladivostok Summit of Nov. '74 had some real potential. Of course any eventual treaty needs to be confirmed by two-thirds of the Senate.

That along with successfully addressing stagflation — which may have even been a part of the 1975 recession — and Ford is well on his way!

(PS I do keep the door open on successfully addressing stagflation.)
 
Cold war goes hot but doesnt go nuclear. US wins the war, USSR collapses and along the way he has some legendary moments - Churchill like speech and/or superior diplomatic maneuvering to save the day. There has to be a point where it looks pretty dire - all is lost and we are all going to die but he does something spectacular, or at least perceived as spectacular. Kennedy arguably saved us from a nuclear war and he isnt considered among the greatest. It's pretty hard to match Washington and Lincoln.
 
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