Gerald Ford: "Palpable" Decency

When Gerald Ford died the day after Christmas, presidential historian and CBS News consultant Douglas Brinkley had just finished a revealing biography of the nation's 38th president.

"Gerald R. Ford" is based on years of research, including several exclusive interviews with Ford, and looks at all of Ford's correspondences with Richard Nixon, Billy Graham and many others.

One of the first things Brinkley writes about Ford sums up the tone of the book: "His decency was palpable. Following the traumas of the Vietnam War and Watergate, he was a tonic to the consciousness of his times, a Middle American at ease with himself and the enduring values of our Constitution."

Brinkley discussed the biography with co-anchor Hannah Storm on The Early Show Tuesday.

To read an excerpt, click here.

Brinkley writes that Ford faced the inevitable sooner rather than later. He did that with Watergate, in pardoning Nixon, allowing the country to move on, and he did it with Vietnam, ending that war.

"Some people talk about Gerald Ford (as) an accidental president, and that he healed the nation," Brinkley told Storm. "What he did was — didn't prolong the agony. He pardoned Nixon so he didn't have to go through the agony of a long, circus trial. And in Vietnam, it was inevitable that we had to get out, so he just did it. Of course, he did it once Congress wasn't going to fund the war anymore."

How was it perceived by the public when Ford finally ended the war?

"My university where I teach, Tulane University, is where he made the famous speech and the rafters shook — people cheered that this long nightmare was really over," Brinkley responded. "It got pretty good press but, of course, in conservative circles, they thought it was wimpish, people like Ronald Reagan started challenging, you know, him for the presidency because he said, 'My god, he didn't do Vietnam right, either.' So, there was anger in the conservative ranks for what he did.

"But ... not only did he evacuate us from Saigon, but when you see those people climbing on helicopters, Vietnamese, he said, 'We're gonna stand for something. We're not gonna not try to get our allies out.' First, we brought all the Americans out of Vietnam. Now, we're gonna try to bring our South Vietnamese allies.' There are hundreds of thousands of so-called children of the ladders living in the United States (today)."