Gerald Ford enters these excerpts chiefly as the author of a famous formulation about impeachment, and secondarily as the namesake of an administrative era in health-care regulation. The excerpts do not treat his presidency, his pardon of Richard Nixon, or his congressional career beyond a single reference to his role as House Minority Leader.
The impeachment formulation
In an episode on the impeachment debate, Gene Healy quotes Ford’s line that an impeachable offense is whatever Congress decides it is at a given moment in history. Healy introduces it while discussing the 1868 impeachment of Andrew Johnson, arguing that the Johnson case shows the formulation to be inadequate: the Republicans in the Senate had the numbers to remove Johnson on a party-line basis but failed because a number of them thought the case had not been made, which Healy offers as evidence that it does matter what offenses a president is impeached for, since legally dubious charges are much more likely to fail Low Tweets and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment Debate Through the Lens of History and the Constitution (2018).
Bob Zadek responds that Ford regretted making the statement, felt terrible about it once he became president, saw the concept in a different light, and later apologized for it. Zadek says most people acknowledge Ford did not quite know what he was talking about, and that he may have been right politically but not right as a matter of constitutional law Low Tweets and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment Debate Through the Lens of History and the Constitution (2018).
In a later episode, John Rothmann gives the same line a different setting and a different weight. He attributes it to Ford as House Minority Leader, spoken in connection with a proposed impeachment of Justice William O. Douglas, and renders it as Ford’s answer to the simple question of what impeachment is: that it is whatever the House of Representatives says it is. Rothmann calls this the key, and adds that you can impeach someone if you have the votes and convict someone in the Senate if you have the votes, regardless of the merits Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020).
The Johnson precedent around the Ford line
Both discussions of the Ford formulation are embedded in accounts of Andrew Johnson. Healy notes that Johnson was the first president subject to an impeachment process, succeeding Abraham Lincoln in 1868, and that of the eleven articles of impeachment against him the Tenure of Office Act made up most of them. He singles out Article X, which was not focused on that statute at all and instead accused Johnson of bringing the presidency into scandal and disrepute through a series of inflammatory harangues delivered on the campaign trail during the midterm elections of 1866 Low Tweets and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment Debate Through the Lens of History and the Constitution (2018).
Zadek asks whether Johnson was doing the 1868 equivalent of sending out early morning tweets, and Healy agrees, adding that the only crime Johnson was alleged to have committed was violating a statute that was clearly unconstitutional as an intrusion into the operation of the executive. Healy notes that Johnson escaped conviction by one vote, and that a number of Republicans who voted against conviction identified the constitutional dubiousness of the Tenure of Office Act when they explained their votes Low Tweets and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment Debate Through the Lens of History and the Constitution (2018).
Rothmann’s version of the same history holds that the charges against Johnson were fundamentally based on the Tenure of Office Act, which Congress passed in order to get him, and that Johnson was saved by one vote — the vote of Edmund Ross of Kansas, an episode recounted in John F. Kennedy’s Profiles of Courage. Rothmann’s conclusion is that impeachment is political in every sense of the word: asked whether a crime is necessary, he answers no, and says an action becomes a removable-from-office crime only if the senators vote that way Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020).
Certificate of need
Ford appears in a third episode in an unrelated connection. Don Boudreaux, discussing hospital capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic, says the United States has had a system of certificates of need in place since Gerald Ford’s administration, under which new hospitals in a lot of places are not allowed to open unless granted a certificate of need — meaning the builder must get permission from the government and show that a new hospital is needed. Boudreaux says existing hospitals decide whether a new hospital is needed, and that existing hospitals are not inclined to say they need more competition, so the policy has artificially restricted the number of hospitals and hospital beds The Single Most Common Economic Fallacy in COVID-19 Reporting (2020).
Zadek characterizes the arrangement as the competitor’s veto, calls it anti-capitalist and anti-free markets, and says he thinks it was created during the Nixon administration at first, for the reasoned purpose of reducing healthcare costs by eliminating excess capacity. He notes that Certificate of Need statutes still exist and dominate certain industries, naming the moving industry in Kentucky and West Virginia The Single Most Common Economic Fallacy in COVID-19 Reporting (2020). The two speakers differ on which administration originated the system, and the excerpts leave the question unresolved.
Across episodes: the Ford formulation
Two episodes take up Ford’s impeachment line, and they do not treat it the same way. In the earlier episode, Healy cites it in order to argue against it, using Johnson’s acquittal to show that the substance of the charges matters, and Zadek adds that Ford himself came to regret the statement and apologized for it. In the later episode, Rothmann cites the same line, attributes it to Ford as House Minority Leader during the Douglas impeachment matter, and endorses it as the key to the subject, concluding that impeachment is political in every sense and that a crime is not necessary. The excerpts show a shift in emphasis rather than a development in the underlying question: the earlier treatment stresses the legal weakness of dubious charges, the later treatment stresses the sufficiency of votes regardless of the merits.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts say nothing about Ford’s presidency, his service as vice president, or his pardon of Richard Nixon. They do not give the date or outcome of the Douglas impeachment matter beyond Rothmann’s reference to it, and they do not identify the statute or statutes behind the certificate-of-need system beyond the disagreement over whether it began under Ford or Nixon. Ford’s own words appear only as quoted by the guests, and the excerpts do not indicate when or where he said them.