Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-20T16:49:43.902Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Goals and tactics of President Gerald Ford's ethnic politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ieva Zake
Ieva Zake*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The College of New Jersey, Ewing Township, NJ, USA
*
* Email: zakei@tcnj.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article analyzes initiatives of Gerald Ford's presidential administration toward nationalities or the so-called white ethnics against the backdrop of the legacy of Richard Nixon and the Republican Party's ethnic politics of the 1960s. Using archival and interview materials, it demonstrates that Gerald Ford intended to improve the relationship between the President's office and the ethnics who were involved in the Republican Party's structures. He consciously tried to respond to ethnics' political concerns and even created a special position on his staff for working with the nationalities. While in office and during the election campaign of 1976, Ford succeeded in engaging the ethnics and in demonstrating his will to address their needs on the domestic “front.” He failed, however, to fully appreciate the importance of foreign policy to the nationalities. The article proposes that today, as in the 1970s, the American political establishment would benefit from recognizing international issues as crucial elements of white ethnics' or nationalities' political behavior.

Keywords

President FordRepublican Partynationalitieswhite ethnicsheritage groups
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 43 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 944 - 961
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Galvin, Daniel. 2010. Presidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Greene, John. 1992. The Limits of Power: The Nixon and Ford Administrations. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hartmann, Robert. 1980. Palace Politics: An Inside Account of the Ford Years. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Hoxie, Gordon. 1980. “Staffing the Ford and Carter Presidencies.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 10 (3): 378–401.Google Scholar
Kuropas, Myron, nd. “Lesia and I: Progress Report and Ukrainian-American Memoir.”Google Scholar
Olmstead, Kathryn. 1996. “Reclaiming Executive Power: The Ford Administration's Response to the Intelligence Investigations.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26 (3): 725–737.Google Scholar
Reeves, Richard. 1975. A Ford, Not a Lincoln. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Reichley, James. 1981–1982. “The Conservative Roots of the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan Administrations.” Political Science Quarterly 96 (4): 537–550. doi: 10.2307/2149893Google Scholar
Smith, Hedrick. 1988. The Power Game: How Washington Works. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Syers, William. 1990. “The Political Beginnings of Gerald R. Ford: Anti-Bossism, Internationalism and the Congressional Campaign of 1948.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 20 (1): 127–142.Google Scholar
Zake, Ieva. 2010. “Republican Ethnic Politics in the 1960s and Early 70s: Nixon vs. GOP.” Polish American Studies XLVII (2): 53–74.Google Scholar
Zake, Ieva, and Gormley, Graham. 2010. “Integration or Separation? Nationality Groups in the US and the Republican Party's Ethnic Politics, 1960s-80s.” Nationalities Papers 38 (4): 493–514.Google Scholar