Thomas DeFrank was a young reporter for Newsweek when he encountered Gerald Ford for the first time. Ford was vice president at the time. The two became friends, a phenomenon that was rare in those days and is all but extinct today as a wall of distrust divides politicians and the press. DeFrank covered the Ford presidency, after which he did an unusually smart thing. He kept up with Ford, visiting him often and taking notes. The result is a wonderful book, Write It When I’m Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford. This is the best collection in years of the private thoughts of a man who was president. The only book in its class is the one, decades ago, that captured Harry Truman in moments of unusual candor. Ford was a likable guy with a quick laugh. He knew everyone, including professional athletes, Hollywood types, writers, and historians, as well as hundreds of world leaders and politicians. And he had something to say about all of them. One of the stories DeFrank tells is about Ford’s friendship with Frank Gifford, the football star and announcer. In 1997, Gifford was caught in a one-night fling with a former stewardess. The tabloids went wild. But Ford, who never strayed in years of marriage to his wife Betty, was loyal to his friend. He called Gifford to say, as DeFrank tells it, “You’re in our thoughts and prayers and we hope everything works out.” Ford was philosophical about man’s tendency to succumb to sexual temptation. “You have to think of the ten bad things that could happen to you from something like that and the one good thing,” he said, “and tell yourself the one good thing will get taken care of some other way.”
