because president nixon's vice president who he ran with, spiro agnew, he had to resign after being charged with bribery. and nixon himself had to resign because of watergate. so the president ended up being a man who had never run for president or vice president. gerald ford got appointed in scandal to be vice in 1973 and then got elevated from vice in scandal to be president in 1974. and he never had to run for those offices. never had to run for president certainly until two years later, in 1976. and when he ran to keep that office, he had bizarrely found himself in in 1976, his own party almost didn't let him keep that job. gerald ford faced a ferocious primary in the republican party from ronald reagan. rimary that year, but the primary was brutal enough that he essentially stumbled into the general election, as best demonstrated here by the chevy chase impersonation of a very, very stumbly gerald ford on "saturday