Heirs to the nightmare: Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and the post-imperial presidency

The American Presidency faced a fundamental crisis in the 1970s as questionable domestic and international endeavors sullied its reputation in the eyes of the American public. My dissertation is a thorough-going revision of the way historians have looked at the Ford and Carter presidencies. I argue that alter the twin traumas of Watergate and the failures of the Vietnam War, the American Presidency faced a fundamental crisis. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter faced the three fold task of restoring domestic comity and respect for the rest of government, restoring the separation of powers in government, and restoring Americans' faith in government. I conclude that Ford and Carter offered reconciliation alter a long series of abuses. My work rejects the prevailing caricature of Ford and Carter as weak aberrations between the strong presidencies of Nixon and Reagan. They understood that Americans needed reassurance that they still lived in a republic -- not a monarchy -- where no one was above the law.