Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/23/gerald-fords-surprising-prediction-from-1989-how-america-will-get-its-first-female-president-video.html
…
4 Likes
During my visiting lecturer days in Europe (early 20-aughts) one of the most common questions I got over lunch was “Why haven’t the states ever had a woman president?” What can you do? i hate explaining anything on that level appealing to ‘cowboy’ mentality. So i blathered versions of: “first, i don’t know for sure, second it’s an ingrained sexist old boys network, third some surprising old timey religious influences, fourth beats me, but i really hope that situation is remedied soon” (try translating that palaver with under two years at the Goethe-Institut) -sigh-
16 Likes
Here’s the full video on YouTube from its original source.
15 Likes
Thanks Ford, Biden isn’t dead yet. Next up in Ford’s surprising predictions: how issuing a blanket pardon on the most conniving president so far was totally worth it and didn’t set a bad precedent at all. /SARC
19 Likes
“Hey kids, look at how I became president: Anything could happen!”
23 Likes
He (and especially his wife) were staunch advocates for pro-choice, the ERA, etc. and yet he couldn’t imagine a woman running as the presidential candidate and winning.
22 Likes
Could women even have credit cards in their own name when this interview happened?
5 Likes
Yes. It was mid-1970s when that started to change.
12 Likes
(Context for those who weren’t around at the time: Geraldine Ferraro had already received the official Democratic party nomination to be VP 5 years before this interview.)
23 Likes
Well, to be fair, this was 1989. It’s now 2024 and we still haven’t elected a woman as President. So he might not have been wrong in 1989. Of course, at the end, he said he thought it would happen within 8 years, so…not a great prediction, really.
18 Likes
Y’know, I totally missed the year (1989) in the article headline. I thought the question was put to Ford during his term, which would have made the idea of a woman as President all the more unlikely. And made it a lot harder to answer my credit card question…
6 Likes
Ford became president in August 1974. The Equal Credit Opportunity act was enacted on Oct 28 1974, but the Federal reserve board was still implementing regulations in 1977
ANNUAL REPORT TO CONGRESS ON THE EQUAL CREDIT OPPORTUNITY ACT FOR THE YEAR 1976
9 Likes
Either the Republican or Democrat political party will nominate a man for President and a woman for Vice President, and the woman and man will win.
Damn, they’ve been doing that “Democrat Party” shtick longer than I had imagined.
4 Likes
Yes! That jumped out to me, too.
I’d assumed that calling the Democratic Party the “Democrat Party” as a sort of mild slur to “own the libs” was a more recent practice, but it turns out to date back to the 1940s. Joseph McCarthy didn’t start the practice, but he was, it seems, a strong proponent of it.
7 Likes
Great link. Recommended reading for all.
I definitely had no idea it went back that far.
5 Likes
Interesting prediction. I do like how he’s all, “and watch out, guys. Once everyone sees that a woman can do the job, men won’t get another chance.” (To paraphrase.)
I remember talking with my dad when I was a teenager in the early ‘90s, I can’t remember which election, but I wanted a woman for the VP nominee and he said, “they’ll never elect a ticket with a woman in that role because then a radical feminist would just assassinate the President to put the woman into office.”
Glad to see that hasn’t been the case, and retrospectively disappointed in my dad for thinking that, and being SO sure about it.
@CCinBmore and @Naltrexone - I noticed the “Democrat,” bs, too. Just recently I started wondering why, when in print, writers/editors don’t use the (sic) indicator when printing the incorrect term as spoken. By not doing that, the media producers are being complicit in pushing double-speak. 
5 Likes
Yeah, because radical feminist have killed so many people… I mean, I guess there was that one time one shot Andy Warhol? Talk about projection… it’s almost always (at least in the modern era) the right wing men committing acts of violence to further their goals…
6 Likes
Yeah, sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised that I turned out so well. By well, I mean not a reactionary bigot. 
4 Likes
In the video someone posted in the comments here, it sounds like he may have been correcting himself, like he started to say that the presidential candidate himself would nominate the vice president, then corrected it to say it would of course be the party who would nominate her. Saying in effect, “either the Republican or Democrat–political party [I mean]—will nominate a man for president and a woman for vice president.”
Lol. Wut?
3 Likes
