The 1976 Ford Ad So Dark His Own Campaign Killed It

Voters today are accustomed to political ads that seemingly have no boundaries, such as Ohio GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s incendiary commercial that uses his opponent’s estranged mother against her. But 50 years ago, a presidential campaign wound up quashing an ad that crossed the line with its references to the John F. Kennedy assassination.

In 1976, as the country emerged from a violent political era that included a series of assassinations, President Gerald Ford’s campaign media consultants sought to remind people of that in a provocative 4 ½-minute TV commercial. The ad proved so unsettling to the Secret Service, Ford’s campaign manager, and a focus group that it never aired.

The commercial, which you can watch here, starts off innocuously enough, with the campaign’s cheesy ’70s-style song, “I’m Feeling Good About America.” Overlaying the tune are shots of marching bands and quick voter hits describing how the country has turned a corner. “He’s restored faith in the American people,” says one man in a typical comment. Without specifically mentioning Watergate, Vietnam, or political assassinations, the spot is clearly making the point that President Ford has helped steer America from those traumas.

Essentially, the message is that a vote for Ford is a vote to Make America Good Again.

Then we see Ford greeting Americans in various settings before the scene switches to a University of Michigan rally.

“There is a change that’s come over America,” the narrator says. “And how long has it been since we’ve seen it on our college campuses?”

Then the commercial takes a dark turn. As Ford speaks, an explosion rings out, and the president visibly flinches. Given the pair of assassination attempts on him the year before, it would be understandable if he were to take cover. Instead, he keeps going with his remarks, telling the crowd, “Trust must be earned.”

The loud noise turned out not to be a gunshot, but a firecracker. And that’s when Ford’s ad makers overplay their hands.

“Neither the cherry bombs of a misguided prankster, nor all the memories of recent years, can keep the people and their president apart,” the narrator says, as the scene shifts to Ford in Dallas, waving from the open roof of his limo. “When a limousine can parade openly through the streets of Dallas, there’s a change that’s come over America.”

The Ford campaign’s media consulting firm, Bailey Deardourff & Associates, commissioned the TV commercial as a way to jolt the president’s lagging race against Jimmy Carter.

“There was one opportunity that we had, and that was to create a five-minute spot that emotionally rang all of those bells of the last 12 years,” the firm’s co-founder, Doug Bailey, said in a 2009 oral history interview with the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. “Of the assassinations, of the wars, of Watergate, and to reinforce emotionally with people what they had been through. To take them through that again, and shake them in a way that caused them to rethink how they were going to vote.”

It shook people, all right — including campaign manager James Baker — but not in the way Bailey had hoped.

“I showed it for people in the campaign and they just went crazy,” Bailey recalled. “First of all, the Secret Service just has a nightmare and I’m respectful of this, I mean, in their mind, it is inviting the nut cases to come forward. But in the campaign, Jim Baker in particular just thinks this is nutty, absolutely screwy, I have a screw loose someplace.”

Bailey said Baker understood what he was trying to do, but argued Ford would lose Texas if the ad ran.

“Well, forgive me but aren’t we going to lose the state of Texas anyway?” Bailey asked him.

“John Connally tells me that we will carry the state of Texas,” Baker replied, referring to the former Texas governor. “But you can’t make a reference to Dallas that way without losing the state of Texas.”

(Carter wound up beating Ford in Texas — and becoming the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state.)

Ford pollster Bob Teeter told author Jules Witcover the ad “was shocking” to members of a focus group who watched it. “It was just too emotional … It was just frightening.”

But Bailey didn’t think that should have been a deal-killer.

“My reaction to that was, ‘Yes, so they hated the ad. So what’s the next conclusion?’” Bailey said. “The whole theory of this ad was, of course they are not going to like it. That’s why it was designed to shake them up.”

Carter won the election, taking the popular vote by two points. Bailey, who got credit for helping Ford nearly erase a 20-point disadvantage in the polls, went on to establish the daily briefing The Hotline in 1987. He died in 2013.

Teeter had another reason for opposing the ad, worrying the Michigan scene would turn off Ohio voters. That intense rivalry continues to affect politics today.

A couple of weeks ago, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed responded to Vice President JD Vance calling him a weasel. “I’m like, ‘No, no, no, what you’re talking about is a f*cking Wolverine,’” El-Sayed told a cheering crowd, invoking the University of Michigan team name. “You can take your Buckeye and shove it somewhere else!” he added, referencing the Ohio State nickname.

Bailey recalled a similar dynamic 50 years ago.

“Now, you know as well as anybody that there is no bigger sports rivalry than there is between Ohio and Michigan,” Bailey recalled in the oral history. “Now, I’m an Ohioan, Teeter isn’t — he’s a Wolverine — he’s not only from Michigan, he’s from Ann Arbor. So his view was that this would cost us the state of Ohio. If you show all those University of Michigan students and Ford speaking at the University of Michigan in an ad, you’ll lose Ohio.”

Ford lost Ohio anyway.

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Frederic J. Frommer, a sports and politics historian who has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other national publications, is working on a book, “Right On! How Money and Mayhem Revolutionized Baseball in the ’70s.”

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