Gerald Ford served as little more than a caretaker in the White House until the election of 1976. Though he received bad press after pardoning Nixon in September 1974, Ford’s presidency was unblemished by scandal. However, economic crisis tarnished his time in office.

Ford proved more conservative than Nixon in his domestic politics. He vetoed measures aimed at social welfare, environmental protection, and civil rights. A Democratic Congress overrode most of these vetoes. Ford’s woes increased with the Arab oil embargo, in effect from October 1973 to March 1974, which devastated the U.S. economy. Rising oil prices sparked enormous inflation, which hit 12 percent in 1974. In October of that year, Ford initiated the “Whip Inflation Now” program (WIN), but instead of reversing inflation and stabilizing the economy, his efforts threw the economy into a recession, with unemployment reaching 11 percent in 1975.

In 1975, Ford and Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, along with the leaders of thirty-one other states, signed the Helsinki Accords, which solidified European boundaries and promised to respect human rights and the freedom to travel.