presidential blunders

Gerald Ford might have won in 1976 if he hadn't made one of the biggest gaffes in the history of presidential debates. On October 6, 1976, during a debate with Jimmy Carter at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts Theater, Ford made his infamous claim: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration." Ford's questioner, Max Frankel, who was then associate editor of The New York Times, smiles and clearly exhibits a look of disbelief. Frankel says, "Did I understand you to say, sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence in occupying most of the countries there and in and making sure with their troops that it's a Communist zone, whereas on our side of the line the Italians and the French are still flirting with the possibility of Communism?" Unflinching and in his wooden monotone, Ford doesn't back down. Instead, he digs himself in even deeper: "I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union." Ford refused to retract or modify his statement during the following weeks. And he lost the election which, at that time, was the closest since 1916. (White House Photograph Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Library)