He had previously held the position of vice president of the country, for eight months, after the resignation of Spiro Agnew. He was the first to be elected according to the procedure established in the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and upon assuming the presidency, he also became the first and so far only person to have held both the vice presidency and the presidency of the United States, without having been chosen by the Electoral College. He was a member of the Republican Party.
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During his presidency the Vietnam War ended and the Helsinki Accords were signed. As for domestic politics, Ford found himself facing the worst economic outlook since the Great Depression: during his years in office the country went into recession and there was rising inflation.1 One of his most controversial decisions was to pardon the president Richard Nixon, implicated in the so-called Watergate Scandal. In 1976 Ford would defeat Ronald Reagan for the Republican Party nomination, but would narrowly lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter in that year's presidential election.