Well, I don’t think Ford was a terribly effective president. Neverless, I don’t see how you can measure objectively presidential intelligence, and I especially don’t think implying that Gerald Ford was dumb is warranted at all.
Ford turned down offers from NFL teams to attend Yale Law. He was an assistant navigation officer on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific theater. After the war, he was elected to Congress, where his work was exemplary, especially in the complex area of military budgets.
Gerald Ford is by any objective measure a pretty bright guy.
Did that make him a good president? No. But confusing ineffectiveness with idiocy would be a mistake, especially for someone who greatly respects the intelligence of Ford’s successor, whose presidency similarly failed.
Considering the historical context at the time of his nonmination, Ford’s reputation across party lines as an honest man may have been his strongest qualifiaction for the job.
There is also the Gerald R. Ford Freeway that goes right by that museum in Grand Rapids.
Squeaky Fromme was. His other would-be assasscinator was Sarah Jane Moore, most known before that time as the woman who tried to organize the Food for People giveaway demanded by Patty Hearst’s kidnappers in return for Hearst’s release. The program was a miserable failure, and SJM drifted into obscurity until her attempt on Ford.
When Hearst was in prison, she was contacted by the “Manson girls,” who viewed her as some kind of hero.
Over time, most Presidents are remembered - if at all, other than by history buffs like me - for just a thing or two. Lincoln=Civil War and slavery’s end; FDR=Great Depression and WW2; Nixon=Watergate and resigning, etc. The more time passes, the less most people are going to remember about any particular President.
A hundred or so years from now, I’d bet that Ford will be remembered mostly for being the first unelected President (appointed under the terms of the 25th Amendment, Jinx), and for pardoning Nixon after Watergate (a very bad idea, IMHO).