Ford and Carter agreed to debate each other on television. Nobody had done that since nineteen sixty, when Richard Nixon and John Kennedy had several televised debates.

Many people thought Ford did a little better than Carter in the first debate. In the second debate, however, President Ford made a mistake. He wrongly suggested that the Soviet Union did not control Eastern Europe.

FORD: “I don’t believe that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don’t believe that the Romanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don’t believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. Each of those countries is independent or autonomous. It has its own territorial integrity, and the United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”

Carter responded:

CARTER: “I would like to see Mister Ford convince the Polish-Americans, and the Czech-Americans, and the Hungarian-Americans in this country that those countries don’t live under the domination and supervision of the Soviet Union, behind the Iron Curtain.”

The third debate did not have a clear winner. Opinion polls showed that many voters were still undecided.

(MUSIC)

President Gerald Ford in the White House Press Room in Washington, November 3, 1976, concedes defeat to Jimmy Carter