13. In the “blooper heard round the world” Gerald Ford claimed that the Soviet Union did not dominate Eastern Europe, who were instead free from Soviet interference
During the 1976 presidential debates between President Gerald Ford, elevated to the Oval Office by the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, and former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, one of, if not the archetypal gaffe in modern American politics occurred. In response to a follow-up question from moderator Max Frankel, Ford incredulously responded that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration”. Listing Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland, Ford claimed that “each of those countries is independent, 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”.
Naturally, the rest of the world immediately frantically scrambled to respond to this incredible statement by the incumbent President of the United States, with the Soviets seeking to capitalize on a valuable piece of free propaganda and the “Free World” seeking to shore up support for democracy in Europe. The New York Times determined that the comment was “enormously harmful to Mr. Ford, because his statement seemed to suggest that he did not understand the geopolitics of the region” and the remark is widely regarded as “one of the most damaging gaffes in the history of presidential politics”. Years later, Carter would express gratitude to Ford’s misguided and insistent proclamation, stating that “if it hadn’t been for the debates, I would have lost.”