Talk:Gerald Ford/Archive 11
Latest comment: 2 years ago by CAVincent in topic Only unelected president
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Only unelected president
It might be worth mentioning in the lead that Ford is the only person in U.S. history to serve as President without being elected on a presidential ticket. Psherman122 (talk) 16:52, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
- @Psherman122 I agree that this is an extremely notable fact that should be called out in the lede. In the US, where the President and Vice-President are democratically elected by the country as a whole, it seems to me that the fact that Ford is the only President never to have been elected in a nation-wide vote is worthy of explicit mention in the lede. Simply saying, "Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment," as @Drdpw pointed out in their revert of my edit is stated in the second paragraph, does not seem to me to be sufficiently prominent or explicit. I added the mention because this comment from last year proposed it, and I didn't see any arguments to the contrary.
- - Waidawut (talk) 03:14, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
- I haven't heard any response from @Drdpw, so I'm going to go ahead and restore my original edit, pending further discussion here.
- - Waidawut (talk) 06:53, 11 May 2022 (UTC)
- 1) I agree that this distinction should be explicit it the lead, and adding my 2 cents to make it clear this is a discussed consensus. 2) I'm wondering if the statement might be tweaked a little - I think your change is perfectly clear to those who understand rules of U.S. presidential succession, but possibly less so to others, e.g. non-U.S. citizens. (I mean, the point of it being notable is that the situation hasn't even come close to coming up before or after.) I'd welcome comments if anyone does find it unclear. CAVincent (talk) 02:21, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
- Well, I guess if Squeaky Fromme or Sara Jane Moore were better shots, we might have had a President Rockefeller. (Oh, and @Drdpw, I was just going to self-revert when I saw that you'd already reverted me. I don't think the problem was so much "extraneous verbiage" as that I just realized I was factually wrong. The bolding was inadvertent.) CAVincent (talk) 02:33, 12 May 2022 (UTC)
- 1) I agree that this distinction should be explicit it the lead, and adding my 2 cents to make it clear this is a discussed consensus. 2) I'm wondering if the statement might be tweaked a little - I think your change is perfectly clear to those who understand rules of U.S. presidential succession, but possibly less so to others, e.g. non-U.S. citizens. (I mean, the point of it being notable is that the situation hasn't even come close to coming up before or after.) I'd welcome comments if anyone does find it unclear. CAVincent (talk) 02:21, 12 May 2022 (UTC)