[President Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter on television during 1st presidential debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) served as the 38th President of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He is the only person to have served as both Vice President and President of the United States without being elected to either office. As he was appointed to fill a vacancy and then succeeded to the presidency, Ford also earned the distinction of being the only person in American history to neither begin nor finish either a presidential or vice presidential term on the date of a regularly-scheduled inauguration. Before vice-presidency, Ford served 25 years as Representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district, the final 9 of them as the House Minority Leader. Ford's reputation for integrity and openness had made him popular during his 25 years in Congress. When Gerald R. Ford took the oath of office on August 9, 1974, he declared, "I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances.... This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts." As President, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, marking a move toward détente in the Cold War. With the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam nine months into his presidency, U.S. involvement in Vietnam essentially ended. Ford acted vigorously to maintain U. S. power and prestige after the collapse of Cambodia and South Vietnam. Domestically, Ford presided over the worst economy in the four decades since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession during his tenure. He granted a presidential pardon to President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. In the GOP presidential primary campaign of 1976, Ford defeated then-former California Governor Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination. He narrowly lost the presidential election to the Democratic challenger, then-former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, on November 2. Following his years as President, Ford remained active in the Republican Party. He died on December 26, 2006 and lived longer than any other U.S. president, 93 years and 165 days. "My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our constitution works."

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Carter, a Democrat from rural Georgia, devotional Baptist, was a peanut farmer. He served seven years' service as a naval officer and two terms as a Georgia State Senator, from 1963 to 1967, and one as the Governor of Georgia, from 1971 to 1975. He was elected President in 1976, defeating President Gerald Ford in a relatively close election. On his second day in office, Carter pardoned all evaders of the Vietnam War drafts. He established a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. He confronted persistent "stagflation", a combination of high inflation, high unemployment, and slow growth. In the Middle East, through the Camp David agreement of 1978, Carter helped bring amity between Egypt and Israel. He succeeded in obtaining ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. Building upon the work of predecessors, he established full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and completed negotiation of the SALT II nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union. The end of his presidential tenure was marked by the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In response to the Soviet move, he ended détente and led the international boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. By 1980, Carter's popularity had eroded and he lost the general election in a landslide to Republican nominee Ronald Reagan, who won 44 of 50 states. "We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war."