US President George W. Bush hailed late President Gerald Ford on Tuesday night for using common sense and "quiet integrity" to restore Americans' confidence in the presidency after the Watergate scandal.

Bush, in a statement from his Texas ranch, where he is spending the week, said: "The American people will always admire Gerald Ford's devotion to duty, his personal character and the honourable conduct of his administration."

Bush, whose father served as CIA director and a diplomat under Ford, expressed his personal condolences in a phone call with former first lady Betty Ford.

Bush said Ford would forever be remembered for assuming the presidency "in an hour of national turmoil and division" and helping to reunite a nation divided by Richard Nixon's fall from power in 1974.

"With his quiet integrity, common sense and kind instincts, President Ford helped heal our land and restore public confidence in the presidency."

The nation's 38th president and the only one not elected to the office or to the vice-presidency, Ford died at his desert home at 6:45 pm on Tuesday local time at the age of 93.

Ford was the longest-living former president, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who died in June 2004, by more than a month.

Ford's office did not reveal the cause of his death, which followed a year of medical problems. He was treated for pneumonia in January and had an angioplasty and pacemaker implant in August.

Funeral arrangements were to be announced later on Wednesday.

An accidental president

Ford was an accidental president. A Michigan Republican elected to Congress 13 times before becoming the first appointed vice-president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew left amid scandal, Ford was Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straightforward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

He took office moments after Nixon resigned in disgrace over Watergate and went into exile.

"My fellow Americans," Ford said, "our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule."

And, true to his reputation as unassuming Jerry, he added: "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me with your prayers."

He revived the debate over Watergate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president.

That single act, it was widely believed, contributed to Ford losing election to a term of his own in 1976. But it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.

Pardon of Nixon a 'right thing'

In his memoir, "A Time to Heal," Ford wrote: "When I was in the Congress myself, I thought it fulfilled its constitutional obligations in a very responsible way, but after I became president, my perspective changed."

Some suggested the pardon was prearranged before Nixon resigned, but Ford, in an unusual appearance before a congressional committee in October 1974, said, "There was no deal, period, under no circumstances." The committee dropped its investigation.

Ford's standing in the polls dropped dramatically when he pardoned Nixon. But an ABC News poll taken in 2002 in connection with the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in found that six in 10 said the pardon was the right thing to do.

The decision to pardon Nixon won Ford a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2001, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, acknowledging he had criticized Ford at the time, called the pardon "an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest."

Asked at a news conference to recite his accomplishments, Ford replied: "We have restored public confidence in the White House and in the executive branch of government."

As to his failings, he responded, "I will leave that to my opponents. I don't think there have been many."

Source: China Daily