A few days after he became president, Gerald Ford invited photographers into his modest suburban Washington home as he toasted his English muffins for breakfast.

The “photo op” was designed to contrast the difference between Ford and the imperial presidency of his predecessor, Richard Nixon. But it illustrated an essential point about the man who had just become the nation’s first un-elected president.

More than any of the other nine presidents I have covered, Gerald Rudolph Ford was a normal human being. He was that way when he entered the White House, and when he left.

Though not lacking ambition, he never had the single-minded drive that convinces many senators and governors to spend years pursuing the presidency.

Indeed, Ford often said his sole ambition in public life – which he never attained in an era Democrats dominated Congress – was to be speaker of the House.

When higher office reached out and beckoned him, he had about decided it would never be and planned to retire from Congress after one more term. In less than a year, he became vice president and then president under circumstances even an experienced fiction writer could not have created.

First, Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign and plead no contest to tax evasion after investigators found he received payoffs from Maryland contractors, both before and after he won the nation’s second highest office.

Democratic leaders told Nixon Congress would not confirm his favored successor, former Texas governor and Treasury Secretary John Connally. Though a partisan Republican, Ford would be approved, they said.

It was a selection Nixon hoped would also help him amid rising talk of impeachment in the burgeoning Watergate scandal. After all, he supposedly figured, no one ever regarded good old Jerry Ford as presidential material.

But he was the perfect choice.

He was well liked by members of both parties – yes, that used to happen in Washington.

He was regarded as a person of unquestioned integrity.

He was especially knowledgeable about national security issues from years on the defense appropriations subcommittee, an important consideration in those Cold War days.

And he was a solid conservative Republican whose elevation would not undercut the decision voters made when they re-elected Nixon in 1972.

I met Ford as a young reporter covering the U.S. House in the 1960s. I thought he was pretty conservative, though in today’s GOP he would be thought of as a moderate or even a liberal.

Domestic debate then revolved around President Lyndon Johnson’s far-ranging domestic policy proposals known as the Great Society. Ford, as the GOP leader, often led the opposition.

At one point, he sought to impeach one of the Supreme Court’s most liberal members, Justice William O. Douglas.

And in national security policy, he steadfastly supported the U.S. role in Vietnam, despite rising domestic opposition as U.S. casualties mounted.

His peers regarded him highly. When younger House Republicans staged a revolt against the “old guard” in the House GOP, their designated candidate on two occasions was Ford.

And though Johnson once derided Ford as so dumb he couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time, he also picked him for the Warren Commission, created to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Ford had a friendly, open manner that made him a popular figure with reporters, who often judge politicians by the degree to which they respond to press queries.

Indeed, he liked reporters. After he retired, he created an award to honor coverage of the two areas of government in which he was most interested, the White House and defense.

And shortly before he died, he wrote a remarkable article for The Washington Post that explained why he had selected a well-known reporter, Time’s Hugh Sidey, to give a eulogy at his funeral.

“I did so in part for symbolic reasons,” Ford wrote, in what constituted his eulogy of Sidey, who died unexpectedly at 78. “I like reporters, even if I haven’t always liked what some wrote about me. I figure that’s a pretty minor price to pay for a free press in a free society.

“But I also hoped to remind people in our often overheated era that it is possible for a politician and a journalist to enjoy mutual respect, admiration and, yes, friendship, all the while understanding the necessarily adversarial relationship that often exists between those in power and those who report on their activities.”

That was a reminder to today’s readers of why, to both the press and the nation, Ford brought a breath of fresh air some three decades ago when he succeeded Nixon and proclaimed that “our long national nightmare is over.”

Unfortunately, the circumstances then were not only unusual, but difficult. He reached the presidency without benefit of a campaign to hone his policies and staff and develop a sense of the public mood. He created enormous controversy by pardoning Nixon so he would not face trial.

Ford often had to make things up as he went along; his presidency showed it. He suffered from an uncertain economy, in part due to Nixon’s decision to impose wage and price controls and an Arab oil embargo that sent energy prices soaring.

In 1976, he came within 18,000 votes – 11,000 in Ohio and 7,000 in Hawaii – of winning a full term. He accepted defeat with grace and good humor, never thought of challenging the outcome, and later developed a friendship with the man who beat him, Jimmy Carter.

Though Ford clearly enjoyed his 29 months in the Oval Office, he had never wanted to be president in the first place. But he liked his status as a former president, and he lived long enough to see historians praise his tenure and vindicate his action in pardoning Nixon.