1980: Ford beats Carter in ‘76...

[Benjamin Frank]

I don't think Teddy would run in this scenario. If he really wanted to be President, he would've ran in 1976.

I often wonder why he didn’t run in 1976. He either thought Chappiquidick would be too fresh or he was worried after what happened to his brothers.Or he really didn’t want to be President which I kind of find hard to believe when you think about the “next man up” and duty to carry on the legacy which is so prevalent in that family.

If he runs in 1976, he wins in a landslide.

But back to 1980. Why would he run in this scenario? He ran in what was a much harder scenario, unseating the sitting President from his own party.

If you saw the post I made of the Literary Digest from the book "The Experts Speak," a compendium of experts being wrong, the same book also reported:  "Exactly one year  before the 1976 Presidential election, U.S News and World Report asked the membership of the DNC "who do you think will win the Democratic nomination?"

Hubert Humphrey 49%
Henry 'Scoop' Jackson 14%
Edward Kennedy 8%
(Jimmy Carter was at 3%)

So, it's more than possible that Edward Kennedy didn't run because he thought Hubert Humphrey would.  Hubert Humphrey also didn't run in part because he thought Kennedy would.  (This is game theory at its finest.)

[Benjamin Frank]

There are a couple points here, Ford almost certainly would have beaten Carter had he not pardoned Nixon, however, I think it's much less likely Carter would have won the Democratic nomination had Ford not pardoned Nixon.  Who knows what would have happened if the election in 1976 would have been Ford vs. Henry 'Scoop' Jackson?

It's always said that the subsequent President is a contrast to the previous President.  The problem with this as a guide is it's easy to argue in hindsight, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything because it's also often easy to find some significant difference of one President to the previous President, but also some significant similarity.

In the case of Jimmy Carter, it was argued that his honesty was a direct contrast to Nixon (the previous elected President.)  However, it could also be argued that Ford's simplicity (not to be confused with simple mindedness) was a direct contrast to Nixon's complexity.

In this way, Carter could also be seen as being just as complex and strange as Nixon was.

So, had Ford not pardoned Nixon, he also could have been seen as an acceptable contrast to the preceding President, Nixon.

[Benjamin Frank]

Ford passes a tax cut of 5% on the bottom four brackets, raises the salary of all military by 20%, and increases the welfare spending by 15.5%. This agreement with the Democrats allows the economy to quickly recover, with unemployment hitting 4% in 1978. Ford receives a 54-seat majority in the Senate, as well as 181 seats in the House. Once unemployment hits 3.5% in 1979, he cuts the welfare increase and raises the top four brackets rates by 6% and the bottom four by 3%, creating a near-balanced budget. A sales tax of 16.5% is passed, 59-39 in the Senate and 220-211 in the House, allowing the budget to be fully balanced. With Ford also pledging a 40% increase in NASA spending, another moon landing takes place in August of 1980.

291: Senator Mark Hatfield/Attorney General Edward Brooke - 48.0%
247: Senator Howell Heflin/Fmr. Governor Reubin Askew - 43.6%
Shirley Chisholm/La Donna Harris - 6.1%
Others - 2.3%

Ford closed the gap in the 1976 election quite considerably, as we know. That has been credited at least in part to Carter's comment that he 'lusted in his heart' (and doing so in an interview with Playboy) but I think the bigger factor was likely that the economy in 1976 was doing quite well.

The economy throughout most of the 1970s was much stronger than was believed at the time.  In the 1970s real GDP growth was compared unfavorably to the 1950s and 1960s, but with the benefit of hindsight, it can now be compared to the 1980s and beyond, and job and real GDP growth in the 1970s was mostly quite strong.  It had ups and downs probably related to the high inflation which likely reduced confidence in the economy than had it been more consistent growth.

However, the only time the economy performed really poorly in the 1970s was during and after the two oil shocks in 1973 and in 1979.

In regards here to the 1979 oil shock, it's possible with Ford being President that the Shah of Iran would either have remained in power or would have been eased out of power with the Ayatollah not coming to power, in which case, the 1979 oil shock would never have occurred.  

Other than that, in regards to the high inflation, I don't know what Ford's views were regarding embracing the monetarism of Milton Friedman and giving the Federal Reserve the full power to really Whip Inflation Now.