Gerald Ford and Bob Dole Signed Bumper Sticker and Campaign Pamphlet.

Gerald Rudolph Ford (1913–2006) and Robert Joseph Dole (1923–2021) were two of the most consequential figures in the moderate-to-conservative wing of the twentieth-century Republican Party, whose careers intersected most memorably in the 1976 presidential campaign — one of the most dramatic and closely contested elections in modern American history. Ford and Dole had been friends since their shared years in the House of Representatives, where Dole had supported Ford in being named minority leader and Ford in turn had supported Dole in becoming chairman of the Republican National Committee, a reciprocal loyalty that shaped Ford's decision to select Dole as his running mate following incumbent Vice President Nelson Rockefeller's withdrawal from consideration. Ford had narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination at a convention in which the outcome remained undecided until the actual balloting — the last American political convention of its kind — before facing Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter in a general election fought under the long shadow of Watergate and Ford's controversial pardon of Richard Nixon. Dole later recalled that the Republican ticket entered the general election facing a roughly thirty-point deficit in the polls, with the combination of the failing economy and the Nixon pardon constituting, as he put it, "a pretty high hurdle to jump," though the race tightened considerably before Carter's narrow victory. Both men were decorated combat veterans — Ford a Naval officer in the Pacific and Dole a badly wounded infantry officer in Italy — and both embodied a tradition of bipartisan pragmatism and institutional respect that each, in his long post-electoral career, continued to represent with considerable distinction.