[24]

^ At the time of his wife's death on April 17, 2018, George H. W. had been married to Barbara for 73 years, the longest presidential marriage in American history at that point.[35] The length of their marriage was surpassed in 2019 by the marriage of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.[36]

^ Biographer Jon Meacham writes that it was widely assumed at the time that Donald Rumsfeld had engineered Bush's appointment as CIA Director since the post was regarded as a "political graveyard". Meacham writes that it is more likely that the key factor in Bush's appointment was that Ford believed Bush would work better with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger than would Elliot Richardson, his original pick for the CIA post.[84]

^ The 1988 presidential election remains the only presidential election since 1948 in which either party won a third consecutive term.[150]

^ The longest-lived U.S. vice president is John Nance Garner, who died on November 7, 1967, 15 days short of his 99th birthday.