[228]
The trust the American public had in him was rapidly and severely tarnished by his pardon of Nixon.[228] Nonetheless, many grant in hindsight that he had respectably discharged with considerable dignity a great responsibility that he had not sought.[228]
In spite of his athletic record and remarkable career accomplishments, Ford acquired a reputation as a clumsy, likable, and simple-minded everyman. An incident in 1975, when he tripped while exiting Air Force One in Austria, was famously and repeatedly parodied by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live, cementing Ford's image as a klutz.[228][229][230] Other pieces of the everyman image were attributed to his inevitable comparison with Nixon, his Midwestern stodginess and his self-deprecation.[227]
Ford has notably been portrayed in two television productions which included a central focus on his wife: the Emmy-winning 1987 ABC biographical television movie The Betty Ford Story[231] and the 2022 Showtime television series The First Lady.[232]

Honors
Foreign honors
Estonia:
First Class of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana (7 January 1997)
Ford received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in May 1970, as well as the Silver Buffalo Award, from the Boy Scouts of America.
