Almost 35 years ago, Gerald Ford predicted that America would get its first female president only when a male incumbent could no longer continue.
In a resurfaced video being widely shared since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the probable Democrat nominee, the former US president was asked in a room filled with schoolchildren for his advice for a “young lady wanting to become president”.
He had his answer ready.
“I can tell you how I think it will happen – because it won’t happen in the normal course of events,” said Ford, who succeeded Richard Nixon in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
He foresaw a scenario where “either the Republican or Democrat party will nominate a man for president and a woman for vice-president and the woman and man will win”.
Ford continued: “In that term of office of the president, the president will die and the woman will become president under the law or constitution.
“And once that barrier is broken, from then on men better be careful because they’ll have a hard, hard time even ever getting a nomination in the future. But that’s the way it’s going to happen.”
Commentators were quick to point out the parallels in his speech to the unprecedented turmoil of the current US election, after Mr Biden withdrew from the presidential race and named Kamala Harris as his successor.
The vice-president, who now has the broad support of the Democratic Party, including the recent high-profile endorsement of Barack Obama, is almost certain to be crowned the presidential nominee next month.
But while elements of his prophecy may appear to have come true, Ford believed in 1989 that it was likely to happen “in the next four or eight years”. More than three decades later, the US still hasn’t had a woman in the Oval Office.
It took until 2016 for Hillary Clinton to become the first female to win the presidential nomination of a major party and until 2021 for Ms Harris to become the first female vice-president of the US.
