THE VICE PRESIDENCY: The Veep Most Likely to Succeed?

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The new Vice President pledged to "set a high example of respect for the crushing and lonely burdens which the nation lays upon the President." He spoke of a "visible and living unity" in the nation and promised "to do the very best that I can for America." For a nation that has become all too used to hearing bitterness from its politicians, there was a simple eloquence in his words and a deeply felt one in his delivery. Daughter Susan, 16, was moved to tears.

Despite Ford's small and forgivable joke that he is "a Ford, not a Lincoln," his inauguration may well come to be both greatly noted and long remembered. It was a constitutional first: though the office of Vice President has been vacant 16 times before, it has never been filled in the middle of an Administration. Ford's ascension was made possible by the 25th Amendment, passed in 1967, which authorizes the President to fill vacancies in the office of the Vice President, subject to confirmation of his nominee by a majority vote in both houses of Congress. Ford was approved easily, winning by a vote of 92 to 3 in the Senate and 387 to 35 in the House.

Grueling Round. Most important, Ford's swearing-in moved the plight of the Nixon presidency into yet another phase. Now, for the first time since the Watergate monster took shape eight months ago, there is a potential presidential successor who, under the circumstances, is both politically acceptable to most Democrats and politically legitimate in the eyes of Republicans. After Spiro Agnew's downfall, the next in line to the presidency was Speaker of the House Carl Albert, a Democrat. Had he been called on to succeed Nixon, Albert could never have lived down the suspicion that his party had stolen the White House from its rightful Republican occupants.

Ford's chances for succession seemed remote at the time that he was nominated by Nixon in mid-October.

Less than ten days later, however, after the Saturday Night Massacre of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus, Washington heard an unprecedented chorus demanding Nixon's impeachment. Many Congressmen began to believe that Ford might well have to perform a Vice President's only important function: to take over for a departed President.

Congressional Democrats,, who had been toying with the idea of holding Ford's confirmation hostage until Nixon released all presidential tapes containing Watergate evidence, quickly backtracked. Albert made it clear that he did not want to take the place of a Republican President in whose impeachment he might be involved, and that Ford must be quickly confirmed.

Ford faced a grueling round of inquiries that made him the most closely scrutinized public official in the U.S.