President Bush, former presidents and Washington veterans remembered Gerald Ford last night as a "rock of stability" whose pardon of scandal-tarred Richard Nixon helped heal a divided country.
Cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices and military leaders joined Ford's widow, Betty, 88, inside Washington's cavernous National Cathedral to honor the memory of Ford, the 38th president who died a week ago.
Mr Bush, speaking with Ford's flag-draped casket lying before him, said Ford's decision to pardon Nixon in 1974 after replacing him in the White House probably cost him the presidency.
The pardon is now seen by many historians as essential to having ended America's greatest political crisis that had divided the country. But at the time, Ford was assailed for it and lost the 1976 election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.
Carter, now 82, attended the memorial service along with the remaining former presidents, Bill Clinton, 60, and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, 82.
"President Ford's time in office was brief, but history will long remember the courage and common sense that helped restore trust in the workings of our democracy," Mr Bush said.
Or as his father put it: "Jerry Ford's decency was the ideal remedy for the deception of Watergate," the scandal that drove Nixon to resign the presidency.
With the Iraq war looming as a source of Washington combat in 2007, a political truce was in effect for a national day of mourning for Ford, whose body later was flown to Grand Rapids, Michigan, for burial.
In the Washington audience were many critics of Bush's Iraq policy. Seated near Mr Bush in the front pew was Carter, a frequent critic. Honorary pallbearers included Brent Scowcroft, who was former President Bush's national security adviser and cautioned him against sending U.S. troops into Baghdad in the first Gulf War in 1991.
Nearby was former Secretary of State James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group report offering Bush recommendations for changing course in Iraq seems to have largely been ignored by Bush as he considers a change in policy to be announced soon.
Elsewhere were former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has been critical of Iraq, as well as former Vice President Al Gore.