Pardon me, but I say Ford blew it

January 6, 2007

Guest Post by Morbo

I was out of town last week and missed the opportunity to comment on the death of former President Gerald R. Ford. I know this is late, but I wanted to add my two cents.

The media line seemed uniformly to be one of thanks to Ford for sparing the nation some sort of trauma by pardoning the disgraced Richard M. Nixon. If anyone in the mainstream media dared to dissent from this point of view, I missed it.

This column by Richard Ben-Veniste that ran in the Washington Post was typical. Ben-Veniste, former chief of the Watergate Task Force of the Watergate Special Prosecutor’ Office, wrote:

At bottom, the decision to pardon Nixon was a political judgment properly within the bounds of Ford’s constitutional authority. The specter of a former president in the criminal dock as our country moved into its bicentennial year was profoundly disturbing. I believe Jerry Ford acted in accord with what he sincerely felt were the best interests of the country; that there was no secret quid pro quo with Nixon for a pardon in return for resignation; and that Ford, a compassionate man, was moved by the palpable suffering of a man who had lost so much.

The final straw for me was seeing an editorial cartoon showing Ford arriving in Heaven. He was being greeted there by a figure wearing a shirt marked “History.” The figure was handing Ford a document marked “Pardon.”

So that settles it. The verdict of history is in, and Ford acted with honor and courage. By letting Nixon off the hook, he literally saved the nation!

I respectfully dissent. I was only 12 when Ford took office and will admit that the Watergate scandal was not at the top of my concerns back then. But looking at what unfolded then 32 years later, with the benefit of more knowledge about the situation, I don’t think it’s outrageous to suggest that Nixon should have been put on trial.

Last week, the party line among the self-appointed media pundits was that there is no way the nation could have handled the trial of The People v. Richard M. Nixon. Why not? One thing I noticed that was missing from all of the columns was an explanation of why Nixon had to be let off scot-free. It was merely asserted as an obvious fact.

I don’t buy it. To me, letting Nixon walk only reinforced the idea that there are two systems of justice in America: one for the rich and powerful, who are usually untouchable, and one for everyone else.

Nixon committed serious crimes. In this country, when you commit serious crimes, you should be placed under arrest and tried before a jury of your peers. No exceptions. Far from inspiring trauma, putting Nixon on trial would have powerfully reaffirmed one of our country’s basic principles: the rule of law. It would have sent a message to every American and even the world: In the United States, everyone must abide by the law — from janitors all the way up to the president. We take this very seriously.

Nor do I accept the claim that Nixon was punished enough by the shame he felt. A bank president who embezzles $16 million undoubtedly feels shame when he gets caught. We should still send him to prison.

Ben-Veniste’s argument is so weak he even has to drag the bicentennial into it. Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974 — nearly two full years before the bicentennial occurred. The crux of any legal action against him would have been disposed of before July 4, 1976. But even if he had been on trial or pursuing appeals during the celebration, so what? What better way to underscore the importance of our founding principles than reaffirm the rule of law?

I also don’t accept that the American people were in no mood to see Nixon “in the criminal dock.” In fact, they seemed to want punishment. In November of 1976 the voters elected Jimmy Carter and handed the Democrats an expanded majority in Congress.

Finally, I’ve talked to plenty of progressives over the years older than me who still remember feeling betrayed when Nixon walked. Sure, they were never Nixon fans to begin with, but the opinion remains common more than three decades later. This would seem to indicate that believing that Nixon should have been put on trial is not such a far-out view.

I’m not saying a Nixon trial would not have been difficult for the nation. Of course it would have. But a great nation need not fear undertaking a task that is difficult — especially when it’s also the right thing to do. A great nation need not fear big challenges. I believe America was up to that challenge. Thanks to Ford, we never got the chance to find out.

I was 17 at the time (linving in the DC suburbs) and I remember one argument for the pardon was Nixon could be called in to court to testify against other Watergate crooks and couldn’t claim the 5th because he couldn’t be charged with anything. Well, that never happened.

He should have been tried, convicted and jailed. Ford didn’t save us from anything but the handwringing of the DC insiders and elites who think the people of the US are incapable of seeing their “heroes” treated like ordinary people. We survived the “constitutional crisis” of the Clinton Impeachment. Nixon would have been a cakewalk.

  • I am really surprised that this article by Bob Woodward has received more play than it has. I heard it mentioned a few times during last weekend coverage of Ford’s death, but it has largely dropped of the radar screen since. It is a really important story and should put an end to the idea that Ford pardoned Nixon to spare the country.

    Months before Richard M. Nixon set a relatively unknown Michigan congressman named Gerald R. Ford on the path to the White House, Nixon turned to Ford, who called himself the embattled president’s “only real friend,” to get him out of trouble.
    During one of the darkest days of the Watergate scandal, Nixon secretly confided in Ford, at the time the House minority leader. He begged for help. He complained about fair-weather friends and swore at perceived rivals in his own party. “Tell the guys, goddamn it, to get off their ass and start fighting back,” Nixon pleaded with Ford in one call recorded by the president’s secret taping system.

    And Ford did. “Anytime you want me to do anything, under any circumstances, you give me a call, Mr. President,” he told Nixon during that May 1, 1973, conversation. “We’ll stand by you morning, noon and night.”
    […]
    …Ford’s eventual decision to pardon Nixon, the most momentous decision of his short presidency and almost certainly the one that cost him any chance of winning the White House in his own right two years later. Ford became president on Aug. 9, 1974; he pardoned Nixon just a month later. “I think that Nixon felt I was about the only person he could really trust on the Hill,” Ford said during the 2005 interview.

    Ford returned the feeling.

    “I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I always treasured our relationship. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon, because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn’t want to see my real friend have the stigma,” Ford said in the interview.

  • Well, Morbo, I have to respectfully disagree with your respectful disagreement.

    If you think, after looking at the trials in the Hague (trial of Milosevic), after looking at other high-profile trials, that Nixon’s trial would have been”disposed of” in only two years, you are betraying a lack of knowledge of the legal system. Do you think that every point of dissension and disagreement in the pre-trial process, or the trial process itself, would not have been litigated and appealed all the way to the Supreme Court point by point? If they had gotten to the point by July 4,1976, that they could see the trial starting in a year, they’d have called it progress! The trial would have been going on in the middle of the next presidential election, which would have been a real mess.

    Sorry, but those who were under about 20, and not fully-grounded in an understanding of politics, have no grounds for commenting intelligently on Watergate because you don’t have a clue, and all those comments do is betray ignorance. (Said in a polite tone)

    Richard Ben-Veniste himself – who was a senior member of the Special Prosecutor’s team, a survivor of the Saturday Night Massacre, and the whole process – did not think at the time as he does now. Back then, he said “I really wanted to see that shovel nose sticking out from between bars.” And a lot of us, myself included, agreed with him. But today I agree with what he said in this op-ed, and it’s not for having downed any kool-aid or having decided to partake of the “common wisdom.” Most of the time, “common wisdom” is only common, but in rare instances like this it is actually wisdom, and people are merely recognizing that fact.

    If you think today is poisonous, if you think today is partisan, you would be amazed at how partisan things were back then. It came from the war, and then focused on Nixon as the symbol of whatever people thought about the country, and they were strong opinions strongly held. Back then, people I knew got shot for their political opinions (Admittedly not a lot, but one is too many). That I know of, that has yet to happen nowadays.

    The country was so severely divided that the division ended marriages that I know of. I know in my own family it led to more prolonged silences over the Sunday dinner table with the in-laws than any discussion of Vietnam ever did, in the expressed hope of my then mother-in-law that we could outlast all this and finally put things back together. If you think it is hard to convince a rightwinger nowadays of “the truth” as you perceive it, it was even harder then.

    That time was so bitter and left such lasting memories even now, that it is the father of everything going on today. Every one of the Bush people got their start back then, and they hold grudges over it that out-do any unreconstructed Southerner after the Civil War.

    If you want to look at what this could have led to, look at the English Civil War. Even after all that was finally “resolved” in 1688, English politics lived in fear of it breaking out all over again until the coronation of Victoria 150 years later. We could have ended up in a for-real civil war over what was going on then.

    Richard Nixon may not have given us the satisfaction of ending up in jail, and I may have had to wait 30 years to get my satisfaction by peeing on his grave, but he was punished anbd he died still in disgrace even if he was allowed a decent funeral, and things didn’t get worse. As we are discovering today, constitutional republics are fragile things. We still deal today with the aftereffects of the Civil War 150 years ago. Tossing “the egg” in the air in the hope you or one of your friends will be able to catch it before it goes splat on the ground is not a good idea.

    Severre constitutional crises wreck republics. Look at history, and you see their wreckage littering the landscape. You have to resolve these things with the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve things at the time. It’s the best you should hope for.

  • Ford didn’t pardon Nixon to save the country. He did it to save the Republican Party which preferred that the saga of the scoundrel Republican President go away as quickly as possible. A pardon caused a dust-up for a few months. A trial would have kept the matter in public view for several more years.

  • Okay, I’ll stick my head idnto the buzz saw: was Nixon more of a criminal than Lyndon Johnson? If Lyndon Johnson gets to go home to the ranch, why shouldn’t Nixon?

  • old joke

    Nixon bumps into Ford on the way out of the White House and says, “Pardon me”.

    Ford, “Not for thirty days.”

    General feeing at the time. This has been discussed around the blogsphere and I personally feel Ford didn’t do anyone any favors. If people had gone to jail for serious crimes, not just the “cover-up” then maybe, just maybe, this current cast of characters, which is the same cast in many ways, wouldn’t have been so eager to do it again. That’s why impeachment may be necessary. The irony is I don’t think the Washington establishment, including Democrats wants to do it. But Bush is so rooted to unreality, they may be forced to.

    I think people also tend to forget the Nixon era lawlessness was about more than the just Watergate. Think Counterintellpro, “surreptious entry”, illegal wiretapping, burglary of Daniel Ellsberg’s shrinks office, Cambodia bombing and “incursions”, Christmas eve bombing of Hanoi, etc, etc.. For those to young to remember or so old we’ve forgotten, take a quick trip down memory lane. If those illegalities had been addressed……

  • For the record you can find Nixon’s articles of impeachment here.
    Bruce, let’s do a side-by-side comparison. Could you give us a list of Johnson’s criminal actions?

  • Dick Nixon was a crook, and he deserved a trial to prove his innocence in light of all the damning evidence to the contrary. I have made this judgement, because Jerry Ford never let the American legal system venture into just how much of a crook Nixon was. Yes, I think these media pundits have caused insult and injury to the historical record. Ford lost an election because of the pardon, and these pundits see it as a sacrifice. News agences failed to note that the American public was pissed and needed closure on the dispicable anti-democratic crimes the Nixon WH perpetrated upon the American public, and it was Jerry Ford who prevented such a so needed national catharsis at the time. The insult and injury to history is that the pardon was political, there was nothing lofty about it. It reflected repolitik Republican action at the time. -Kevo

  • Ford declared that the President is above the law. Why should Bush and all future Presidents presume anything different? What would a President have to do to be impeached – when would it not disrupt the nation?

  • Rege asked: Could you give us a list of Johnson’s criminal actions?

    Here.

    Johnson’s criminal actions:

    The lie that was the so-called “Tonkin Gulf Incident” – which was nothing like what was not a defense action by two destroyers against attacking North Vietnamese torpedo boats but an action in support of a raid on North Vietnamese territory (Hon Me Island, which was conveniently left off the maps published in the newspapers of the time). Only a Lt(jg) on the Turner Joy and an enlisted fire control technician on the Maddox managed to keep the two ships from opening fire on each other. This information was known at the time to the commanding admiral of the force (who I worked for), and it was communicated to Washington. There Johnson took it and twisted it 180 degrees and used it as his excuse to get the Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed which he used as his “authorization to use military force” as Bush has used his. Johnson went to war on a bigger lie than Bush did.

    What we need is a constitutional amendment that keeps assholes from Texas from being elected to any national office. Johnson and Bush – two Texas criminals in one lifetime is enough.

  • Tom, remember Ann Richards. Not all Texans are criminals.

    Apparently fabricating excuses for wars is not restricted to the current era. Think about the Spanish American war.

  • Gotta agree with Tom Cleaver – as much as I resented at the time Nixon getting pardoned, it also was a huge relief, both personally, and for the nation, to put him behind us and make him “old news”. And it was amazing how quickly that happened and how cathartic that was. People who want Nixon’s blood now, in the abstract, and I do acknowledge the point, just don’t realize how *weary* we were all back then. Years of hating Johnson and the war that ripped apart American society followed by years of Nixon and Watergate. Ford came in – he was a normal guy, for once, and he promised “normal” times (as best as they could be with the biggest economic downturn since the Depression staring us in the face). It really was exactly what America needed at the time.

    On a different note, I happened to come across a doumentary about Fidel Castro on PBS last night. Was interesting the overt overtures of “detente” that Ford and Kissinger made in the mid 1970s at a time when the Soviet Union and Cuba were clearly ascendant. I found it interesting that the Ford era really is tied so much into Kissinger and detante – yet the discussion when he died seemed to be solely about the pardon. I wonder how the right wingers would have dealt with the whole “detente” thing if they didn’t have the pardon thing to allow them to avoid it. I think Ford isn’t really the right wing saint that they pretended he was.

  • Watching the Watergate hearings between classes at college was more interesting than any course I was taking at the time. Anytime Tricky Dick akppeared on TV we greeted him with a variation of his own double victory-sign gesture, ours known as the flying double-bird. A bunch of us gathered for his resignation speech, and before he finished we were all throwing watermellon at the TV (cut pieces, not whole watermellons). The angrier among us smeared the juice over his face and stuck seeds up his nose.

    The important thing to me at the time was the he was out of office. Ford’s subsequent pardon was another in lesson in how government “works,” and while many of us were pissed we really did want to move on.

    Within the period of a few years, I’d seen the turmoil surrounding the civil rights movement, the madness in Vietnam, defections to Canada, drug overdoses, wiretapping of people I knew, three assasinations, the burning of whole parts of major American cities, the Chicago convention, the Kent State shootings, the resignation of a VP, Watergate, the threat of impeachment and the resignation of a President. I was exhausted, and I wanted to get on with the brighter future i saw through my young, idealistic eyes.

    It was only later that I became torn between moving on and justice for crimes committed. I’m still torn and probably always will be.

  • Tom, The Gulf of Tonkin incident is what I thought of as well.

    The Nixon action which most closely parallels Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin ruse was his secret bombing of Cambodia. Although the House Judiciary Committee consider a fourth article of impeachment based on this bombing, it was never introduced because there weren’t the votes to pass it. Here is how Time described the situation at the time.

    Although doomed to failure, the articles on the bombing of Cambodia and the President’s personal finances were debated sharply and at length. On the Cambodia article, the basic facts were not challenged. The U.S. made more than 3,600 B-52 sorties and dropped 100,000 tons of bombs on that nation at a time when Nixon was publicly proclaiming that its neutrality was being respected. The Administration later contended that the secrecy was necessary to maintain Cambodian Prince Sihanouk’s tacit approval of the action, which was aimed at Communist troops in border mountains, not at civilians. The arguments were carried most effectively by New York Democrat Elizabeth Holtzman and Alabama’s Flowers.

    HOLTZMAN: But Prince Sihanouk was deposed on March 18, 1970, and there are three years thereafter that this Administration, including the President, lied to the Congress and lied to the American people without any justification … Congress may very well have approved it. But… it was the right of Congress to have known … Deceit and deception over issues as grave as… waging war cannot be tolerated in a constitutional democracy.

    FLOWERS: This is a bad rap for President Nixon. We might as well resurrect President Johnson and impeach him posthumously for Viet Nam and Laos as impeach President Nixon for Cambodia. We might as well resurrect the memory of John Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs. President Truman in Korea.

    The debate revealed that at least eight hawkish members of Congress had been advised confidentially of the bombing. “How foolish we would be to impeach this President for that particular incident when the whole South Vietnamese involvement was one series of mistakes, one right after the other,” declared Republican Railsback.

    Given the failure of Congress to consider this article, I think it is highly unlikely that had Nixon gone on trial, that he would have been facing charges based on the Cambodian bombing. While I certainly think that a president could be and, in Nixon’s case, should be impeached for waging illegal wars, I don’t think that trying an ex-president for his foreign policy actions would have set a good precedent. That would open a pandora’s box of political abuse. Therefore if a case is to be made, that would convince me, that Johnson should have also been tried for criminal behavior, then it should be on the basis of charges other than misleading us into war.

    Let me add that I do think that the US should turn over politicians, including, ex-presidents to the Hauge for international war crime trials. Had that happened to Nixon, perhaps BushCo’s Iraq adventure would never have happened.

  • I agree with Morbo. Ford seemed like a nice guy, but he was a politician and he did what he did for his buddy, his own shot at the presidency and the good of his political party.

    If there had been a blogosphere it would have exploded then.

    I’m a little suspicious about the accuracy of Woodward quoting dead guys. He seems to like to put words in people’s mouths. I think he really wants to direct.

    I also think that you don’t have to be fuckin’ Zelig (with you or your ancestors magically appearing at every important juncture in American history) to have a valid opinion on this subject.

    Johnson was, in everything outside the war, a prety good president. And he stood down when he saw the mess he had made.

    Being president means you always get a soft landing with a golden parachute.

    Recommended reading: Martin#1, Rege#2, Dee#6, Rege#7, Kevo#8, ML#9, Ed#10,

  • Compare the treatment of Nixon for real crimes against the people and the treatment of Clinton for no crimes except against the cigar.

  • I’m a little suspicious about the accuracy of Woodward quoting dead guys. –Dale
    I don’t think your skepticism is justified. This is not a case where Woodward has miraculously quoted from a conversation for which the only witnesses are the participants and Woodward wasn’t one of them. Such Woodward quotes are highly suspect.

    In this case, my guess would be that Woodward taped his conversation. I base this on the fact that Ford was cooperating with Woodward for a forthcoming book and that there was an embargo on the interviews content. Hence I don’t see Ford objecting recording interview. Further we do know that Woodward has taped other interview.

  • I too am tired of all the love that Ford is getting for pardoning Nixon. By letting Nixon walk and even trying to allow him to keep all of his presidential records and tapes; Ford actively participated in the cover up. Those of us who thought that Ford’s primary reason for being selected vice president was to pardon Nixon were brushed aside as cynics. It turns out that Ford had no intention of allowing the facts of the Nixon’s actions come to light. And now we are supposed to believe that Ford is the great healer? That burying your head in the sand and ignoring what is going on around you is the best way to respond to crisis? The abrupt pardon prevented the country from finding out all that was done and how much the constitution had been compromised. A trial would have been well understood by Americans because that is our system. It would have proven to the world that no one is above the law in our country. Instead, we acknowledged that special people get special privileges in our country and set the ground work for future abuses of power by future administrations.

    In response to comment #3: the great divisive issue of the time was the Vietnam War and fear of communism; not Nixon’s impeachment. As the details of Watergate became more known there was little doubt that Nixon would be forced to leave office. In no way did the controversy about Nixon compare to the massive demonstrations held in response to our involvement in Vietnam. Your own personal experiences aside, pardoning Nixon did much to inflame the population and guarantee a massive rebuke of the republicans.

  • “Being president means you always get a soft landing with a golden parachute”

    Dale, that’s my fear with the Bush presidency. Bush will ride off into the sunset with a handsome pension from our tax dollars because no matter how malicious he was in his selfish pursuit of power and corrupt practices, it will all be shrugged off with the comment that “he did what he thought was best for the country.” I guess being president means never having to say you’re sorry.

  • I haven’t stated this explicitly yet, but I do believe that a trail would have been in the country’s best interest. It likely would have laid bare Nixon’s actions for all to view and made it far more difficult for Nixon to resurrect his image after leaving office. For those who disagree, let me pose a question. Do you not think that Ford should have at least demanded a full confession from Nixon prior to issuing the pardon? Ford himself, for self interested reasons wishes that he had.

    Ford knew the best-known act of his own presidency would be Nixon’s pardon. He insisted to me he had no second thoughts: “I felt so strongly that I had to get this damn thing off my desk.” He admitted that “sure, I would have appreciated it” if, in return, Nixon had made a stronger statement confessing guilt for Watergate offenses, which would have helped shield Ford from the firestorm the pardon created.

    In our conversation, Ford said he suspected that the reason Nixon had refused to sign such a confession was that Alexander Haig, the chief of staff he had inherited from Nixon, had tipped off his exiled old boss that Ford was going to pardon him. (Haig strongly denies this.) Ford said he was “shocked and saddened” when he discovered years later (from James Cannon’s 1994 book “Time and Chance”) “what the role of Al Haig turned out to be. At the time, I had no idea. I assumed he was totally loyal to me … I’m sure what Haig apparently transmitted to Nixon convinced Nixon that he didn’t have to make an outright admission of guilt.”

  • I don’t think your skepticism is justified
    Comment by rege

    You’re probably right in this case for the reasons you gave in #18. In general, though, Woodward’s credibility with me is just above testimony by cigarette or oil executives.

    He and Oliver Stone have written more fictitious dialogue than Shakespeare.

    I guess being president means never having to say you’re sorry.
    Comment by petorado

    I fear you’re right. Too bad Bush didn’t die young in Ryan O’Neal’s arms.

    Hey, was ALI McGraw a Muslim?

  • I never have cared much about vengeance, especially against rich old men. Putting someone in Club Fed for a while won’t undo the damage he’s done. What infuriated me about the pardon was that it denied the rest of us knowledge which could only have been obtained in open court. That’s the real loss, and for that I’ll always condemn “don’t-play-by-the-rules” Ford.

  • I think NIxon could have been put on trial, as well.

    However, when I look at the crimes of Nixon, and compare them to more recent presidents, I have to say I think Reagan was, in general, ten times worse than Nixon, and Bush has been, both in general and electorally, at least ten times worse than Reagan….

    yet, they have been careful not to leave a paper (or tape) trail, and have never felt themselves bound to laws, so that they shred and destroy with impunity.

    So my sense of outrage about Nixon isn’t very high, knowing that far worse criminals have escaped consequences entirely.

  • Tom, when you brought up Lyndon Johnson, I thought you were going to go after the accusations that he was personally involved in a string of murders. I’m not a conspiracy person, but reading about those things I do wonder….

    As to the Gulf of Tonkin — yes, that was bad. But it seems to me I’ve read things that were equally morally indefensible from Eisenhower onward. I know that I found it ludicrous that we thought it reasonable to mine the harbors of another country, steal the president of Panama and try him for not obeying US laws, a bombing run meant to take out a different foreign leader who we weren’t at war with, various other assassination attempts. JFK’s talk of a nonexistent missile gap and questionable votes in Chicago are among these.

    The consequences of the Gulf of Tonkin talk were certainly particularly bad. Just as the consequences of the lies that lead to the Iraq war. But if we’re singling presidents out for political crimes, I don’t know that Johnson deserves a leading role.

  • This is a pretty fascinating discussion. Looking back, I think a “perfect world” trial would have illuminated the depth and breadth of Nixon’s abuse of power and the pathology of his presidency. It would have been nice to have cold, hard, indisputable evidence that his RESIGNATION (pardon aside for the moment) was the central act to healing the country’s psyche. Instead, we have Republican revisionists continuously asserting that Nixon was brought down by the treachery of his enemies rather than his own acts. Part of the legacy is Cheney and Rumsfeld taking it upon themselves to make a restoration (of a Nixon-style imperial presidency) inside a restoration (Bush 43 / Bush 41). Even with the pardon, partisans on the right were not satisfied until they impeached a Democrat for personal conduct. And, let’s face it, since Clinton was not forced from office, they still are not satisfied.

    Yes, it would be nice if a trial had slammed the door on the intrepretation of Nixon on the important matter of his abuse of executive power. It would have been nice if a trial had convinced the doubters that both justice and the best interests of this country had been served by his ouster from office. I simply cannot be certain that a trial of Nixon would have accomplished those things. I suspect Nixon’s supporters and those who smeared watermelon juice on his televised image would have continued to believe what they wanted / needed to believe about him. I think we could have “taken” it, though. I do not think the earth would have tilted off its axis. I guess I conclude that the pardon was “denial,” and not catharsis. We have been stringing out our cartharsis ever since.

  • It would have sent a message to every American and even the world: In the United States, everyone must abide by the law — from janitors all the way up to the president. We take this very seriously.

    It would be great if this were actually true. Anyone over the age of 30 knows that this isn’t true. The rule of law applies only to the powerless. The upper echelon of the political class in this country have put themselves above the law, or, more specifically, bend the law to their needs. Of course it’s true that Nixon should have been impeached, tried, and convicted. All honest people know this. Instead we were told “he’s suffered enough.” His crimes against the office of President and against the nation were secondary. Only Nixon’s suffering mattered, the rule of law be damned.

    It truly sickens me to hear the claptrap about “healing the nation” as a result of Ford’s pre-emptive strike against the nation’s laws. I haven’t heard a single dissenting opinion expressed about this issue in the corporate-owned media. It’s disgusting and bad for the nation.

  • That’s going to be my defense if I ever commit a major crime.

    “look…okay, I may have muredered all those people, but THINK of the COMMUNITY…spare them the self-doubt and embarrassment of having all these things come out…you should pardon me!”

  • For me, the most objectionable aspect of the pardon was its pre-emptive nature. That robbed the nation of an accounting of Nixon’s crimes. Prosecution wasn’t the only option; we could have had a national reconciliation inquiry, a la South Africa, as Matt Yglesias has pointed out. I think Ford was a decent guy, but his actions aided Nixon’s cover ups, and that wasn’t a good thing for the country. The pre-emptive pardon also established a very unfortunate precedent, which the first Bush made use of to cover up his involvement in Iran-Contra, and which I fully expect the second Bush to use as well. (All of you people hoping to see Scooter Libby in the docket and Cheney testifying: forget it, it will never happen.)

  • I was only eleven years old at the time, but I remember Watergate, “Tricky Dicky” Nixon, and the famous (or infamous) Ford pardon. Even at my tender and unsophisticated age, the lesson I remember getting out of the whole thing was that with power and money you can get away with anything.

    Looks like that’s what the current administration got out of it, too.

  • What Morbo said.

    I’m sure plenty of criminals would like to be pardoned that aren’t. We need punishments, not just to punish the guilty, but to serve as a warning to the criminals who follow. I suspect that Cheney would not be running amok if Nixon had gone to jail. He saw from the front row how to get away with murder, and now he is murdering people and giving us all the finger. Trials are uncomfortable for people, but that’s not the fault of the judge (who could throw out the charges and “pardon” the criminals, its the fault of the criminals for committing the crimes.

    I have relatives who act as though Nixon really didn’t do anything much wrong, and a trial would have settled that once and for all.

    I piss on Ford’s grave. He covered for his good buddy, and left us a new crop of criminals to rape the Constitution.

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