Forty years later, and few acts still confound and divide the American people more than Gerald Fords pardon of Richard Nixon. Many scholars and historians (including my friend Rick Perlstein) hold that the pardon was a mistake...that it crippled Fords presidency, fatally wounding Republican moderates and letting the Right Wing achieve supremacy in the party; that it injected an irreparable dose of cynicism into our national psyche that still scars us; that it was simply a misguided quid pro quo for putting Ford into the White House to begin with. But I feel that it was not only the right thing for Ford to do, but the only logical option left to him. He was correct in saying that putting Nixon on trial would have consumed the publics attention, at a time when the nation and its political leaders needed to focus on other matters, and to let the toxic cancer that was Watergate go, once and for all. And no one has ever quite explained how Richard Nixon could have ever have had a fair trial; where would 12 jurors have been found who held no opinion on Nixon or Watergate? And what would it have done to US prestige around the world for us to drag a former Chief Executive into the dock, and potentially imprison him afterward? Isnt that the kind of thing banana republics do? And Ford could not have put off the decision any longer. The Grand Jury was about to release their indictments, and Nixon almost certainly would have been among them. Special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski had privately told Ford that he had absolutely no desire to put Nixon on trial, and all but begged the President to issue a pardon. As Ford said, I could, and therefore I must. But he really didnt have to. He could have refused to issue a pardon, instead saying he would consider commuting Nixons sentence should he be found guilty in court. That would have been a popular move, and probably would have helped the Republicans hold onto a few more Congressional seats in that Novembers election. A popular move...but cowardly. Instead...even though he knew it would most likely prove fatal to his presidency, and would prove controversial long after he had left the White House...Gerald Ford did the right thing, the brave thing. The country hated him for it at the time, but then as now, the nation should drop to its knees and thank Providence that Ford was the man in the Oval Office, and that he spared the US from a devastating orgy of anger and recriminations. Because as Teddy Roosevelt once said, “The best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing. https://youtube/watch?v=3lI-buJHdk0
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 22:36:36 +0000
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