Thursday, December 28, 2006
Editorial: An accidental hero, or goat?
The late President Ford's mark on history will depend on the long-term consequences of the Nixon pardon, played out over many decades.
From the RoundTable blog
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The legacy of Gerald R. Ford's brief, accidental presidency rests on that of his predecessor, Richard M. Nixon.
If, by pardoning Nixon and thwarting his prosecution for Watergate-related crimes, Ford denied posterity the collective memory of how internal rot ate away a devious administration and divided the nation, his signature act should blacken the modest record of his 896-day term.
If, however, Nixon's misdeeds are not forgotten and Ford's stunning act of forgiveness is remembered in the context of those bitter years, history might judge him more kindly.
In the short term, it already has.
In September 1974, Ford announced that, as an act of national healing, he would grant a full and absolute pardon to the man who had resigned office just a month earlier to avoid facing impeachment for his role in the Watergate scandal. Rather than bind the nation's wounds, Ford reopened them.
The new president -- the only president, thus far, to reach that office after being appointed vice president -- stirred up new rancor. Nixon critics accused Ford of having struck a deal: the promise of a presidential pardon should Nixon be convicted and lose office in exchange for being named to replace disgraced Vice President Spiro Agnew, who had resigned earlier.
Ford steadfastly denied any such deal, and his forthrightness and otherwise unquestioned integrity support him. Still, the pardon shattered a disillusioned nation's brief optimism that a fresh political wind had swept the capital clean.
Ford's decision surely cost him re-election in 1976, against Democrat Jimmy Carter.
In the decades that followed, though, the shock of the pardon wore off and Ford's act proved to be the period at the end of the sentence, closure for that era that he had rightly called "our long national nightmare."
As a result, Nixon never stood convicted of wrongdoing and later was able to rehabilitate himself as an informal elder statesman in foreign affairs. New generations might be tempted, at their peril, to minimize his flagrant abuses of power while in office.
Though the power of the presidency was undoubtedly diminished for some time, subsequent presidents seemed to take from the pardon the unfortunate notion that they were somehow above the law, or beyond justice in any case.
What can only be surmised is what agonies the pardon spared the nation. Even damning evidence against Nixon had failed to unite a fractured country behind impeachment. Rifts even within families ran so deep, the upheavals in society -- over Vietnam, civil rights, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll -- loomed so large that the national spirit seemed close to shattering.
Ford cauterized the wound. America moved on.
For that difficult and self-sacrificing decision, Ford probably deserves the nation's grudging thanks.
