Was Former President Ford Right to Pardon Nixon?
Ever since the death of former President Gerald Ford last week, pundits from all political persuasions have been retroactively validating Ford's controversial decision to give Richard Nixon a full pardon. The logic, parroted by all the geriatric journalists who have spent the last nine days lavishing praise upon Ford, is that it would have been a horrifically traumatic ordeal for the country if Nixon had been prosecuted for his role in the Watergate Hotel break-ins.
Given that I wasn't even born until three years after Watergate scandal crashed and burned, I'm in no position to support or reject this new conventional wisdom for this specific case, but I completely reject the implication that the President should be above the law "for the good of the country's morale". If the President guns down a nun in Central Park at high noon, should we also accept his successor's decision to grant a full pardon to "spare us from the national embarrassment" of prosecuting a former President for his crimes? Where is the threshold in which the crimes a President commit are deemed severe enough that he or she is brought to justice by the legal system he or she was ordered to uphold? Or does no such threshold exist?
The logic here is not only insulting, but dangerous. It reminds me of the frequent Republican talking point that criticism of the war in Iraq should be muted lest we "send the wrong message to the troops." Just as it's inconvenient for politicians who foolishly get the country involved in pointless and disastrous wars to face scrutiny for their actions, it's equally inconvenient for lawbreaking Presidents to face the same legal consequences for their actions as Bob in Cleveland does. But the real disservice to our country is hold our elected leaders above criticism and above the very law they were elected to uphold. If only someone could articulate this obvious logic to Bob Schieffer, or virtually anyone else in the punditocracy, who have mindlessly defended Nixon's pardon with the same one-dimensional logic this past week.
Given that I wasn't even born until three years after Watergate scandal crashed and burned, I'm in no position to support or reject this new conventional wisdom for this specific case, but I completely reject the implication that the President should be above the law "for the good of the country's morale". If the President guns down a nun in Central Park at high noon, should we also accept his successor's decision to grant a full pardon to "spare us from the national embarrassment" of prosecuting a former President for his crimes? Where is the threshold in which the crimes a President commit are deemed severe enough that he or she is brought to justice by the legal system he or she was ordered to uphold? Or does no such threshold exist?
The logic here is not only insulting, but dangerous. It reminds me of the frequent Republican talking point that criticism of the war in Iraq should be muted lest we "send the wrong message to the troops." Just as it's inconvenient for politicians who foolishly get the country involved in pointless and disastrous wars to face scrutiny for their actions, it's equally inconvenient for lawbreaking Presidents to face the same legal consequences for their actions as Bob in Cleveland does. But the real disservice to our country is hold our elected leaders above criticism and above the very law they were elected to uphold. If only someone could articulate this obvious logic to Bob Schieffer, or virtually anyone else in the punditocracy, who have mindlessly defended Nixon's pardon with the same one-dimensional logic this past week.
posted by Mark at 5:55 PM
3 Comments:
In a discussion about the passing of Gerald Ford, one conservative poster claimed that Ford did the right thing since Nixon did no wrong in Watergate. Um, excuse me? If that was the case, Nixon would not have resigned because the president has the best legal team American taxpayer money can buy and he would have been more than able to defend himself in court and turn the tide against his accusers. One flaw of the American legal system is that legal skill of the opposing lawyers is often a deciding factor.
Nixon really should not have been pardoned, because he jeopardized the integrity of American democracy.
If the principles the Constitution was written to defend still mattered anything when he was president, Nixon should have been tried for treason and upon pardoning him, Ford should have been impeached and investigated for possible ties to the scandals of the Nixon administration.
Some more good news, the Dem Convention in 08 will be held in Denver! Sorry that the "bad guys" will be infecting your neck of the woods with their convention.
Minnesota's demographic changes portend a more Republican-friendly state. The Democratic gains of 2006 may have slowed the trend, but the arithmatic is starting to pile on. The Democratic strongholds of Minnesota are all zero-growth counties/cities while many of the strongest Republican counties are among the fastest-growing counties in the entire Midwest. Unless our exurbia starts trending the same way as Northern Virginia (which I don't see happening anytime soon), Democratic victory in Minnesota will become increasingly challenging.
I'm glad Denver got the Dem convention. Good strategic city and a FAR better choice than New York City. If Tim Pawlenty hadn't been re-elected Governor in November, I wouldn't care about the GOP convention in my home state. But Pawlenty's already respectable veepstakes stock went up further following the narrow victory in an otherwise Democratic landslide, and running mate coronation in Pawlenty's backyard would make for dramatic TV. Particularly if McCain gets the GOP nomination, I'd bet money on Pawlenty being the running mate.
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