Really remembering Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford, the only unelected President of the United States, has died at the age of 93. Many have stepped forward to say a kind word about him, as we should about any man who has died. But Ford was more than a man, he was a historical figure, and kindness toward the dead should never trump an accurate account of history.
The Vietnam War ended on President Ford’s watch, over the objections of Ford, which ought to tarnish his nice-guy reputation just a bit. In 1974 Ford made a speech to Congress trying to persuade them to vote more funding for Vietnam. Congress refused, and some freshmen members of Congress got up and walked out of the speech, to their credit. Today’s Congress could follow that example.
Ford has an entirely undeserved reputation, in the mainstream media at least, as the “healer of the nation” because of the Nixon pardon. The Chicago Tribune’s comments are typical: Stanley I. Kutler claims that “the pardon spared us years of court proceedings, riding a wave of national obsession about Watergate.” Indeed, that’s what Ford said he was doing when he pardoned Nixon for all crimes he committed as President, even though no charges had yet been filed.
The obvious response is, where were the conservatives when the Bill Clinton legal proceedings were going on and on and on, all the way to impeachment? Where was the concern for “national obsession” then? (And since when does “national obsession” give anybody a Get Out of Jail Free card? By that logic, O.J. Simpson should have been pardoned before trial.) Allow me to supply the obvious answer: the interminable Clinton investigations were allowed to proceed because they were politically expedient for Republicans. And the years of court proceedings against Richard Nixon were halted—before charges could even be filed!—because it would have been disastrous for Republicans. Go ahead and call me cynical; I learned how to be a cynic from Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The message of the pardon is simply that you can get away with anything if you have sufficiently powerful friends. The long history of Presidential criminality since Nixon tells me that the message was heard loud and clear.