Ford, Moderation, and the Pardon
However, with that growing respect over the past twenty years has emerged something far more questionable, in my eyes. That is a growing belief that his pardon of Nixon was correct, and indeed courageous.
Courageous? Perhaps. It almost certainly cost him reelection. Correct? No.
Let’s take a look at Ford’s statement in granting Nixon his pardon. He gives several reasons for his action.
1. Concern that that a fair trial would be impossible and that any conviction could be overturned.
2. Concern that “ugly passions would again be aroused” by the process of a long trial.
3. His personal concern for Nixon and his family.
4. His belief that Nixon had suffered enough.
The first two are the more substantial. However, neither is as strong as may appear on its face.
Trials of notoriety had been held throughout American history in which damning evidence had been publicly aired. Consider the trial of Jack Ruby. At one level, it might seem to support Ford’s concern because the Texas Court of Appeals overturned his conviction, ruling that a change of venue should have been granted.
But look more carefully. A change of venue would not have reduced the percentage of prospective jurors who would have seen Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald on national television. Nor did anyone then or later suggest that Ruby should not be tried because of the visibility of his crime. The problem of venue in Dallas stemmed from the sense that the entire city felt on trial for the events of the weekend of November 22. Locating the trial of Nixon outside of D.C. would have been prudent, and the debate over where the trial should be held would have been interesting. But a good judge could have kept that debate from getting out of hand, and unless one abandons all faith in the jury system, the juror’s previous knowledge of the events of Watergate would not have been a huge obstacle.
The concern with ugly passions and polarization also had a basis in fact. The Watergate Saga had dragged on a long time, in particular in the fourteen months from the beginning of the Watergate Committee’s hearings in May 1973 to Nixon’s resignation in August 1974.
What we too often forget is that the “smoking gun” evidence only emerged in the last week of July 1974. Nixon’s resignation was only two weeks later, and Ford’s pardon of Nixon came exactly one month after the resignation. So when Ford issued his pardon, he was not addressing a public that had long known the truth about Nixon. He was issuing it at a time that large sections of the public were still assimilating that information and still wondering what they did not yet know. I think that was one reason that a majority wanted Nixon to face trial. It was a joint desire for justice and the truth. The pardon cut off both desires.
Ford feared, I think sincerely, that a trial would “prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed.” But the basis of that assumption was false. The chapter was not closed. He hoped to close it by pardoning Nixon, and he failed. Certainly, the lack of the drip.drip.drip of daily tidbits may have muted the visible anger, but it left a sourness that festered. In a cynical time, it increased cynicism.
It also set a truly unfortunate precedent that helped to cloak George H.W. Bush’s pardon of Casper Weinberger and other Iran Contra figures.
I do not equate Ford’s and the Elder Bush’s actions. Ford at least did it in the light of day, presenting the best reasons that he had. The timing of Bush’s pardons indicates that he acted out of selfish concern for his own future and those of his friends. Ford had no self-protective motives.
However, in reading the pardon carefully, I think that Ford’s personal relationship with Nixon and his family swayed him more than he said, and the humanitarian reasons that that Ford gave, Bush echoed in his pardon message. Thus, I believe I am right in arguing that Bush's pardons—and the justice denied in those cases--are part of the legacy of Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon.
Does this make Ford a bad president? Hardly. The good that people are remembering today is based on fact, and that good should be remembered fondly. But it is no slur to Ford’s memory to remind today’s public that the public of 1976 rejected Ford’s bid for reelection. They did so in part not because he was immoderate but because, in the case of his pardon of Richard Nixon, his virtue of moderation and his hatred of polarization became his flaw.