Nixon being pardoned a good idea?

It created a precedent that ultimately allowed the criminals of the Bush administration to believe (apparently correctly) that they could get away with anything. Next to the likes of Cheney and Rumsefeld, Nixon was a saint.

Perhaps you should type out your post and mail it to tens of thousands of families whose fathers, sons, and brothers aren't around anymore because of this paranoid had to continue a useless war. Oh and cc the half are million or so Indochinese who feel the same pain on the matter. When a President is a criminal he receives a pardon and gets to feel bad about what's done as he lives in mansions while the rest of get no such breaks. All men created equal? Perhaps not.

I have said, from the day Ford pardoned Nixon, that the pardon did more to undermine the reputation of the US as a law abiding nation than any other thing in my lifetime...and perhaps the history of the country. And the proof is that that precedent has allowed George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to escape justice. Well...we get the government we deserve.





Ciao, e buon auguri

Nixon's pardon was unforgivable. In Gerald Ford's confirmation hearing before Congress he was asked that very question. Would you pardon Nixon. His response was "The country would not stand for it" Ford lied to the public. The US suffered irreparably for the crimes that Nixon committed and got away with. Ever since that time American presidents have taken Nixon's pardon as a license to do anything with impunity. It had nothing to do with the person of Nixon, but the legitimacy of the presidency. That legitimacy has forever been stained.

With the benefit of 38 years' hindsight, I think the pardon was the right thing to do. But there is no question that the overwhelming majority of Americans were opposed to it at the time, and there is a legitimate argument that a president should not use his power in that way, in the face of such opposition. I also am convinced that if Ford had not pardoned Nixon (or at least, had not pardoned him *so* *soon* after taking office), he would have defeated Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election, with all the implications that would have had for the past 35 years.

Ironically, I think the pardon might have gone down easier with the people if Ford had pardoned "all the president's men" and not just Nixon himself. Some of the public anger over the pardon was rooted in the fact that the man at the top was getting a free-pass while his underlings were still being forced to endure the Watergate firestorm on their own. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia expressed this point at the time.

In response to Writerchamp13's point about Nixon being "regretful" in the Frost interviews, well yes of course he was. I don't think his regret was primarily about "being caught" but in having so incompetently allowed himself to get stuck in such a situation in the first place.

At the time I wasn't sure.
But, within months I agreed that there had been enough time spent on Nixon; his resignation was "beheading" enough.

The nation needed to move on.

Yes, but not to avoid stigma or tarnished credibility - that had already happened. More it was good to help the nation move on and avoid further divisive politics.

Besides, after Cheney and Rove, Nixon looks positively benign. Nobody died because of his shenanigans.

All stigma aside, our country suffered instead, from what one person wrote was the revelation that there was a huge double standard in how justice was applied to the rich and powerful vs. ordinary citizens. After Nixon's Watergate AND the pardon, nobody took the Presidency as seriously from that point on.

And it is George. W. Bush who deserves comparison for his flagrant violation (along with Cheney & his conspirators) in the Valerie Plame scandal (outing a covert CIA agent and NOBODY gets slapped down but Scooter Libby? PLEASE!). And let's not forget his lies about the WMD's and unnecessary invasion of Iraq.

Compared to this, Clinton's sexual frolics were absurdly miniscule in importance. Sure he lied, but he was the only one to be targeted by the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that Hilary had predicted years before. His main mistake was trying to cover up adultery, which was NONE of our business!

Nixon's crimes went far beyond this, including COINTELPRO, the infiltration of the anti-war movement and unwarranted surveillance of activists like Abbie Hoffman and John Lennon. He developed the so-called, "Garden Plot", counterinsurgency program, designed to suppress (by any means necessary, using the military AND police on Americans, if they ever rebelled too much. Anyone remember Kent State? His lying about withdrawing from Vietnam and instead, bombing Cambodia? Nixon was a vile, power-hungry, lying, immoral scumbag and deserved a LONG jail term, not a pardon!

Clinton just needed a 12-Step program for sex addicts. But he left us with the best economy in our history. Beat that.

She deserves her revenge, and we deserve to die.