Death, in most cases, brings with it a kind word. If you were once President, those words are brought by the likes of Bob Dole. Who, in today's Washington Post, hails Gerald Ford for his "healing" and "reconciliation". A task made all the more difficult by his running mate in '76, who spent the campaign snarling about "Democrat wars".
Should Ford have pardoned Nixon? To read Watergate transcripts is to behold a chief executive frantically trying to sort out his lies, attempting to separate his high crimes from his misdemeanors and construct plausible scenarios and scapegoats that, unfortunately for him, only worked in a vacuum of limited information. A trial...to have witnessed Dick Nixon reduced to his most jabbering, vindictive, sociopathic, paranoid self...thanks to Ford, now only exists on an album by the great David Frye.
And, whether we are a forgiving or forgetful nation, as a weeping Bob Dole observed over the tomb at Yorba Linda "God bless Richard Nixon". (This of course was back in the day when Dole's currently plasticine face was capable of emitting tears.)
So...Ford was WIN buttons and far too much golfing with Bob Hope. But, thanks to C-SPAN, you can also be aware that he did a most extraordinary thing. He went up to Capitol Hill and, in open committee, answered questions about the pardon! Just let that thought sink in. A "Commander In Chief" defending his actions in a Socratic give and take with a coequal branch of government!
No doubt that experience seared whatever it is that passes for Cheney's soul, just as surely as cigarettes and heavily salted meats obstructed ventricles in whatever it is that passes for his heart. It is easier to imagine Thomas Friedman getting his head out of his own ass, than it is George W. Bush holding himself accountable for his actions in such a way.
And so...as Bob Dole would say...God bless Gerald Ford.
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