Centerfield

Sounds right to me.

What I could never decide was, was his pardon the right thing to do.

At the moment, I think he should've thrown back all the little fish except Nixon himself. But I'd be interested to see arguments on this.

Whatever you thought about Ford as a president--and he was certainly in a thankless position--I think most people have generally positive feelings about him as a person and as someone that tried to do the right thing. That's a far cry from recent presidents whatever their party that have left a legacy of bitterness and recriminations behind.

I always thought the pardon was the right thing. I didn't care if Nixon went to jail. He certainly committed criminal acts but I didn't see what was served about putting him in jail. He certainly wasn't going to do it again.

The major downside to the Nixon pardon was, I think, only apparent with hindsight: there is now, as there was not before, the concept out there of Presidents pardoning people for acts, without even admitting that they have committed them. Or even that they were committed on that President's orders. See, for a recent example, the pardons for actions which violated the laws which banned torture.

We can argue separately whether those actions were a "good thing" or not. But to remove them from any interactions with the justice system, in my opinion, is definitely a "bad thing." And for all that I am sure that Ford would never have done such a thing, it is a bad thing which flows from the pardon that he granted Nixon.

Nixon's pardon was the ultimate compromise position from a true centrist President. I think the President should act above the justice system, in a defined manner such as the power to pardon, when it serves the best interest of the country. In the case of the Nixon pardon, it did.

I once visited Ford's Presidential Library in Michigan and gained great respect for the man. It's a sad day.

What Mathew said. Pursuing Nixon would have done serious damage to the nation, greatly compounding the damage of Watergate, and pardoning him was in the best interests of the country. Nor was it without cost--Ford knew he was throwing himself on an electoral hand grenade, that it would almost certainly cost him the next election. The alternative was worse for the country. He took the right path.

When Clinton came up for impeachment on lesser charges than Nixon would have faced, I argued that he should be censured and not impeached, even though he was too lacking in shame to ever resign. His actions had been exposed and he could not be re-elected anyway, and removing him from office would have been much more damaging than leaving him in office. Had he been convicted and removed, I would have argued strenuously for pardoning him as well.

What everyone said. I suspect that Ford did what he thought was right at the time, and one hopes the verdict of history considers that. Regardless of one's views on his policy choices, he was a good man who humbly took up the mantle he never sought. He served his country as President, and he has stepped into eternity.

I was 16 at the time of the pardon and had been glued to the TV a year earlier with the Senate Watergate hearings. At the time I disagreed with the pardon but I have to admit even at that age I had a sense that Gerald Ford was doing it not out of an obligation to party but as a service to the country. In hindsight, I think it was the right decision.

Unfortunately that lesson: "Damaging the Presidency is not soemthing to be done easily nor lightly" has been lost in time. The "I" word is bandied about way to carelessly.

Now, having said all that, one of my favorite moments with Gerald Ford as President(and not his finest moment)was not the pratfalls but the "WIN" buttons ("Whip Inflation Now").

Ditto the rest. Thank you President Ford.

Strange, how the Ford Administration is connected to the present one. I wished Ford's personality had rubbed off a bit more on those around him. Reagan didn't care much for them.

Well, perhaps the Presidential stumbling has lived on, but on a much grander scale......

From what I've read and seen, Ford was always a humble guy. He knew he had to earn the people's mandate, unlike some Presidents we know.

Read a WaPo article about Ford the "realist". This caught my eye as a possiblity for Irag 2009:

Ford recalled the Paris Accords that Nixon reached with North Vietnam in January 1973, in which the North Vietnamese promised to remove all of their military from South Vietnam. Regrettably, they violated that pledge, Ford said, and "equally unfortunately," Congress refused to maintain South Vietnam's military strength.
"The net result was, it was inevitable under those circumstances that Saigon would fall." he said.

Is the lesson from history that post-WWII USA easily gets "war fatigue" and once they're out, they "forget it all and move on"? Colin Powell was only half-right. If we break it, we own it but that doesn't mean we have to pay for it!

Hopefully you all don't think it crass to refer to this but over at the Health Care blog is an interesting post regarding Gerry Ford's last year of life and the medical costs.

So consider Ford’s last few months of life. He was admitted to hospital last January for pneumonia. Then spent much of July in hospital in Vail; then went to the Mayo Clinic for not one but two angioplasties in August. Then went back into hospital in California in October, and now has died in December. All that time he was obviously going to die within a year or so, and all that time he was at least 92 years old.
My guess is that over the last 12 months of his life well in excess of $100,000 was spent on his health care. And that money probably extended his life by three months at most. that money probably extended his life by three months at most. Now for all we know they may have been the most wonderful three months ever for him and his family, but I’m inclined to think that if he’d died in the summer, his family would have been equally fine with it, and the nation wouldn’t have felt any differently about him. But the cost of extending life an extra year in this type of case is probably around $400,000.
How can that possibly have been money worth spending?

A glimpse of our future?