Wow, you think it was good that Ford pardoned Nixon.  I remember at the time how disgusted I was, and to me time has shown over and over again what a disaster it was.  Of course, it was no surprise.  It emphasized that our country is not a country of laws, but of corrupt power arrangements.  People who did crimes far less serious than Nixon's lived out their lives in prison.  The failure to recognize fully the corruption of our constitution dovetailed nicely with the media's rehabilitation of Nixon, and laid a foundation for the current dismantling of what is best about our country.

I can never forgive the pardon.  Never.  It destroyed the presidency of an essentially decent man, and it is his legacy, that Americans can never trust the government to come clean about its sins and mistakes.

He was a decent, well-intentioned man. He didn't deserve to be constantly mocked for his perceived physical clumsiness; but it was reassuring, at the time, to have a president, any president, who was not frightening. Maybe that was the best thing about Gerald Ford. We had (most of us) been afraid of his sinister predecesor; but you can't be afraid of someone who tries to persuade everybody to wear a lapel button that says WIN, which stood for the silly slogan Whip Inflation Now.

I had just graduated from college and was visiting a friend at MIT. Walking across the Charles, I saw a newspaper that had a huge headline, "FORD PARDONS NIXON". I was so angry I kicked the paper box hard enough to break a toe.

This was an abuse of power. It was a terrible decision, paving the way for the even more egregious pardons issued by Reagan to Weinberger, North et al., and very likely to be issued to Rove, Libby and Cheney by Bush in the next year or so. That my reaction was not atypical is proved by Ford's defeat at the hands of Jimmy Carter in 1976.

It's one thing to say that Nixon should not have been hounded forever by the legal system, that there had to be an end to Watergate. Fine. But to short-circuit the law set a dangerous precedent that we are still living with. Any president can now say to his or her staff: Doesn't matter that I am asking you to break the law. I'll pardon you if you get caught. This puts the inner circle of the president above the law.

The pardon power of the president needs to be limited, and should not extend to those who broke the law at the behest of the president; nor should it be construed to be applicable to the president by the president. As Nixon's resignation became increasingly likely, there was a lot of legal discussion as to whether or not he could pardon himself. The prevailing wisdom was that a president could pardon himself or herself. This is an extremely dangerous law, if it is the law.

In hindsight, his decision to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon, appears to have been the right one, even if at the time it cost him politically.
.

With all due respect you obviously have no idea of the tenor of the times or of what Nixon did. No way Nixon should have been pardoned. What Ford did has absolutley no defense what-so-ever.

I can see why the pardon seemed like the right move at the time.  In retrospect, it was a serious mistake.

It established the notion that some people really ARE too high on the totem pole to punish for their crimes: that dethroning the king is punishment enough.

It cleared the way for the string of Iran-Contra pardons that would have been unthinkable if Nixon hadn't first been pardoned.

And because the Iran-Contra people were pardoned, they wound up in prominent roles on the current Administration's foreign-policy team.  Things might have worked out the same if they hadn't been there, but nonetheless, they helped tip this President towards war.

The pardon was a mistake, and we continue to pay the price.

I'm going to disagree with you vociferously concerning the absurd grant of retroactive immunity to Nixon.

Just as W's war in Iraq is unconstitutional since "Congress shall have the power to declare war."  So, too, is Ford's "pardon" of Nixon.  What was he pardoned for?  For crimes that he had not been found guilty of, right?  If you aren't guilty how then can there be a pardon.

Answer: there can not.

So, Ford granted retroactive immunity to Nixon.  This has set an awful precedent and was repeated in the Christmas Eve 1992 debacle where GHW Bush prevented an investigation into himself by "pardoning" Caspar Weinberger.  This "pardon" was granted mere weeks before (1) the trial was set to start, and (2) GHW was set to leave office.

When W starts pardoning everyone (Rumsfeld, Woo, Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, Cheney, Libby, Rove, et al....) the precedent set by FORD will be shown to be the problem it really is.

Horrible decision and a ridiculous statement.

Caretaker President.

By the way, Ford's pardon of Nixon didn't just cost him personally, politically. Ford's pardon directly contributed to massive Democratic Party gains in the 1974 mid-term election. Democrats gained 49 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate. Many of the then freshmen Democrats are still with us today, still legislating with reformist zeal. Henry Waxman may be the best example, and he will be critically important in this next Congress.

Also - it should be noted that the massacres in East Timor started while Ford was president and the US did and said nothing.

Well, it's worse than that - we armed their killers: Indonesia.

I guess Ford was worried that the East Timorese - like other Portugese colonies (Angola, Mozambique) headed for independence in 1975 would go communist.  

I, like other posters here, was surprised and disappointed to hear you suggest that the pardon was the right thing to do - precisely because, as one poster put it -  it did ratify, "the notion that dethroning the king is punishment enough."

Gerald Ford declared "our long national nightmare was over" when he pardoned Nixon. It was not. By pardoning Nixon, Ford ensured that the nightmare was just beginning. We have been paying for letting Nixon, and his henchmen, off the hook for 40 years, and we're not done.

Karl Rove came out of that time, he was one of Nixon's college age "dirty tricksters". Iran-Contra was brought to us by the same Constitution-hating fascists. Our current administration has the fingerprints of Nixon felons all over it. And, make no mistake, these people wanted to overthrow the Constitution to gain and hold power.

Whenever they get the opportunity, they come back in to do it over again. Lying, cheating, stealing and murdering for power is who these people are.

Pardoning Nixon was putting a bandaid on a cancer. The Bush Administration is the resulting metastisization of that cancer. Cancer isn't gone until every cancerous cell is destroyed.

Time to reread "All the President's Men". Time to take another look at both the Iran-Contra scandal and the McCarthy Hearings. It's past time to look at those who have been undermining this country since the 1950's and put an end to their ability to gain and keep the power they continually abuse at our expense.

 If Ford would`ve pursued the criminals of the administration that appointed him, he would've been a great president. He could've established law and its integrity as this nation's binding ethic for our governments. He should've put aside his partisan loyalties for his nation's, he should've compromised business as usual for defining our business as benevolent, and he should've face boldly and courageously the abuse of power that Nixon sought. He would've, he could've, and he should've. Even a good dead man does not make a good president.

It is true that Ford's pardon of Nixon was likely the difference in his fairly close Electoral College loss in 1976 to Carter.  On the other hand, had he not granted that pardon then Reagan - over whom Ford squeaked out a close race for the 1976 nomination - would probably have hammered Ford over that issue, and that likely would have been the difference in that race and Reagan would have won the nomination.  So in that respect the pardon probably helped Ford.

Just to state the obvious context:

We're at the culmination of a thirty year Republican project, allied with the Christianists, and very well-funded by winger billionaires, to replace Constitutional government with authoritarian rule, where the executive isn't subject to any checks other than a quadrennial "accountability moment."

The push to authoritarianism started with Nixon, continued with Reagan [, Bush I got away with clean,] and culminates with Bush II. Each time the authoritarian wave washed further up the beach -- Nixon with the plumbers, Reagan with Iran-Contra, Bush II with the entire administration.

Ford's evil deed of pardoning Nixon allowed this Republican project to continue and prosper. In fact, our long national nightmare was only beginning.

Ford's evil deed shows why it's necessary, this time, not merely to replace Bush, but to relentlessly repudiate his works.

Which is why oversight is very important...

My memories of Gerald Ford are a good deal less grave than those listed above.  Ford was simply not Presidential nor did he grow into the job.  I can't separate Ford's gaffes from the ongoing Saturday Night Live pratfalls of Chevy Chase playing Ford.  Verbally, one of his best known lines ("A Ford, not a Lincoln") was a combination of auto industry "humor" and the unfortunate truth.

During the Ford Administration, I was working as a very minor federal beaurocrat before I went to grad school.  Another of the Ford legacies was that it was simply impossible to audit the state of Michigan while he was in office.  On a minor level, that was similar to the pardon.  Ford protected those around him (a small but tight circle) in an absolute fashion.

The other memory of Ford was that he dressed just awfully.  The loud sports coats and odd colored belts and shoes (white and IIRC red) were worn by Ford.  Nixon never could look too casual but his suits looked good.  Kennedy was elegant and even LBJ looked like a Texas oil baron and not a schmuck.  Yes, I remember Gerald Ford memorabilia on sale at the Grand Rapids airport.  But the whole thing came off pretty pathetically.

Ford may also be remembered as the last candidate nominated at a convention.  It was good TV.

everyone has already said it. sorry, chris. you couldn't be more wrong. don't let sentiment cloud a proper perception of history. even "nice" guys can make terrible mistakes, and we are all paying the price.

two words for you: dick and rummy. without ford elevating them to power in his circle, they'd not have been able to become the powerful warmongers they are today.

erm, sorry, jonathan, not chris. my bad.

First time I've seen virtually universal disagreement with a frontpager at MyDD... maybe I haven't been around long enough?

 I was ten years old when Ford pardoned Nixon, and being raised in a wingnutty Republican family, I was fairly nonplussed by it at the time. Heck, I was disappointed to see Nixon step down! (Shows you why we don't extend the vote to ten-year-olds.)

 Ford struck me as a reasonable enough person -- he was probably the last moderate Republican. He was probably also the last high-profile Republican the news media wasn't afraid to mock shamelessly. (Boy, have times changed.)

 In retrospect, of course, the pardon was a horrible thing to do, but I believe Ford genuinely just wanted to put the whole debacle behind us and start fresh. My guess is that if he'd been able to anticipate the long-term consequences of letting Nixon and his crew off the hook, he likely wouldn't have done it. So maybe you can fault him more for a lack of vision than anything.

 But if we'd had Gerald Ford in the White House for the last six years instead of Idiot Boy, the nation, and the world, would be in vastly better shape than they are now.

I certainly agree with the overwhelming consensus that Ford should not have pardoned Nixon. It has indeed contributed greatly to the culture of lawlessness that surrounds the executive branch in most of its actions today. And Ford was far from noble in doing so. He did not knowingly sacrifice his political chances; he figured he would get away with it. And Ford was far from noble in other respects as well. Beyond that he was almost as ignorant as Bush, though he was not proud of his ignorance the way Bush is. He killed himself politically by revealing that he did not know that Poland was under Soviet communist control at a time when there was no question that it was. The only thing that makes him look somewhat good is the fact that all the Republican presidents who came after him were people completely without principle. Ford was not as imoral as Reagan or Bush (or Bush Sr.). They should put that on his tombstone.  

Ford received a Profile in Courage award from Caroline Kennedy's foundation.

The argument is that the pardon healed the nation, but that is not my recollection. I think Nixon might well have been pardoned on these ground, but it should have been left to Carter or Reagan to do it.

For me, it was yet another kick in the testicles that began Chicago, 1968.

Ford's pardon of Nixon may have "spared" the country the spectacle of a former president going to prison, but frankly I think I was tough enough to endure that. Nixon subverted the American political system with illegal spying, break-ins, and hush money. The agencies of the federal government were used to attack people on Nixon's "enemies" list. Nixon knew what he was doing in those desperate final months when he picked Ford as Agnew's replacement. Ford had always worked as a party shill and could be relied upon to issue a pardon when Nixon needed it. I don't believe there was any kind of overt bargain: Nixon knew his man.

Ford was a genial enough fellow, but his greatest gift was to stand out as a nice guy in the midst of a gang of thugs.

Though I'm willing to give Ford the benefit of the doubt that it was made for best of reasons, The Pardon is unpardonable.

The great lesson of Watergate was that the Rule of Law is greater than the political power of men or parties. Ford's decision to short circuit this lesson resulted in the fact that ultimately, politics went on as usual. Money rules, dirty tricks are allowed, winning is everything and there is little consequence for misdeeds. If you liked Iran-Contra, Lee Atwater, Willie Horton, McCain/Bush in SC, Karl Rove, Mellon-Scaife, the Arkansas Project, Florida in 2000 and Swiftboating, well then you probably liked The Pardon. It was our best opportunity squandered to reform the political process. I cannot forgive Gerald Ford for this.

I find that I just don't agree with any of these posts.

First, I've got to consider their respective sources: the readers of this blog, all of whom, myself included, are pretty partisan folk who are skeptical at best, and dismissive at worst, of anything any Republican anywhere ever did.

Second, while Nixon deserved to have at least one book thrown at him, I really don't think the country needed to go through any more hell. Sure, we'd have all come through it okay, but Nixon's guilt was established in the public's mind, thus practically guranteeing that the Reps would suffer at the ballot box for years thereafter, which was a good thing. Also, I'm not at all certain that Nixon and his associates wouldn't have found ways, in a protracted, public trial, to cast themselves as "patriotic Americans," much the same way as BushCo today use "love of country" as a cover for every nefarious act. I think it really was best to move on and exact revenge at the ballot box.

Third, the scummy people that Ford enabled to go on to illustrious careers in theft and deceit are no worse than some of the other stars in the Republican constellation; they just unfortunately happen to be the folks on the scene now. And don't tell me that there aren't also flawed Democrats currently in positions of power who don't owe their rise to Carter or Clinton; I'm no student of history, but I'm sure such folks are out there.

Ford did the right thing.

I think there was a real fear in 1972 that the imprisonment and prosecution of a former President could honestly tear the nation apart from the seams.  Remember that despite Ford's pardon, he still only barely lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

The Soviet Union, a nation relegated to our history books today, was a powerful and real threat.  There is no doubt that they would prey on the very real chaos and confusion that would have happened as a result of a Nixon trial.  On one hand you would have had liberals take to the streets and burn down buildings if he was found not guilty.  On the other, you'd have conservative wingnuts doing the same thing if he was found guilty.  You don't think an enemy would love that?

Pardoning Nixon probably spared a lot of heartache for the country, but it left the problem unscathed to grow back.

Yes, convicting him and his aides would have been messy, some might even have been acquitted, but it would have shown that nobody is above the law and sooner or later the guilty will be brought to justice.

Instead, Ford showed that he'd really rather just bury his head in the sand. He was, if you will, a Very Serious Person.

The current occupant of the White House has largely ended the once common evaluation of Ford as the dumbest guy to ever be President.  Lyndon said he played football without a helmet.  Fidel, when Carter was raising opportunist hell about Soviet troops in Cuba said something like:  "John Kennedy knew about the troops and did nothing. Lyndon Johnson knew about the troops and did nothing.  Richard Nixon knew about the troops and did nothing. Even Gerald Ford knew about the Russian troops, and did nothing."

Gerald Ford had a history of helping the nation "move on" from important issues. He was a member of the Warren Commission that ignored all kinds of discrepancies in the evidence and decided that President John F. Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.

There is lots of conspiracy theory hogwash out there, but even a casual analysis of the Kennedy assassination reveals lots of very odd occurrences that make the Oswald acting alone theory extremely suspect. I doubt anyone seriously reviewing its report would say that the Warren Commission was honest. Perhaps it was good or necessary to hide the truth (since we still don't know what really happened, it is difficult to say), but the Commission was certainly not honest.

This article reveals that Ford deliberately altered the evidence to make the Warren Commission's result seem more plausible. In this way, Ford appears to have actively worked to deceive the American public.

Here are three words of absolute praise of Ford I can list, especially if you are a progressive lawyer and love our constitution and country:

John Paul Stevens

Gerald Ford wasn't perfect.  But like Eisenhower he was seen as harmsless and genial.  

But liberal got something from Ford that conservatives cannot hold us to blame nor fail to assume responsibility for...His names is John Paul Stevens.

I agree with you Jonathan: pardoning Nixon was the right thing to do.  I think resigning in disgrace was enough of a punishment.  And the country did want to move on, to get Watergate behind them.  Also what I dont think has been mentioned is that Nixon had a health problem and Ford always said that was one of the basis.  I forget exactly what it was, but I think it was some blood clot in Nixon's leg.  There was a real concern that Nixon could die.

A couple more thoughts on Ford and the pardon.  I disagree with the idea that the pardon cost Ford politically.  He benefitted politically from Watergate being over.  The last thing he wanted was to be campaigning for President in late '75 and '76 and have Nixon's trial be in the news every day.  That would have hurt Ford worse then the pardon.

Finally, on just pure personal characteristics, Ford is probably my favorite president.  Read accounts of Ford's Presidency-the people who worked for him really admired him a great deal.  And no he was not at all stupid.  Stupid people dont graduate from Yale law school; they only make it through Yale as an undergrad.  Ford was basically honest, smart and only moderately conservative.  HE tried hard.  He wanted to do the right thing.  He was involved in the decision making process.  He got alot wrong, but he got a few things right too. All in all a good guy if not a great president.

I was born in '65, so I offer a then child's perspective. Here's what I remember:

WIN bottons:  Wip Inflation Now, President Ford's attempt at rallying the country around his economic policy.

Chevy Chase:  SNL just started around then and Chase portrayal of Ford as the clumsy president took hold quickly.

Assasination attempts:  two in quick succession, Sqeeky Froam and Sarah Jane Moore

Drop Dead:  Famous Daily News headline that read Ford to City: Drop Dead.  As a New York child I really thought he hated us.

As for the pardon, I remember great anger in my Democratic family at the time, but in retrospect it shaped the attitudes that led to the public supporting Bill Clinton during his impeachment.

Gerald Ford got me involved in politics.  I made five bucks an hour in high school working for Jimmy Carter.

That is my only memory of him.

The pardon was a disaster that looks even worse given our countries current situation. Nixon deserved to rot in prison.

For the times, Ford was right wing. He is only considered moderate because he didn't change as the GOP went right-wards.  He was picked because Nixon needed to change the subject from corruption because of Watergate and Agnew resigning for classic corruption.  He did what he was told, had no initiative and pardoned Nixon because he wanted to kill the story and take the hit for the pardon but let Nixon and his corruption drop off the radar.

As a president, he was a non-entity doing nothing to deal with the problem of inflation caused by Nixon going off the gold exchange or anything else.

The control of the media has allowed him to get off with a light load but we should not forget that as a weak cowardly man, when he was faced with a choice, he sold out the country and the justice system for his Party.

Here's my problem with Gerry Ford. He was a decent guy who played by the traditional rules of political fair play. In spite of his near-wingnut conservatism, he was a breath of fresh air because of that, and because of that it is too bad that he short circuited the process of soul searching that should have taken place and Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, Grover Norquist, and Jack Abramoff are the unfortunate products of that pardon.

OK, I was a kid at the time as well, but I remember thinking that the pardon was a cover-up.  There was more that would have come out, had the impeachment proceedings continued, and it would have been very bad stuff.  So the pardon.  I've no idea whether that was true or not: that's how it seemed to me at the time.  I didn't feel it brought closure to a "national nightmare" -- I felt it swept it under the rug.  The results of that decision solidified in the national mind that there is one justice system for the rich/powerful, and another for the rest of us -- and neither is "fair."  And I do think that you can lay the shenanigans of the current administration right to the door of the pardon: yes, I think they think they can -- and should -- get away with anything, and a great deal of it has to do with their confidence in their ability to re-write history. So even if you walk free in disgrace, you can be "rehabilitated" at a later date (see Nixon: eulogies).  

I grew up expecting national leaders to be shot.  It has surprised me that we haven't had a major national figure shot since Reagan.  

The best thing I know about Ford: his wife.  She was (and probably remains) his better half, who had much better approval ratings than did her husband. The buttons I remember said "Betty/Liddy."

Regardless of whether the pardon was the right or wrong thing to do it strikes me as sad that we feel the need to dissect the decision of a man, who by all accounts was a good man with noble intentions, just hours after his passing and choose to blame him for all of our political ills. Doesn't it strike anyone as reasonable to maybe be people first at a time like this; or are we all so set in our beliefs and emotions that it is unacceptable to feel anything other than disdain for the people we disagree with?

This idea will probably get lost in the slew of comments and some other news item tomorrow, but oh well....

I agree with many commenters above that the pardon powers of the President have been abused, though I do not think that Ford would have predicted how his pardon would have set precedent in the future.  Remember, Ford was an Honest man, unlike the Presidents that have served since 1980.

So the solution is simple, and should be called the "pay-raise solution".  Many states have requirements that Congressional pay raises cannot go into effect until there has been an election.  A similar rationale would apply:  Pardons cannot be made by a President to: 1. people who have served in his/her administration; 2. have been employed or business partners with the President during  or prior to the Presidency; 3. people who have or may have broken the law or been involved in wrongdoing that the President was aslo involved in; 4. oneself.

In the latter case, W cannot pardon Rove, Cheney, etc.

A future President would have to pardon a current President.  This policy would still have allowed Ford to pardon Nixon, but would not have allowed for pardons of Weinberger, etc., mentioned in other comments above.

It only takes a Constitutional amendment...

I was a pre-teen when Ford was President and my memories of him are shaped by my parents who were rabid Dems and held a party the night Nixon resigned.  My parents were very mad when Nixon was pardoned but I wonder 30+ years later what the country would have gained by having Nixon stand trial.  I understand the argument about letting the judicial system take its course but sometimes it is best to lance a boil and be done with it.  That was Ford's belief and in the end I don't think it hurt the country.  It is interesting that many politicians such as Ted Kennedy who were calling for blood in 1974 now think pardoning Nixon was the right thing.  

Also, Ford did not abuse his power by pardoning Nixon.  The constitution gives the President this right and he/she can use it to pardon whoever they want.  Disagreeing with a pardon decision does not make it an abuse of power.

My personal memory of Ford growing up in NYC was the famous NY Daily News headline during the 1970s fiscal crisis - Ford to City: Drop Dead.  In those days NY State was much closer politically and many people believed it cost him the state in 1976.

When I was ten, during the bicentennial, Gerald Ford came to the town I was living in -- Walnut Creek, Calif. (East Bay of San Francisco).

He was to ring a smaller replica of the Liberty Bell to the gathered crowd.

The Big Moment came.

The clapper fell off in his hand.

Fitting, somehow.

RIP, G.F.

Its difficult to describe the mood of the country at the time of the Nixon pardon for some of the commenters here who were really too young at the time appreciate it first hand. The context was at least for me (in retrospect) all of the turmoil that happened after JFK's assassination in 1963. Do I really have to list everything that happened to this country in the following 12 years? Culminating in watergate, Nixon going down and finally our army's retreat from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon? It's easy now to say "Hey, lets spend another 4 years prosecuting Tricky Dick! The republic demands no Less!"

Please. As angry as I was at the time of the pardon, It was really a relief to not have to see or hear those disgusting flatulent, pendulous, 5 o'clock shadow encrusted Nixon jowls hissing into the camera every night as they had for virtually my whole childhood, adolescence, teen and college years. People were tired of that fucker, and it was time to move on. Ford made that possible, and while I voted against him, I still thank him for doing what he did.

And I don't believe the case has yet been made that Ford set a precident with the pardon. Just repeating the fact that GHWB pardoned Weinberger, Elliot Abramson, or some other mass murderer doesn't prove that it was only Ford's Nixon pardon that made it possible. I can just as easily say that every unpopular presidential pardon since then, would have happened anyway, whether Nixon was pardoned or not. Matter of fact, I just said it. In the 36 years since Nixon, I haven't read one credible argument for such a precident. Not from historians, witnesses or anyone else. The only real precident was that Ford made the pardon at the beginning of his term, not the end. And that has never been repeated as far as I know. All the subsequent POTUS's continue to save their craven, corrupt pardons for when they leave office.

The deep, deep cynicism on the street about American politics in this country arises from--not Nixon's Watergate scandal--but from Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon.  Such cynicism is did not arise from the fact that Nixon cheated, but that Ford let him get away with it.  It Nixon would have been held to the same standards that anyone else would have been held, then the country's political soul may have recovered.  Because he was not, three generations of Americans, maybe more, became disgusted with American politics and have been ever since.  

that on a liberal blog site there is such a high degree of buy-in to the themes about Ford promoted by the same machinery that promoted the war in Iraq.

What is this 'nice guy' stuff? We are talking about a public figure that probably none of us knew on an intimate level, where we could have a meaningful subjective opinion about his 'niceness' which is irrelevant anyway.

Ford's clear quid-pro-quo with Nixon - yes, if you position me to be President I will pardon you - was talked about before the fact, and when it happened it just confirmed what was obviously in the works.

His role in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people just like you and me in East Timor disqualifies him from his role of 'healer' but then the pardon of Nixon was like putting a bandaid over severe internal injuries - not much of a healer.  

I expect the mass media to turn truth on its head, but when it is a strong theme on a site like this one it is not inspirational.

Gerald Ford was a good man, although sometimes making Republican mistakes.

And I look forward to repetition of his memorable line at inaugeration in 2008

"...our long national nightmare is over"

Homer
www.altara.blogspot.com

Ford was the last of the decent Republicans. His party is now dominated by right wing ideologues who lie to the American peoople and polarize the nation.  Thankfully there will be a Democratic Congress on January 4, 2007 to stop this madness.

so, now we know--if Bob Woodward, in Wapo,  is to be believed--that it was even worse than we thought:

" Until now, the relationship between the two presidents has been portrayed largely as a matter of political necessity, with Nixon tapping Ford for the vice presidency in late 1973 because he was a confirmable choice on Capitol Hill.

But the tapes, documents and two lengthy recent interviews with Ford before his death this week, conducted for a future book and embargoed until after his death, show that the close political alliance between the two men seriously influenced Ford's eventual decision to pardon Nixon, the most momentous decision of his short presidency and almost certainly the one that cost him any chance of winning the White House in his own right two years later. Ford became president on Aug. 9, 1974; he pardoned Nixon just a month later. "I think that Nixon felt I was about the only person he could really trust on the Hill," Ford said during the 2005 interview.

Ford returned the feeling.

"I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I always treasured our relationship. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon, because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn't want to see my real friend have the stigma," Ford said in the interview.

That acknowledgment represents a significant shift from Ford's previous portrayals of the pardon that absolved Nixon of any Watergate-related crimes. In earlier statements, Ford had emphasized the decision as an effort to move the country beyond the partisan divisions of the Watergate era, playing down the personal dimension.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2006/12/28/AR2006122801247_ 2.html