I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad.
In all my public and private acts as your President, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy in the end.
My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.
Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.
Remarks By President Gerald Ford On Taking the Oath Of Office As President
Fine, pretty words those. Saying that you respect the Constitution and the rule of law sounds very nice, but is rendered empty when followed almost exactly one month later by this, his statement upon pardoning Richard Nixon:
After years of bitter controversy and divisive national debate, I have been advised, and I am compelled to conclude that many months and perhaps more years will have to pass before Richard Nixon could obtain a fair trial by jury in any jurisdiction of the United States under governing decisions of the Supreme Court.
I deeply believe in equal justice for all Americans, whatever their station or former station. The law, whether human or divine, is no respecter of persons; but the law is a respecter of reality.
The facts, as I see them, are that a former President of the United States, instead of enjoying equal treatment with any other citizen accused of violating the law, would be cruelly and excessively penalized either in preserving the presumption of his innocence or in obtaining a speedy determination of his guilt in order to repay a legal debt to society.
During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.
In the end, the courts might well hold that Richard Nixon had been denied due process, and the verdict of history would even more be inconclusive with respect to those charges arising out of the period of his Presidency, of which I am presently aware.
But it is not the ultimate fate of Richard Nixon that most concerns me, though surely it deeply troubles every decent and every compassionate person. My concern is the immediate future of this great country.
In this, I dare not depend upon my personal sympathy as a long-time friend of the former President, nor my professional judgment as a lawyer, and I do not.
As President, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the people of the United States whose servant I am. As a man, my first consideration is to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience.
My conscience tells me clearly and certainly that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed. My conscience tells me that only I, as President, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book. My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquillity but to use every means that I have to insure it.
No, the primary concern wasn’t “healing” the nation, no matter how many times that bromide has been chanted through the years since. He spends a great deal of time worried about BEING FAIR TO RICHARD NIXON, a thug willing to commit war crimes and undermine the very Constitution he swore to protect for political gain. (Some feel Ford may have been given the office with the understanding that a pardon would be offered). The rule of law, preserving the Constitution, maintaining even the illusion that we’re all equal under the law, from the low to the high, paled before concerns for Nixon’s well being and the well being of the Republican Party. In fact, his focus on this reason for his pardon has echoes in the partisan Supreme Court decision that argued that G. W. Bush be handed the Presidency to protect HIS equal protection rights under the law. You have to hand it to the corrupt aristocracy of the Republican Party … they have a perverse willingness to twist words, reason and legal precedent beyond all recognition.
Ford wasn’t a great statesman, nor was he a national hero, or a bipartisan healer of national wounds. He was a party operative, a hack, a water-carrier for monsters. We have him to thank for fostering the careers of Rumsfeld and Cheney, and laying the groundwork for the Republican administrations to follow. He kept Kissinger on, and worked with him to greenlight and support Suharto’s slaughter in East Timor. He was a strong supporter of Pinochet’s fascist administration in Chile. He was Hoover’s source within the Warren Commission. Like the current Republican in the White House, he callously turned his back on an American city in need.
We could go on, but why bother? He was what so many in the leadership of this country have become: landed gentry, a pampered insider willing to befriend anybody, condone anything, to further the agenda of the American right. Insisting that he wasn’t as bad as those running the party now doesn’t mitigate his support, cover and mentoring of these people. He was a friend of despots. Other than the made-up assertion that he “healed” the nation, I challenge anybody to point out a single positive thing he left behind when he vacated any of the offices he once held, or that he left behind when he vacated this life. He may have been a nice man to friends and family, a comfortable companion to the very people he felt comfortable with, but he was a terrible President, a terrible Congressman, a barely there Vice President.
The most disgusting part of the huzzahs being sung in his praise this week is how it demonstrates how completely political propaganda has buried any hope for accountability or an honest historical record being presented to the general public. What matters is the story, not any facts, or photos, or eyewitness testimony, or other points of view. Once more a corpse becomes a fetish to validate a political culture where thugs, fascists and authoritarians can act with impunity. Ford acted in his public roles in much the same way that a forgiving school administration helps cover and protect an out-of-control student athlete accused of rape. He epitomized the soft corruption that enables the powerful to prey upon the weak, that forgives the crimes of the connected while enforcing increasingly draconian controls on those without access to high-level help and protection.
Accountability is dead in this country, and Gerald Ford helped to kill it.