The New York Times wouldn’t run Rick Perlstein’s op-ed on the lasting damage from Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon because they said it didn’t make sense to them, but Salon ran it. And Perlstein’s argument makes perfect sense to me.
The Ford pardon was actually my introduction to politics, as it made my father so angry that my little almost-five year-old brain needed to understand what had happened. The president of the United States had just committed a grave injustice by demonstrating that our laws only apply to regular folks. Our former president had broken the law repeatedly and lied about it to everyone’s face. He had obstructed justice. And nothing was going to be done about it. Nixon got a pass.
That this incensed my father so, was an important building block to my own moral sensibilities. It’s why, twelve years later, when the Iran-Contra Affair hit, that I felt it was so vitally important that there be no repeat of pardons. But there was a repeat of pardons, on Christmas Eve 1992. And the man issuing the pardons was the man who was probably most responsible for the crimes.
Standards eroded over time. During Reagan’s presidency, his administration set a record for people resigning in disgrace. By the time Dubya was in office, no one ever resigned no matter how obvious their corruption, criminality, or conflict of interest. They resigned under Reagan because he was operating in an environment with pre-existing expectations. Public servants who were exposed as unethical were expected to resign.
That’s no longer the case. At all. Witness Senator David Vitter of Louisiana.
What set this all in motion was Ford’s decision to spare Nixon from justice. When Nixon was removed from office, it proved that the system worked. Too bad it was the last time it would work.
