Booman wrote a piece today about Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon and its ramifications as a precedent both in his life and in the life of this country. Rick Perlstein is Making Sense
This all really goes to “morality.”
In a comment here recently on my article (The Problem(s) of Centrism) I tried to make a point about the value of a “moral” quotient in any approach to government. I used FDR as an example of how a moral aspect can be successfully applied to practical politics and contrasted his approach with that of Barack Obama, but I might as well have contrasted it with LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, Ford, Bush I + II and Clinton. (I leave out Ford and Carter because Ford was too stupid to be blamed and Carter was too innocent to possibly survive in office.)
I wrote:
[FDR] ran on moral grounds. What he decided to do tactically once elected was determined by specific political, social and economic conditions in the country at the time, but the overall strategic goals that he set were based on what would be best for the common man. And…unlike our quite possibly well-meaning current president…he stuck to his guns and he ran a tight ship.
I included two FDR quotations:
Primarily this is because rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence… The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
Read on for more.
Now of course the concept of “morality” can be debated ad infinitum, but I hold with the jist of Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart’s famous statement regarding pornography.
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…
I know morality when I see it. So do you unless you are a total sociopath. Bet on it.
Back to Nixon:
Richard Nixon was by all accounts a very talented poker player. At its highest level poker is a game of lies, a game of bluffs and deceits the only goal of which is to win by any means possible, including cheating if you can manage not to get caught. It is by no means a game of morality. Nixon’s style of governance was totally lacking in any moral sense. It was simply about winning by any means necessary…it was driven by a poker player’s worldview only instead of chips or money the stakes were human lives. Stupid, narrowly focused academics have labeled this approach Realpolitik. It is really just short term politics. In the long term Martin Luther King’s “arc of the moral universe” does tend towards justice. Bet on that as well, and bet against it at the risk of your long-term mortal ass and/or your (really long-term) immortal soul.
Booman’s post states this case in a different way. He writes:
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.
His father’s outrage over this was morally based, and it made a lasting impression on the young Booman. He follows with a list of other not-so-morality-based acts by our federal government.
…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.
Curiously (not really), he only mentions Republicans. This “pardoning” thing is a Permanent Government problem, not a Republican one. It has only been further refined by the Democrats. If one does not proceed with an investigation there is no “pardon” necessary…witness the utter criminality of the people who engineered the financial collapse of this country during the first decade of this century and their continuing revolving door status regarding private enterprise and public office. The list is nearly endless in both directions. Legal crooks like Timothy Geithner pivot smartly back and forth between the so-called “private” sector and the (OH-so-secretive)” public” sector with ease, while the other direction is smartly carried out by so-called public servants like Eric Cantor. All of this occurs regularly under Democratic as well as Republican regimes.
The problem is endemic to this now broken system, and only someone from outside of the system will be able to change it. Unfortunately, the GMC (Government Media System) continues to maintain its power to cloud men’s minds. Who knows how to stop this insidious problem?
Only The Shadow knows!!!! Mwwahhhh hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!!!
But seriously, folks…how long are we going to stand for this thoroughly embedded, bipartisan criminality in our government?
How long?
Booman dates its rise from after Nixon was removed from office. I believe it predates that time, all the way back to the JFK coup. Once it was established that the power of a fully controlled media could successfully put over any story on an appreciable majority of the American public no matter how cracked the story might appear on rational investigation, that was all she wrote. After that? The other political assassinations, followed by Watergate, Iran Contra, the myth of Ronald Reagan as anything other than a second-rate actor verging on senility while propped up in the Oval Office, The Bush I Blood For Oil War, the whole NAFTA debacle, the political ruination of a sitting president by honey-trapping tactics, the rigged Bush II (s)elections, the rancid set of backstories regarding 9/11, the rush to Bush II’s Iraq War, the (s)election of Barack Obama by the media, the free pass that he has gotten as far as not prosecuting the economic and war criminals from previous administrations, etc., etc., etc. right up to the next (s)election of whomever most promises to be a good boy or girl to the controllers.
How long must we wait, people?
How long?
Until the whole structure topples of its own rot?
Let us pray not.
Let us pray.
All we can do now is refuse to cooperate, refuse to approve of such actions because of partisan politics. If both sides are rotten, then partisanship is equally rotten.
Take that to the bank!!!
Later…
AG
