What Precedent Did Gerald Ford Set When He Pardoned Richard Nixon?
Unanticipated consequences of historic decisions
Historic decisions often have unanticipated consequences. President Gerald Ford pardoned disgraced President Richard Nixon less than a month after Nixon resigned from the presidency in 1974. In accepting the pardon, Nixon vaguely expressed “regret” over “mistakes” he made while president, but never admitted that he had engaged in illegal behavior, though Congress was poised to impeach, convict, and remove him from office by a bipartisan vote. Indeed, in a subsequent interview with British journalist David Frost, Nixon argued that U.S. presidents are above the law.
Ford’s pardon immediately evoked outrage and suspicion from a cross-section of the American people. Ford narrowly lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter, who went on to extend the concept of forgiveness by pardoning Vietnam draft dodgers, especially those who fled to Canada.
In the longer term, Ford’s initially unpopular decision won wide praise, even among Democratic partisans who hated Nixon. In retrospect, they conceded that not prosecuting him allowed the country to move on and heal after a period of deep division rather than continue to divide, obsess, and argue about Nixon’s guilt and let the wounds of Watergate fester.
Nearly 30 years after Ford’s pardon, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, strongly influenced by one of Nixon's arch-adversaries, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), as well as President Kennedy’s daughter Caroline, in 2001 awarded President Ford the Profile in Courage Award. Ford "put his love of country ahead of his own political future,” Caroline Kennedy said.
And yet there was a negative historical consequence to Ford’s pardon. It allowed “those (like Donald Trump) who thought like Nixon could come to think they were above the law,” Boston College History Professor Heather Cox Richardson wrote.
Ford’s pardon influenced Trump. He and Nixon became penpals in the 1980s, engaging in “mutual affirmation” if not admiration, Politico reported. “The two men bonded over themes that resonate today: a shared distrust of the media, a desire to maximize TV ratings, the idea of using people as ‘props.’”
Nixon, Trump wrote in 1982, is “one of this country’s great men, and it was an honor to spend an evening with you.” He invited the Nixons to reside in Trump Tower.
What do you think? Was Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon a good one or a bad one?
Richardson offered a fuller context to Nixon’s crimes and their parallels to the behavior of Trump.