A Final Word (Or A Thousand) On Ford

Gerald Ford, in the end, was a loyal soldier, a loyal Republican. He was a moderate, certainly, on some things; late in life he came out in favor of stem cell research, choice, gun control... the list goes on and on. In his time, he mirrored Nixon's policies almost precisely, and this came out of their close relationship, almost entirely hidden to the public, that lasted from the late 1940s onward.

When talk turned to Nixon, Ford made me start at the very beginning: his early congressional career during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. Ford had two indelible memories from the early Cold War days: sitting in the House chamber hearing General Douglas MacArthur deliver his "Old Soldiers Never Die" resignation speech, and watching his G.O.P. colleague Richard Nixon, a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, zealously investigate the State Department official and accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss. "Both moments stayed with me in a very real sense for very real reasons," Ford recalled. "General MacArthur, after all, had led our efforts in the Pacific, where I served during World War II. And Dick Nixon was my close friend, and there he was creating a national ruckus by methodically prosecuting Hiss. In MacArthur's case I was impressed by the power of oratory. In Dick's case it was more the power of dogged diligence."

It didn't take Ford long to learn that Nixon was "a foreign-policy wizard." "We had a shared vision about the Soviet Union," Ford said. "But Nixon could actually tell you about 20 political parties in Rhodesia. He was that micro." Ford genuinely respected Nixon's acumen in the foreign-policy realm. Both Republicans enthusiastically endorsed the Marshall Plan and the U.S. military intervention on the Korean Peninsula. "Our political views on global issues were nearly identical," Ford recalled. "I even agreed with him on Hiss. Domestically we were mirror images." Both men had gone through the Great Depression on the poorer side of the socio-economic tracks. "We understood what is meant to rise on merit, not privilege," Ford said. "But it was our mutual love of football —both N.F.L. and college—which sealed the deal of our friendship.

But it wasn't until Nixon lost his 1962 California gubernatorial bid, to Pat Brown, that he fully appreciated Ford's stand-up quality. Most Republican politicians now deemed Nixon finished, a washed-up pariah who couldn't win dogcatcher of San Clemente. As the saying went, everybody enjoyed kicking Nixon while he was down. Everybody except Gerald Ford. "I kept in touch with Dick as a friend," Ford recalled. "I knew how down he could get. And whenever somebody bad-mouthed him within my earshot I defended his honor. That's what friends do for friends. When Alger Hiss went on TV and started smearing Dick, I spoke out." [...]

No major Republican congressional leader stood by Nixon more fulsomely than Gerald Ford. Ford was the man Nixon trusted on Capitol Hill. The mutual friendship continued well past the throes of Watergate, Nixon's resignation, and Ford's ascension to the Oval Office. Exiled at Casa Pacifica, his home in San Clemente, California, Nixon, hoping to repay the friend who had campaigned for him in 1960, 1968, and 1972, was hell-bent on returning the favor. Unbeknownst to history until now, Nixon was occasionally offering Ford both strategic advice and morale boosts from retirement throughout the 1976 campaign. Nixon presented himself in letters as a scarred veteran of political bloodbaths, a California sage with an instinct for the jugular. On April 22, 1976, for example, he urged Ford to lambaste the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill, which sought to trim unemployment by offering a wide range of public-service jobs to citizens willing to take them. To Nixon, the bill was a "monstrosity," and he urged Ford to score points with independents by denouncing it as socialist. Nixon also advised Ford to aggressively paint Carter, and the Democratic congress, as wimpish on Communism. "Your 'guts' comment on the Congress' failure to support you on Angola was tops," Nixon wrote Ford on February 12, referring to Ford's thwarted bid to fund anti-Marxist guerrillas in the African country. "You will take a little heat on it—but sometimes the right four letter word is the best way to get a message across."

This revelation of a close relationship, seconded by Bob Woodward, is only the latest in the many things coming out about Ford that buck the conventional wisdom. It was always a given that Nixon picked Ford for VP because he was popular on Capitol Hill and would be easily confirmable. Now we can see that it was a reward for loyalty. A reward that was paid back with the pardon of Nixon that marked (and marred) Ford's entire Presidency. One month earlier, in his speech to the nation after taking the Oath of Office, Ford claimed that "the long national nightmare is over" because the process worked, showing that no man is above the law. Then he went and put Nixon above that law. The conventional wisdom is that Ford healed the nation by sparing them the protracted trial and imprisonment of a former leader. But at the time, the reaction was the exact opposite:

Many Americans were furious. Conservative columnist George F. Will railed that the pardon showed Ford was not committed to "equal justice under law." As a gubernatorial candidate, Democrat Jerry Brown told The Chronicle that Ford was wrong to pardon Nixon "before the special prosecutor had completed his independent review of the evidence."

Of 32 Letters to the Editor printed in The Chronicle in the week following the pardon, only 2 supported Ford. One reader called the pardon "the grossest insult ever perpetrated against the working, taxpaying American citizen."

Here's some more fallout. To suggest that those who were so angry at the exoneration of a disgraceful criminal just because he once lived in the White House just didn't know how good it would be for the country decades later is insulting. People were angry with Ford because he upended the entire idea of American justice. And he clearly, given the new disclosure of friendship, did it out of loyalty. It was the same loyalty that propelled him to embargo his criticisms of President Bush's war in Iraq until after his death. The fiction is that this pardon "healed the wounds of the nation." Really, as Atrios says, it healed the wounds of official Washington.

As we all know, because everybody on the teevee will keep repeating it, Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon was perhaps the wisest and awesomest thing anyone has ever done in the history of presidenting. Never mind that it wasn't popular at the time. Never mind that it set an awful precedent which led to the pardoning of the Iran Contra figures and transformed corrupt Nixonites into distinguished elder statesmen and Bush administration officials.

We are told again and again that what they nation needed was "to heal." That "the turmoil" needed to be over. That it was necessary to move on.

But these are the Wise Old Men talking, not of the country but of their beloved Washington. The turmoil was in their city, not in the country. While they speak as if they know what's best for us, in truth they simply know what's best for them.

One thing we have to do in this country is put the stake through the heart of "conventional wisdom". It's almost never true (like the old one about how former Presidents don't criticize sitting Presidents, even though Reagan did it ONE MONTH into Clinton's term). In fact, it's incredibly damaging, because it keeps the nation from moving forward by constraining it based on what a few unelected elites in DC think. The politician that eventually decides not to care what these boors think will earn the undying gratitude of America.

Jerry Ford was a nice and honest man. Betty was a treasure. But he was a loyalist, through and through, and this loyalty characterized practically all his decisions. Let's not pretend anything different.