Month: January 2007

Pardoning Nixon Saved the GOP, Not the USA

Jon Ponder
As leader of his party, Ford knew that having former Pres. Nixon on trial when the 1976 campaigns got underway could have permanently hobbled the GOP

As the pundits have eulogized former Pres. Gerald Ford over the past few days, a new version of the conventional wisdom about his pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon, has emerged. In the newly revised history, Ford pardoned Nixon in order to spare the nation the agony of witnessing a former president on trial. However, I agree with Margie Burns that his motives were a bit more basic:

[The pardon] did not spare the nation; it spared Richard M. Nixon. The nation had not undergone a long nightmare with Nixon’s resignation; Nixon had. The nation had not endured a virtual state of siege with Nixon’s attempt to spy on and to steal from the opposition and then to stonewall investigation into his actions (assisted by then-head of the Republican National Committee George H. W. Bush); Nixon had. And with all due respect, most of the graybeards on television probably know that. If they don’t, they’re not qualified to be either reporters or commentators. Anyone who recollects the Seventies as being a period when public adoration of Dick Nixon was at its peak -– such that seeing him answer questions about Watergate would have been simply unbearable -– is remembering wrong.

Margie Burns is being generous. Ford may have been motivated to help Nixon, with whom he had a social relationship. But Ford’s primary objective in pardoning Nixon was to prevent the GOP from entering the 1976 election cycle with the trials of a Republican ex-president and his aides dominating the headlines.

Ford knew that the putting Nixon on trial in 1975 could have easily spread Watergate’s cancer on the presidency into the GOP body politic at the same time that the 1976 presidential campaign was ramping up. Nixon’s secret Oval Office tapes would be played in open court, and the crimes of his staffers would be exposed in the worst possible light. The Republican Party could not afford this exposure, so, as its leader, Pres. Ford did what had to be done.

He paid a heavy price for the pardon. Within a month, Ford’s popularity plummeted over 25 points. Less than two years later, he lost the presidency to Jimmy Carter.

Ford was a genuinely decent guy — a World War II veteran who served in the House for 25 years before being named Nixon’s vice president. For the pardon of Richard Nixon, the Republican Party owes him everything, and the nation owes him nothing.

Giuliani Misplaces Secret Prez Playbook

Jon Ponder

Knucklehead: Unless you are Rudolph Giuliani fan (and I know some very smart people who are), here’s a story that will make you chuckle:

“All will come out – in worst light.”
— Giuliani ’08 internal campaign memo

It’s clearly laid out in 140 pages of printed text, handwriting and spreadsheets: The top-secret plan for Rudy Giuliani’s bid for the White House.

The remarkably detailed dossier sets out the budgets, schedules and fund-raising plans that will underpin the former New York mayor’s presidential campaign – as well as his aides’ worries that personal and political baggage could scuttle his run…

One page cites the explicit concern that he might “drop out of [the] race” as a consequence of his potentially “insurmountable” personal and political vulnerabilities.

On the same page is a list of the candidate’s central problems in bullet-point form: his private sector business; disgraced former aide Bernard Kerik; his third wife, Judith Nathan Giuliani; “social issues,” on which is he is more liberal than most Republicans, and his former wife Donna Hanover… “All will come out – in worst light,” the memo continues.

These documents could haunt the campaign later by making it impossible to make Rudi’s personal issues go away via the Bush/Rove method of denying they exist.

Giuliani is the most over-rated would-be president out there. Aside from his spotty mangerial record, his personal history is a mess. Voters in Peoria may forgive him for having gay friends, but may be less forgiving about his marital transgressions, particularly the very public affair he engaged in while he served as mayor of New York, and was very much married to someone else.