POTUS Gerald Ford has died.

[minionofmidas]

Rest in Peace.

[Wakie]

RIP

Probably the last President that both sides can agree was basically a good man.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Ford was not a supporter of the Iraq war.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/27/AR2006122701558.html

[JSojourner]

May light perpetual shine upon him and may God grant peace and comfort to his family and friends.

I always liked and admired this good, decent man.

[Ebowed]

I agree with a lot of what you say, dazzleman.  Nixon was a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time - nearly any other president has, I think, done comparable things that we will probably never know about.  This is one thing that separates Ford from the rest -- he gives off a quality of general trustworthiness.  I've never heard any stories about Ford being corrupt or spiteful to his opponents.

The Nixon pardon was hardly on level with the last-minute pardons that we have become accustomed to.  Pardoning a group of people who gave you money on your way out the door doesn't require any bravery or basis in political principle, and the controversy generated by it is minimal and soon forgotten.

[Nym90]

As I said, I understand and respect the logic in favor of the pardon. I admitted I'm torn on the issue, and I do agree with your points as valid. I'm not at all arguing that pardons should never be used, but by "extreme cases" I'm mainly referring to situations where the person is clearly innocent and their conviction was a miscarriage of justice. That's what I would view as a legitimate use of the pardon, not to usurp the power of the courts or of the people.

There certainly are cases where prosecuting a criminal may do more harm than good, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea of one person being able to unilaterally make that decision. I think it would make more sense for Congress to wield the pardon power, or at least for pardons to be able to be overridden with a 2/3 vote of both houses of Congress.

I do think that allowing Nixon to get away with what he did could well be argued to be more damaging to the national interest than the positive effects of putting the whole affair behind us. It's not at all obvious to me that what Ford did was in the best interest of the country, and that prosecuting Nixon would've been merely a vendetta that would hurt the country. I do think it's bad for the country to show that we are going to allow that kind of thing (and the fact that it was done in the past is no argument in favor of allowing it, as I do believe our standards should continually be evolving and improving over time--it was wrong then too, and it shows maturity for our country to be able to finally realize this and show that we won't continue to allow it any further).

As I said, it's a genuinely tough issue; both sides can legitimately argue that their position would be better for the country. There are both large positives and large negatives to both pardoning Nixon and also to not pardoning him.

I don't agree with the abortion argument you brought up, nor do I really agree that the pardon is equal to judicial activism either (as you said, one of them is in the constitution, the other isn't), but I do think there are similarities in that in both cases one person, or a few people, are able to unilaterally override something that may be favored by the vast majority of people. In both cases, the public does have recourse in the next election to vote out the person who has done this (or the people who appointed or supported them). So yes, there is a difference in degree, and it's not necessarily illogical to support one and not the other, but it's not a fundamentally black and white distinction either. I was merely raising that example (as I had done with abortion previously) as one way of looking at the issue, not as the correct one necessarily.

I do agree that former Vice Presidents who are unelected don't usually have a mandate, and obviously you are right that most people don't vote for VPs at all, much less on the basis of what kind of President they'd make. But in the case of Ford, he came in having to succeed a disgraced President of his party, so his mandate was even less (not that this was his fault at all, but that's how the chips just happened to fall for him). It certainly wasn't meant as a criticism of Ford, in fact I'd say it's praise, as he did quite a good job given the nearly impossible situation he was faced with in terms of his party's position at that point in time. I did admit that he was a good President, I was merely pointing out that his position was historically pretty unique.