Bob Shrum
By Bob Shrum
Gerald Ford was, above all, a decent man. Ironically, his very decency undid him barely a month into his term as the 38th President. After restoring a measure of public faith when he succeeded a disgraced Richard Nixon, forced from office for complicity in a “third-rate burglary” and more profound abuses of power, the unelected Ford let Alexander Haig talk him into suddenly and unexpectedly pardoning his predecessor. The new president had won the nation’s confidence in ways large and small—his inaugural words proclaiming that “our long national nightmare is over” to photos of him preparing his own toast for breakfast. Now he angered and alienated Americans by yielding prematurely to the argument that a criminal investigation of an allegedly suicidal Nixon would be inhumane and “bad for the country.” Ford might have gotten away with a pardon—his decision might have been seen as the decent but misguided act it probably was—if he had waited. He could have given Nixon his get-out-of-jail-free card after an indictment and before a trial. But he would have had to prepare public opinion and let the idea emerge, instead of announcing it like a thunder-clap before Nixon had faced the special prosecutor. The Ford presidency was instantly under water because people rejected the notion that presidents were that far above the law.< CONTINUED >>
By Bob Shrum, "Hardblogger"
Iraq is now the lame-duck war, but lame ducks have a way of hobbling around for a while. We know that George W. Bush will be quacking for two more years, sometimes in bipartisan tone, faux or real, and sometimes with instinctive calls to the base that failed him, Rove and Rumsfeld in 2006. The difference with Iraq, which is of course Bush’s twin lame duck, is that Americans and Iraqis are dying every day. How many more will die in the month and a little more before the Iraq Study Group reports its carefully negotiated and calibrated findings? These kids on the front lines deserve to be treated as something more than pawns in a face-saving exercise.
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