As I listen to the television news, now, more than 36 hours after former U.S. President Gerald Ford has died, all I hear is how he helped “heal” the country.

Sure, after a person is dead, you’re not supposed to talk about the person in a negative way. Growing up at the time of Ford’s appointment as the now-late President Richard M. Nixon’s vice president, there was a lot of bitterness that I recall.

When Ford was tapped as vice president, Nixon went live on television that evening, telling how he met Ford, how he approached him, and his trust in Ford.

Before Nixon’s second term in office would come to a natural conclusion as a result of a new president being elected, Ford had to assume presidency. Why? Because Nixon was forced, in face of impeachment hearings, to resign in utter disgrace over his involvement with the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, among other criminal activities, most of which were tied to him being re-elected.

Politics has never been clean, polite, or about honesty. It’s always been about finding the lesser of the two evils. These days, though, it seems it is becoming harder and harder to figure out what the lesser of the two evils are. It’s coming down, in the last two elections especially, you know, the federal elections in 2000, as well as the next one, in 2004, of figuring out which of the two evils you can stomach more easily.

Well, after good ol’ Tricky Dick resigned as president, the country soon learned he was granted a full presidential pardon by his former vice president, then the President of the United States, Gerald Ford.

That act alone, which Ford said was meant to “unite” the country, to help the country “heal,” brought out a lot of anger and resentment, and rightly so.

Nixon had been caught with his fingers in the cookie jar. Two then-reporters working at the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, followed the story of a break-in at the Watergate Hotel, the trial of a plumber and others tied to the break-in, and as they followed the leads, more and more dirt was kicked off the hidden nuggets of truth, revealing deeper and deeper involvement by stronger, more powerful figures in the Nixon Administration.

The [1] Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), the organization’s name, honestly, was aptly named for Nixon.

As stories began appearing on a regular basis in the Washington Post, politicos in the Beltway began harassing the paper, the reporters, and a chill ran through many reporters at the time. A lot of news outlets, print and broadcast alike, avoided the story like the plague. Some ran short, sanitized versions of the stories the Post put on the wire service.

When things in Washington began to spiral, more news outlets began to cover the story — either through picking up the wire reports or with their own reporters in the nation’s capitol.

After Nixon resigned, many wanted to see him face trial and be rightly convicted of wrongdoing for his crimes, like other Nixon cronies.

Known as the Watergate Seven, John N. Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson, faced trial, with most going to prison, but all ended up paying fines. Read more on Wikipedia’s page about the [2] Watergate Seven.

While at Wikipedia, be sure to also read up other [3] Watergate figures.

When Nixon resigned, it was a day of sadness and shame in the U.S. Shortly after that, though, the full presidential pardon by Ford brought out a lot of anger — toward Nixon, toward Ford, and toward the U.S. system of justice.

Had Nixon been anyone else, just a common man, he would not have received a presidential pardon. If you look at the list of people who do receive pardons, it almost always contains people who are well-connected. Sure, on rare occasion, a president does grant a pardon to a common person, but most of the time that’s something relegated to fictional accounts of heroism and patriotism. Yeah, rah-rah.

Am I sad Gerald Ford has died? No. Am I glad he died? Not particularly. I didn’t know the man. What I knew of him, by his actions, especially his major action in pardoning Nixon, left a bitterness with many people, which is still being heard, even on today’s news.

That bitterness, which is still fresh, it seems, is why so many are on TV news programs trying to whitewash the entire Nixon pardon.

I’m sorry, but trying to re-write history, especially this soon, isn’t a good thing. Admit Ford did something that was probably bargained in the talks he had with Nixon — the talks that ultimately led to his becoming vice president, and later, after Nixon resigned, president of the U.S.

Anything less than saying it was a mistake to pardon Nixon is simply another slap in the face to the American people. Sure, a former president — one who was never elected by the will of the people — has died. He will get all the pomp of a duly elected, full-term president. Just don’t try to say he did an honorable thing in allowing criminal activity at the highest levels of government go unchecked, unpunished in the name of “healing” the nation.

Technorati Tags:[4] Gerald ford, [5] Nixon, [6] president, [7] u.s., [8] u.s. president, [9] united states, [10] Watergate

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