Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon: ethics and politics

Research Paper Abstract This paper examines, evaluates and discusses Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon. It discusses the issue from the perspective of ethics and politics and shows that Ford’s decision was both an ethical one and a political one—which explains why many viewed it and still view it today in such stark and different terms. For some, the pardon allowed the nation to move forward and put the whole ugly incident behind them. For others, the pardon allowed the so-called “crook” to walk away free without any sort of accountability. The fact of the matter is that Nixon had already resigned and has his reputation destroyed and his career ended. Pardoning him was the moral thing to do and an appropriate course of action as well as a display of generosity and charity. It was also a political move, as it ensured that Nixon would not come back to play another role in the farce that had become the American government since November 1963. This paper explains why Ford’s pardon was both ethical and political and what implications this had and has today.

President Gerald Ford’s Decision to Pardon President Richard Nixon

Introduction Nixon’s reputation had already been ruined and his political career was over. Pardoning Nixon seemed like the right thing to do in order to move the country forward, put the past in the past, and start fresh with a new page and a renewed sense of the democratic spirit. On the other hand, it could be argued that pardoning Nixon was like letting the symbol of corrupt government off the hook. It was like saying there would never be any accountability among any politician at any time ever. Depending on the view that one chose to take—the former somewhat optimistic and rosy, the latter more pessimistic and dark—the pardoning of Nixon by Ford tells a very different story. This paper will evaluate and discuss President Ford’s decision to pardon President Nixon and show that Ford’s decision was ethical but also political, which suggests that actions are not always wholly good or bad.

The Matter of Ethics The debate over whether Ford’s decision to pardon was ethical or not essentially boils down to one’s perspective on whether Nixon deserved to be punished for whatever crimes he committed. Thus, an examination of the evidence can be helpful in shaping one’s perspective. The evidence of Nixon’s “guilt” is really only evidence of a deeply paranoid President trying to control the flow of information and shape the narrative around himself (Stone & Kuznick, 2012). As a politician, his entire career had been based on the idea of controlling the narrative. His defeat to Kennedy in 1960 was a result of his inability to control his own narrative: JFK had taken control of it and ridden that control all the way to the White House. When Jack and Bobby died, Nixon’s path to the White House was open once more. He eventually pulled American forces out of Vietnam—but his political opponents did not stop hammering him about his knowledge of or role in the Watergate conspiracy. As both Dean (2014) and Hougan (1984) point out, Nixon was not the mastermind behind the Watergate burglary nor really the architect of its cover-up. But because the players (the plumbers) were long-time agents (including E. Howard Hunt), they had information (presumably about the assassination of JFK) that would have made life very difficult for Nixon and his Administration were it to be publicized. It was for this reason (i.e., the intention of keeping certain unpleasant realities under wraps) that Nixon offered to pay Hunt to keep quiet (Hougan, 1984). It was not really an attempt to bribe one of the Watergate burglars in order to prevent the burglar from copping to Nixon’s role in the break-in: it was merely an attempt to nip a possibly negative story about the past in the bud—no one knew what Hunt knew, and since he was connected to the CIA and had been in the same circles as those linked to Kennedy’s assassination, Nixon believed it was better to try to control the narrative than have it controlled by someone else. The Watergate burglary was all Liddy’s doing—not Nixon’s (Dean, 2014). Yet, the American press and Nixon’s political opponents were happy to distort the reality and paint Nixon as the representative of government corruption.
Thus, for Ford to pardon Nixon was really not unethical at all: it had never been proven—not even on the Tapes—that Nixon had committed a crime. Whatever guilt could be placed on him was related to his desire to control the narrative. Pardoning Nixon also allowed the U.S. to put the whole sordid affair in the past and move forward. For those who did not want to think of it, who did not want to think of JFK, Bobby, Malcolm or MLK, Jr., moving forward was good. Political Factor of President Gerald Ford’s Decision to Pardon Richard Nixon Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon, however, was not just an ethical decision—it was also a political one. Ford also had ties to the Kennedy assassination (he served on the Warren Commission) and cleaning up the Watergate business and showing Nixon through the door and closing that door by way of pardon was a political way to keep all the dirty political business of the 1960s locked and under wraps. Ford’s attempt was futile, however, as the House Select Committee on Assassinations found in 1976 that JFK had probably been assassinated as a result of a conspiracy (JFK Assassination Records, n.d.). Thus, even if Ford was acting ethically by ending the witch hunt over Nixon’s involvement in Watergate, he was also acting politically by pardoning him.

Implications The implications for Ford were immediate: he lost in the following election to Carter. The public had been convinced that it did not matter what Nixon was trying to cover up—the fact that he was not as transparent (as, say, someone like Carter), and the fact that the public had been through four major assassinations, the Vietnam War, Kent State, and a social/sexual revolution, all meant that Ford’s actions were an inexcusable demonstration by the establishment that it did not believe itself accountable to the people. The people thus showed that their voice and vote did still matter—and so they voted out Ford. For me, politics has always been like two-faced Janus: on the one side there are the nice words that leaders use; and on the other side, there are the actions they take behind the scenes that—if the public knew about—would almost certainly bring the era of democracy to close.