August 8 was the fiftieth anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Unfortunately, that anniversary spurred little reflections or lamentations on how lawless the federal government has become in the subsequent half century.
Aside from his Watergate abuses, Nixon was guilty of illegally invading a foreign country (Cambodia), perpetuating the war in Vietnam for political purposes and his 1972 reelection campaign, violating the rights of tens of thousands of Americans with the illegal FBI COINTELPRO program, sanctioning CIA violence and subversion around the globe, and many other offenses. Nixon also created Amtrak.
The friends of Leviathan have benefited immensely from obscuring, if not burying, most of the crimes of the Nixon era. The more clearly people recalled Nixon’s abuses, the more difficult it would be to sway them to accept that government is inherently benevolent and trustworthy. The media’s Nixon rendition routinely starts and stops at Watergate. It is typical of the establishment media to treat a crime against a competing political party as a graver offense than the trampling of the rights of tens of thousands of Americans.
Nixon resigned because he knew that he would be demolished in a Senate trial. But President Gerald Ford compounded the damage from Nixon’s presidency when he issued a sweeping pardon of his predecessor that practically condemned future generations of Americans to being governed by lawless presidents.
Ford’s rationale for the pardon deserves a place in the pantheon of American political bullshit. In his televised announcement of the pardon, Ford declared that, if Nixon were put on trial, “the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.” Ford also claimed that prosecuting Nixon would banish “the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks” after Nixon resigned. But Ford’s action made it easier for subsequent presidents to disturb “tranquility” and practically everything else.
Many people assume that President Ford pardoned Nixon only for Watergate. In reality, Ford’s pardon was so sweeping—forgiving Nixon for any and every possible crime he may have committed—that it would have exempted Nixon even from charges of genocide:
“Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969, through August 9, 1974.”
Ford’s pardon effectively closed the book on holding Nixon culpable for his crimes against the Constitution, Americans, and millions of other people around the world. Ford’s pardon of Nixon set a precedent of absolute immunity for the president for all crimes committed in office. Ford’s pardon proclaimed a new doctrine in American law and politics—that one president can absolve another president of all his crimes and all his killings. His pardon signaled the formal end of the rule of law in America.
The lesson that Ford’s top advisors seemed to draw from the pardon is that the government can break the law with impunity. Ford’s former chief of staff, Dick Cheney, brought this doctrine into the W. Bush administration, where it helped unleash torture around the world.
If Nixon had been publicly tried and a full accounting of his abuses made to the American public, it may have been far more difficult for subsequent presidents to cover up their crimes. Politicians remembering Nixon’s punishment and humiliation might have been slower to lie the nation into unnecessary foreign wars. If Ford was hell-bent on pardoning his benefactor, he should have had the decency to wait until the evidence was on the table.
Ford’s expansive use of the pardon helped pave the way for George H.W. Bush’s Iran-Contra pardons which largely demolished the investigation of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. On Christmas Eve 1992, Bush pardoned six Reagan administration officials for their roles in Iran-Contra, the illegal arms-for-hostage deal that blighted the final years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was scheduled to go on trial two weeks later on charges of lying to Congress. University of California Professor Eric Rauchway declared that Bush’s “pardons did more to enable future criminal presidencies even than Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon.” If Walsh’s investigation had led to Bush’s conviction, the Bush brand name might have been sufficiently damaged that no other Bush could have ascended to the presidency.
President Bill Clinton built on those precedents to issue a deluge of pardons in his final day of office, including for two former cabinet members, his brother Roger, fellow Whitewater operative Susan McDougal (whose silence helped save Clinton), and former Congressman Mel Reynolds (convicted of having sex with a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer as well as bank fraud and wire fraud). Slate denounced Clinton’s pardon for fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who had been indicted for tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and trading with the enemy, as “the most unjust presidential pardon in American history.” Rich’s pardon was facilitated by Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who slipped the pardon effort past normal Justice Department checks and balances. (Holder was reportedly the key operative in selecting the vice presidential candidate of Kamala Harris this month.)
Trump issued a deluge of pardons in his final weeks in office that added to his notoriety, including 143 in his final day. Trump pardoned political crooks, foreign agents, some of his prominent supporters, and a founder of Death Row Records. A White House press release justified the pardon of Detroit’s notoriously corrupt mayor Kwame Kilpatrick because he “has taught public speaking classes and has led Bible Study groups with his fellow inmates.” Plus, the dude is from a swing state in the next presidential election.
If Friedrich Hayek was still around, he might update his famous chapter on “Why the Worst Get on Top” with a few paragraphs on the pardon power of American presidents. Ford’s blanket pardon of Nixon helped turn America into an impunity democracy in which rulers pay no price for their misdeeds. Presidential pardons often preclude truth: the odds of learning the facts about official outrages decline by 98% after the threat of prosecution is removed.
