And we shouldn't forget it. This post started with a comment on Jonathan Singers' post on Fortand his judgment on the Pardon:
In hindsight, his decision to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon, appears to have been the right one, even if at the time it cost him politically.
de mortuis nil nisi bonum aside Ford was a Republican Hack
It's important to understand him in his historical context. To compare him to Bush, Cheney, Foley, Frist, Delay and the current crop of GOPerverts is to be guilty of presentism which is judging a person in the past in present day terms, for example, having Tony Blair call American's traitors because of that unpleasantness around 1776.
For the times, Ford was right wing. He is only considered moderate because he didn't change as the GOP went right-wards. He was picked because Nixon needed to change the subject from corruption because of Watergate and Agnew resigning for classic corruption. He did what he was told, had no initiative and pardoned Nixon because he wanted to kill the story and take the hit for the pardon but let Nixon and his corruption drop off the radar.
As a president, he was a non-entity doing nothing to deal with the problem of inflation caused by Nixon going off the gold exchange or anything else.
The control of the media has allowed him to get off with a light load but we should not forget that as a weak cowardly man, when he was faced with a choice, he sold out the country and the justice system for his Party.
This was crossposted onto unsourced from my comment on Mydd.com and as the next commenter excoach332 said,
it is too bad that he short circuited the process of soul searching that should have taken place and Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, Grover Norquist, and Jack Abramoff are the unfortunate products of that pardon.
I think that this was a time where if Nixon has continued in the courts that more of his and the GOP subversion would have come to light and been corrected. But hey, I'm an optimist.
This theme has been expressed much more eloquently on Hullabaloo by poputonian channeling Herblock. The net of this entry is that Nixon had started the GOP assault on the constitution and on his "enemies". Watergate was in fact a third rate burglary, but the investigation was uncovering a whole spectrum of corruption and abuse. With the Pardon, Ford stopped the investigation in its tracks.
Reagan and Bush I continued to institutionalize the abuses and Bush Jr. (with assistance and guidance from Ford's Chief of Staff, Cheney) has made it SOP.
Matthew Yglesias add to the conversation by pointing out that Nixon didn't admit to anything whereas a pardon with an admission of the actions taken would have stopped the lawbreaking, the unequivocal pardon, allowed the GOPerverts to continue their assault on the Republic.
Dave Johnson in Seeing the Forest argues that the Pardon convinced the public that the Big Guy's didn't have to obey the Rules.
And so here we are. Bush2 can do anything with impunity - and says so with a smirk. His cronies loot, lie and steal. The public and especially the Washington insider class are conditioned to accept that this is the way things are done. All partly tracable back to Ford's subversion of accountability. A mistake. A big one.
The point is, that those who don't learn from History, are condemned to accept the current lies. The other point is that Republicans are GOPerverts who have been subverting the United States of American at least since Nixon. In this context Major Danby's posting Dick Cheney has a point is relevant, as is Ben Franklin's admonition that we have a Republic if we can keep it.