Hindsight and History

One of my favorite lines from To Kill A Mockingbird is spoken by Sheriff Tate, who tells Atticus Finch: "Let the dead bury the dead." That line keeps coming to mind but hasn't stopped me from thinking about Gerald Ford and the pardoning of Richard Nixon. He's been praised for having the courage to pardon the Criminal In Chief because it was such an unpopular thing to do at the time and it may have cost him his own presidency. Why does everyone now assume that it was the right thing to do? What if it was the wrong thing to do? What if it set a precedent, putting presidents above the law. I never quite understood how you can pardon someone BEFORE they're convicted of anything anyway. Doesn't that negate the whole "innocent until proven guilty" concept?

And he's applauded for speaking out against the Iraq War in 2004 -- but think of the impact his words might have had if he'd been courageous enough to let Bob Woodward publish that interview in July 2004 - not posthumously. Knowing when to speak out -- and when to keep quiet is a true sign of leadership and Ford missed the mark here too. But I digress.

The pardoning of Nixon was no profile in courage. It was the easy way out - and it let Ford put the Nixon mess behind him. It's easy to put our messes behind us by sweeping them away. The hard part - and what most requires courage - is to face what messes we have, shed light on them and hold those who did wrong accountable. Maureen Dowd connects the dots between the Ford administration then and Bush II's regime now - Rumselfd, Cheney, even Kissinger. Maybe if Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon, the lives and careers of all involved at that time might have turned out differently. And consequently would have altered history.