Letters to the Editor
Gwool
Published Letters: 353 Editor's Choice: 40
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Looks like there's been a run on tin foil ...
[Read the article: The man who ended our Nixon nightmare]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Historical Hindsight finds the dominant majority of us in agreement that pardoning Nixon was the right thing to do. Alas, like the wizened WWII Japanese soldiers who crawled out from caves in the Phillipines in the 1970s only to find the war they'd been fighting had ended 30 years ago, a few Salon readers don the tin foil helmets to blame the usual suspects about Watergate.
Barak Obama may be a political lightweight due to his lack of experience, but he hits a resonant chord when he states that American debate has been dominated for 40 years by arguments within the baby boomer generation and that the rest of the country is getting pretty tired of it. From vietnam, to watergate, "family values," boomers have hissed at one another in increasingly impolite fashion.
If Ford were politically active today he would be ridiculed by the right as a RINO, or Republican in Name Only. He believed in civility. He had the temerity, according to the man's daughter, Cokie Roberts, to socialize with Majority Leader Hale Boggs when he was the Minority Leader.
Through it all, Ford also put the country first. It was not in his political best interests to pardon Nixon. He felt it was in the country's best interest to put a trial and all of the rest behind us. The tin foil twits arguing Nixon should have been impeached missed an itty bitty fun fact. All impeachment does is remove a president from office. In essence, then, rabidly clamoring Nixon should be impeached after he resigned is akin to demanding a death row inmate be electrocuted after he died of natural causes. (I realize the analogy will be lost on the tin foil crowd, as the left wing loons are universally against capital punishment, but I suspect we hoi polloi will be able to follow it.)
Watergate signals many things to many people. To this armchair quarterback it signaled the break point at which the media deemed itself smarter and more important than the politicians. It established the cynical and cancerous viewpoint that all politicians are corrupt and have to be watched by the so-called 4th estate lest they do injurious harm to the citizenry.
Post watergate we have hamstrung these people. They have to spend more time rather than less time chasing money post watergate thanks to our contribution limits. The press has become increasingly invasive of a pols' personal life. The issue has morphed from protecting the citizens against bad political practices to essentially snooping around for anything in a politician's personal life that will sell newspapers regardless of its pertinence to the political process.
It is an historical blink of an eye to go from FDR to Kennedy to Nixon to Clinton, yet look at the change in political press coverage. With FDR they looked the other way as he was lifted from chair to chair and never photographed him in a wheelchair out of RESPECT for the office. Kennedy's pecadillos were well known secrets, yet never covered. Nixon brought about the feeding frenzy that continues to this day. Poor Jerry Ford, a well meaning accident of history, gets mocked and ridiculed as a dunce and a klutz when he was in actuality one of the most athletically gifted presidents ever. Clinton's sex life became a critical focal point for a myriad of reasons and gave some the justification to say he should be impeached because he lied about sex. They claim it mattered not that it was about sex. While I personally disagree with them, I can see how they get there when the wall between the personal and public lives of our officials had been so obliterated by the cynical view that the fourth estate had to police every aspect of the political process given their arrogant belief they were the smartest ones in the room at political press conferences.
While many exalt Woodward and Bernstein, I think they should be villified. Nixon should have resigned earlier. Ford did his level best to protect the process, but it was too late by the time he had any ability to do something about it.
The first amendment does not protect one from yelling fire in a crowded theatre when there isn't one. At one point will bringing down a politician for sport be deemed the equivalent?
Rest in Peace, Jerry. You may have been an accident of history, but you acquitted yourself well.
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Smugness does not become you, jamartinjr
[Read the article: The man who ended our Nixon nightmare]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, the House impeaches and then the senate determines whether or not there is a conviction.
What does the conviction do?
It removes the president from office.
If the man resigns from office, then why have the house vote on setting in motion a process that could remove him from office? Why have the Senate hold a trial to determine if a man should leave an office he has already vacated.
Think, smartass.