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Instead of being let off by Ford? Seems ridiculous how he just got off with just a slap on the wrist. Sure he resigned, but the higher you are, the more you should fall. Being the President to do something like that should mean life in prison with Bubba as a friend.
Instead of being let off by Ford? Seems ridiculous how he just got off with just a slap on the wrist. Sure he resigned, but the higher you are, the more you should fall. Being the President to do something like that should mean life in prison with Bubba as a friend.
To what purpose?
Prison has three purposes:
1) Deterrence.
I don't think prison time would be any more of a deterrence than the loss of the office - a penalty Nixon paid (had he not resigned, he'd have been impeached by the House and removed by the Senate). After a lifetime of clawing one's way to the White House, I don't see a conversation going like this:
Chief of Staff: That's a bad idea, Mr. President. You could get impeached and removed from office.
POTUS: Pfffft! Like I care!
Chief of Staff: And maybe prison time.
POTUS: Yikes! You're right, I better not do that!
2) Prevention.
While incarcerated, an individual's ability to re-offend is either removed or severely limited. In any case, it would be rather hard for an ex-President to commit an impeachable offense, in prison or not, don't you agree?
3) Rehabilitation.
As with prevention, we don't really need naughty ex-Presidents to be disinclined to re-commit impeachable offenses, because being ex-Presidents they no longer have any capacity to commit impeachable offense.
As William Muny once said, "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it!". It might make you feel better, but slaking your retributive desires are not a legitimate purpose of the criminal justice system. And it hardly seems worth the national fiasco that would have been a trial. Did Nixon commit serious crimes? Absolutely. Did they warrant, as a legal matter, a prison term? Certainly. Was Richard Nixon a rotten, vindictive, power-abusing man who seriously damaged the Presidency? Yes.
Did President Ford to the right thing? Again, yes.
By the way, there's a lot of bipartisan agreement to this thought. I'm not saying there's unanimity, far from it. But, for example, the Kennedy Foundation - comprised of a lot of people who take a lot of issues with Nixon's side of the political aisle - awarded Gerald Ford its Profile in Courage award for his pardon of Nixon. https://www.jfklibrary.org/events-an...rald-ford-2001
Also, according to Lyle Dennison - a brilliant legal scholar whose work for SCOTUSblog I used to enjoy before he retired - and was skeptical that the evidence that would have possessed at the time would have produced a guilty verdict that would withstand appeals. So there's that.
Note:
The above discussion pertains only to the case of Richard Nixon. I am not suggesting that no President should ever be held criminally liable for any crimes committed while in office.
Instead of being let off by Ford? Seems ridiculous how he just got off with just a slap on the wrist. Sure he resigned, but the higher you are, the more you should fall. Being the President to do something like that should mean life in prison with Bubba as a friend.
A few things here:
At the time Nixon was pardoned he was undergoing impeachment. No criminal charges or criminal indictment was yet issued. So we don't even know if or what he would be charged with - maybe conspiracy, perjury, obstruction of justice. Then we have to assume the trial would be successful and he would be found guilty (and it appears indeed he was guilty of all the above, but deals are struck for lessor charges even in trial). Then we must assume that he would even be sentenced to jail - his VP Spiro Agnew was found guilty (tax evasion) but did no jail time. His Attorney General was also found guilty and did 19 months in a club fed type facility.
So there you go -
1.) There is no assurance even if found criminally guilty that he would have been sentenced to prison.
2.) If he did prison time it certainly would not be for life, but for a year or two.
3.) The prison would be a relatively comfortable life in a minimum security detention center, not a "jail cell with Bubba."
The pardon clearly cost Ford the election. The public at the time I believe wanted Nixon put on trial, but not necessarily imprisoned. There is still a certain dignity to the office of president, I don't think it would have set well with the public.
Also, what you are suggesting is just to "bannana republic" type action. A coup occurs and the previous leader is imprisoned or put to death. That's not what America is about. Justice needs to be served, but based on the rule of law, not the rule of vengeance.
Plus Nixon was, at best, a minor crook. You want some real prison/gallows material ? We've had some real jewels up there:
FDR was well aware that Pearl Harbor was going to be attacked and allowed it to happen as the 'shock and awe' moment needed to get the US into WW2. For the CIC to allow the deaths of thousands of US service personnel, I can't imagine a prison bad enough.
Lincoln allowed Sherman to commit war crimes on civilians in his march across Georgia, locked up northern newspaper editors with a different opinion on the war, held the entire legislature of Maryland hostage to prevent a vote of secession, just to name a few on his list of crimes.
Clinton lied his way thru office, has used the Clinton Foundation as a 'pay for access' organized crime outfit, has too many bodies in his (and her) wake to count, and remains free as a bird today.
And I could probably list another dozen that Nixon pales in comparison.......
As William Muny once said, "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it!". It might make you feel better, but slaking your retributive desires are not a legitimate purpose of the criminal justice system.
Are you arguing that there is no punitive aspect? It is called the penal system because it comes with a penalty.
Why do you think that victims get invited to attend parole hearings and their opinions solicited? Because the system wants the victims to weigh in on whether or not the perp is being successfully deterred? To gauge whether or not he is rehabilitated?
William Muny quotes aside, punishment is indeed one of the purposes.
Do you think Nixon should have served prison time for the Watergate scandal?
Not at all.
What Ford did was the right thing.
In the immediate aftermath of the scandal, there was considerable public desire for Nixon's prosecution after he resigned. But the pardon put that to rest and the country (most of it, anyway) was able to move on to address the pressing issue of the economy, which was in bad shape at the time following years of high inflation, the Arab oil embargo and the fall of Vietnam.
Ford wasn't successful in his weak attempts to turn it around, which gave us Jimmy Carter two years later. And Carter wasn't able to get a handle on it either, resulting in his one-term presidency.
My recollection of those times is that Nixon was dominating every press conference and the daily news, well after he had resigned and Ford had taken office. Ford said that he issued the pardon in order o stop the constant barrage of questions in the news and press conferences so the administration could get on with running the country. The previous two years of controversy had consumed so much time that little governance had taken place. It took a while, but it finally made sense to most people.
I suppose Ford could have stepped back and waited to see if the House would continue impeachment proceedings that might have resulted in a trail in the Senate. If Nixon had been found guilty by 2/3 of the Senators, he would have been convicted and the Constitution would have prevented him from holding public office again. (That seems like a waste of a lot of resources, considering Nixon's age at the time. He wasn't going to run for office again anyway.)
Another outcome if Ford had let the Congress continue with impeachment proceedings would have been constitutional tests. First, could a President who resigned still be tried in an impeachment trial? Second, if he was tried and convicted, would further criminal proceedings based on the same actions be considered double jeopardy? Some very expensive lawyers would have made a LOT of money arguing about that in the Supreme Court.
A few things here:
At the time Nixon was pardoned he was undergoing impeachment. No criminal charges or criminal indictment was yet issued. So we don't even know if or what he would be charged with - maybe conspiracy, perjury, obstruction of justice. Then we have to assume the trial would be successful and he would be found guilty (and it appears indeed he was guilty of all the above, but deals are struck for lessor charges even in trial). Then we must assume that he would even be sentenced to jail - his VP Spiro Agnew was found guilty (tax evasion) but did no jail time. His Attorney General was also found guilty and did 19 months in a club fed type facility.
So there you go -
1.) There is no assurance even if found criminally guilty that he would have been sentenced to prison.
2.) If he did prison time it certainly would not be for life, but for a year or two.
3.) The prison would be a relatively comfortable life in a minimum security detention center, not a "jail cell with Bubba."
The pardon clearly cost Ford the election. The public at the time I believe wanted Nixon put on trial, but not necessarily imprisoned. There is still a certain dignity to the office of president, I don't think it would have set well with the public.
Also, what you are suggesting is just to "bannana republic" type action. A coup occurs and the previous leader is imprisoned or put to death. That's not what America is about. Justice needs to be served, but based on the rule of law, not the rule of vengeance.
I actually think President Ford did the right thing pardoning Nixon.
Watergate had been two years of unadulterated misery for this country. Pardoning Nixon was part of the process involved in putting this whole sad episode behind us. We needed to move on and while the pardon focused a certain amount of rage against President Ford, he acted in the interests of the country.
I am not categorizing you as a defender of Richard Nixon. Nevertheless, though, there are those who to this day do defend him and attempt to claim he did nothing that other presidents did not do. That is a possibility indeed. However, what made Nixon's case fundamentally different from other presidents is that proving the charges against Richard Nixon was relatively easy to do. In other cases, we have to largely speculate. In Nixon's case the proof was very clear. White House tapes clearly established that Nixon was present during meetings in the Oval Office where he, Haldeman, Mitchell, and others sat around and planned a system of paying off the Watergate burglars so that they would testify falsely to a grand jury investigating Watergate. A plan was hatched by Nixon and others to make cash payments to the families of these burglars in exchange for not implicating anyone in the White House in the Watergate break in. Nixon indicated his agreement to this conspiracy and commented that getting a million dollars for hush money to these families wouldn't be any trouble at all. Large cash payments were actually made to these men. Nixon was not charged with a crime while he was president only because of executive immunity. He was named in an indictment by the federal grand jury as an "unindicted co-conspirator". All of the other people who participated in this conspiracy were convicted and received prison sentences. I refer to John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman. I have said much of this before in other threads. I think it bears repeating because no one should lose sight of the reasons that Nixon was forced from office.
To address your points:
1. There is no assurance (Nixon) would have been sent to prison.
This is possibly true. However, Agnew was spared prison partly as a tactic to obtain his resignation. Nixon had resigned without such a deal being made and was subject to being tried and sent to prison. I think if things had progressed that far, a judge would have been hard pressed not to send Nixon to prison simply to uphold the notion that even presidents are not beyond the reach of the law. Plus, all other conspirators to this crime (Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman) went to prison.
2. If he did prison time it would have been for a year or two.
Correct. The sentence would not have been long. I agree on that.
3. The prison would have been relatively comfortable.
Also correct. White collar criminals who are non-violent are generally sent to prison camps or minimum security prisons. What many fail to grasp is this occurs because that type of incarceration is cheaper for the public than a maximum security prison is. It involves fewer bars, high tech barriers, locks, and armed guards. What should be understood though is that the amount of disgrace a former public official must feel when they are locked up in jail is a very severe punishment in and of itself. Career criminals expect to go to jail and some point. Public officials do not.
I actually think the aftermath of Watergate was well handled. The president and vice president needed to step down or be removed from office. The country needed to move on. Many people think of Gerry Ford as a bungler who was probably paid off by Nixon in exchange for the pardon. I see him as a statesman who took a lot of heat for doing what was the right thing.
Instead of being let off by Ford? Seems ridiculous how he just got off with just a slap on the wrist. Sure he resigned, but the higher you are, the more you should fall. Being the President to do something like that should mean life in prison with Bubba as a friend.
Nope. Ford did the right thing for the country, and paid for it by being voted out of office. Actually, the entire country paid for it by having Carter voted in, but that was fixed in 1980.
Quote:
in prison with Bubba as a friend
P.S. Why are so many people obsessed with anal rape?
Last edited by jtab4994; 06-10-2019 at 10:52 AM..
Reason: P.S.
I actually think President Ford did the right thing pardoning Nixon.
Watergate had been two years of unadulterated misery for this country. Pardoning Nixon was part of the process involved in putting this whole sad episode behind us. We needed to move on and while the pardon focused a certain amount of rage against President Ford, he acted in the interests of the country.
Try applying the above sentiments to other crimes. If someone did something horrible to you or your family, murdered a member, or was responsible for the destruction of your home, would you be satisfied if the law, rather than arresting and trying the perpetrator, told you that "It was time to put all this behind us, time to move on?"
I would have liked to have seen President Nixon incarcerated, not so much for the Watergate cover-up alone, but as the traitor to the US who sabotaged LBJ's attempt at a negotiated settlement of the war in 1968, because Nixon feared that an end to the war would swing voters toward Hubert Humphrey and deny him the presidency. Thousands of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were to die in the years between Nixon's persuading Thieu to reject negotiations in '68, and the final end of American participation in 1973.
The loss of those lives, the sustained suffering of millions, I don't feel like just "putting that behind and moving on."
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Do you think Nixon should have served prison time for the Watergate scandal?
