Griper Blade: Ford Was No Fan of Bush -- He Should've Said So

The death of former President Gerald Ford was sure to bring controversy. Did pardoning Nixon help to heal the nation, as Ford put it, or did it just send the message that presidents can get away with anything? I'm with the latter school of thought -- our present circumstance shows the disaster that follows a president who knows there are no personal consequences to his recklessness. If you commit war crimes, you just redefine the term and, voila, you've never committed war crimes. You can spy on americans -- just as Nixon did -- and the worst that might happen is you lose the presidency. In George W. Bush's case, the worst that happens is that you get bad press.

We say that we are a nation of laws, not men. But that's only true so long as men are held to account by the law. Ford's decision set a precedent guaranteeing that they're not. People who believe they are above the law commit crimes. There's no reason for the just to ignore law; it's only those who know they're breaking the law who have reason to believe they're above it. If there were photos of Nixon in an orange jumpsuit, future presidents would be in the position that presidents were meant to be in -- they would fear the law. The elected should fear the people, not vice-versa. We have become a government of men, not laws, with the presidency morphed into a cult of personality.

All of which makes a 2004 interview of Ford with Bob Woodward interesting. It turns out that Ford wasn't a big fan of Bush and had become extremely critical of his former colleagues Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld...

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Tags: news | politics | war | Iraq | Richard Nixon | Dick Cheney | Donald Rumsfeld | Gerald Ford | George W. Bush