Ford/Nixon

Hey, as long as I'm replying to people who disagree with my comments on ancient history: how about another one?  Mori Dinauer says:

I'm not clear why Jonathan Bernstein thinks Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon was the right call. He says that "the trial of Richard Nixon would, in fact, have consumed the nation" and that "the nation deserved a functioning political system, and the pardon helped that to happen." But this feels a bit like the defenses of the Supreme Court intervention during the 2000 elections: Stop the recount -- lest the nation devolve into anarchy.

Unlike the Mondale/Hart question, I think this is much more of an open question; I think the pardon was the right call, but I certainly think the other side has good arguments.  I do think the analogy with Bush/Gore doesn't work well.  The problem with the "stop the recount -- lest the nation devolve into anarchy" argument wasn't that chaos was a bad thing; in fact, there was every reason to try to resolve the disputed election quickly.  The problem was that the Court chose, from all the various options out of chaos, one that involved the Court arbitrarily choosing a winner for the election.  Since there were plenty of other available options to avoid chaos, the Court erred, at least in my view.  In other words, having the Court arbitrarily choose the winner of the election was a cost that didn't have to be paid.

In the Nixon case, it's a lot less clear whether the pardon actually had much of a cost.  In my view -- and as I said, I think the other side has reasonable arguments as well -- the cost was minimal.  As far as deterrent value was concerned, I'm not at all convinced that jail time for Nixon would affect the calculations of future presidents.  The cost of losing the presidency is so high that adding jail time to it just doesn't seem to be that big a deal, at least in my opinion.  There's also the question of showing respect for the rule of law, but again, the imprisonment of so many high officials, and the loss of the White House for Nixon, I think covered that fairly well.  I'm not convinced that a Nixon trial would have made much of a difference to that.

It's also worth thinking about exactly what charges would have been offered, and what the trial would have been like.  Unlike an impeachment trial, where the prosecutors would have plenty of license to talk about the overall conspiracy, a criminal trial for Nixon would have been focused on specific charges that might not really get at the essence of just how terrible Watergate was.  Basically, I suspect a criminal trial would have been limited to obstruction of justice -- bad enough -- but an impeachment trail in the Senate would have also included abuse of power, and that gets to some of the most important things that happened.  To put it another way, it's bad enough that people now believe the myth that the problem with Watergate was the cover-up, not the crime; had there been a Nixon prosecution focused only on the cover-up, the myth would be that much stronger.

Nixon deserved jail.  No question about that.  I just don't see that the benefits to the nation in insisting on it were that great, and I do think that the costs would have been significant.

Presidents for the Fourth 6

I did overrated, so I guess it's time to talk about underrated presidents in the new Siena College survey experts.

Once again, I'll just by looking at the other similar surveys.  Who does worse by Siena than they do elsewhere?

Start with Ronald Reagan, who Siena has at #18 (he was at 17 last time around for them, in 2002)..  Reagan's been doing a bit better than that in other surveys...he's been around 10th in most of these things over the last fifteen years.  Siena has William McKinley at #21, about half a dozen spots lower than the other surveys.  Neither Siena nor last year's CSPAN survey like Rutherford Hayes very much (#31 and #33); Hayes usually comes in mid-20s.  That one seems like the flip side of moving Grant up, no?  And Siena is down on Benjamin Harrison, placing him at #34 while most others have him at or above #30. 

Who do I think is underrated?  Well, I've already said that I think putting Washington at #4 is awful -- comparisons are tricky enough that I'm not going to complain if he's #3, but I usually place him right at the top -- and yes, I see a very large gap between the third and fourth spots, so I think putting any of Washington, Lincoln, or FDR fourth or lower is a major mistake.

Who else?  Siena places George H.W. Bush at #22, and Gerald Ford at #28.  I think both of these men, neither of whom I think was really cut out to be a president, could both be a bit higher.  Bush really was a conservative, interested in preserving the status quo and managing necessary change wisely.  That worked well for him in the major events of his presidency, the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union.  It worked out less-well in the Middle East, especially, I think, with respect to Iraq, and it generally worked out badly for him with regard to the economy, where Bush will get credit from deficit hawks for long-term responsible management, but he did little about short-term suffering.  I also think Bush...well, he wasn't quite a demagogue, but I think that he really didn't have much commitment to democracy.  That he's remembered for looking at his watch during his debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in 1992 is appropriate: he never gave much indication that he cared what ordinary people thought about things, apparently having as little regard for the activists and grass-roots interest within his own party has he had for those of the other party. 

The things is: the events in Europe was really very important, and one can imagine all sorts of ways they could have gone wrong; Bush deserves, in my view, enormous credit for it.  He's hurt in these sorts of ratings because ideological conservatives -- or should I say "conservatives" -- have decided to give Ronald Reagan all the credit for the end of the Cold War.  I may do a separate item about Reagan, but for now I'll just say that to me, everyone from Ike through Reagan was just carrying out the strategy established during the Truman administration, so if anyone gets credit for winning the Cold War is should be Truman.  Bush, however, had a very different and difficult challenge, and I've never seen an argument against giving him very high marks for it.

As for Ford: it's hard to think of anyone else who had worse luck in the situation he inherited.  A mess of an economy, the last stages of losing a war, a Congress completely aligned against him, and his predecessor and half his administration in legal trouble.  And, of course, no president has ever taken office with less of a mandate from the people.  Sure, mandates are largely fictional, but sometimes fiction helps.  Let's just say that there wasn't anyone in Congress who even considered the possibility that he owed his election to Gerald Ford.  Given all that, I think Ford acquitted himself reasonably well. 

Of course, with Ford, all anyone is really focused on is the pardon.  I think it was the right thing to do; I think that the trial of Richard Nixon would, in fact, have consumed the nation.  Nixon famously tried to argue that one year of Watergate was enough, and he was wrong about that as long as he was in office, but once he was gone I think there's a fair argument to be made that two years of Watergate was, in fact, enough.  Yes, Nixon richly deserved prison, but the nation deserved a functioning political system, and the pardon helped that to happen.  So overall, on Ford, I think he did well with what he faced, and that's really all anyone can ask of a president.