Reply #159: I understand your sentiment, and can even agree with it... but....

[quiet.american]

I doubt I will ever understand how handing Nixon a get-out-of-jail-free card actually *healed* the nation. Why does one American citizen go to jail 20-to-life on trumped-up charges, yet Nixon gets off scott-free? If he had been held legally accountable for his actions, Reagan and Poppy Bush may have, just may have, given pause to their actions while in office. Shrub probably would never have gotten this far, if faced with an example of an ex-president who was actually subject to the law of the land just like everyone else. Giving Nixon that pardon seemed to have set in stone the meme that the President is above the law, and it's hard to see how someone as intelligent and accomplished as Ford couldn't really see that, that's why I can't buy his "healing" rhetoric.

That said, I don't feel any need to pile up on him and his family, now that he's passed away.