Quote:
Originally Posted by AGDee
The common thought at the time was that Nixon had made a deal with Ford. I appoint you VP, then I resign and you can be President, but you have to pardon me. I was only 7 at the time and I remember hearing people say that.
If you watch The Presidents series on the History Channel, some say that it was a good thing that Ford did, because the country just needed to move on at that point and a long dragged out issue was only going to hurt people's trust in the government, which was totally shot then. This idea was reiterated when Ford died and they were talking about his Presidency.
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I don't remember any of the discussion at the time (how politically aware you were at 7, AGDee!), so I'm pretty uninformed about it really. It's just kind of hard to see Ford as the guy who wanted to be President enough to make a deal with Nixon just to be President, assuming that he didn't authentically believe the pardon was the right thing to do anyway. And if he thought it was the right thing to do, and history may kind of affirm him on that, it's hard to have a problem with the deal. (He'd have to realize that being connected to that administration would doom him in the next general election.)
I was just Wikipedia-ing the Nixon resignation.
You know what's absolutely astounding? Carl Albert! Can you imagine someone today as sincerely concerned about the will of the people that he (or she, as the case may be) would publicly express concerns about taking on the role? No person at the time could have believed that, knowing what they presently knew, Nixon would have been elected, and yet, Albert expressed a reluctance. If something similar happened with Pelosi today or Gingrich under Clinton, well, I think it's safe to say, the last congressional election results would have been considered a new and better mandate from the people than the previous Presidential election.
Or maybe Carl just knew taking the Presidency at that point would be a career ender.
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