Ford (and John Lewis) received the Kennedy Library 2001 "Profiles in Courage" Award

[WI_DEM]

I found this interesting, given all the debate today. He got it due to the controversial decision to pardon former president Nixon.

"As president, he made the controversial decision of conscience to pardon former president Nixon and end the national trauma of Watergate. In doing so, he placed his love of country ahead of his political future." Caroline Kennedy.

(for information on this just goggle: profile in courage/Gerald Ford).

We can debate the right or wrong of Ford's decision, and I remember as a ten year old kid in 1974 opposing Nixon's pardon (largely because my democratic family did), but as the years have gone by I've come to accept Ford's rationale for this decision. I'm not alone. Even retired professor Stanley Kutler, the author of "The Wars of Watergate," and certainly no fan of Richard Nixon, believes in retrospect that Ford did the right thing.
"My position on this is very clear and unshakable. Ford did the nation a favor with the pardon. Can you imagine if Richard Nixon went to trial? there would have been years of proceedings and he would have made a mockery of the legal system, tying it up in knots..." Kutler also correctly states that the acceptance of a pardon (despite what Nixon may have said) was acknowledgement of guilt.
http://www.madison.com

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Read this on that by Daniel Schorr.

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0525-02.htm

A Profile in Courage Clouded by Ambiguity
by Daniel Schorr

Last Monday, former President Gerald Ford received the Profile in Courage Award at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. He was honored for his 1974 pardon of President Nixon, which many believe cost Mr. Ford the 1976 election. Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Barney Frank were among those who praised the decision of the panel.
The Nixon pardon, and especially its timing, forms a troublesome chapter in American history.

There was, first of all, the question of whether the pardon was subtly negotiated with Vice President Ford. On Aug. 1, 1974, a week before the resignation, Nixon's chief of staff, Alexander Haig, met alone with Ford and raised with him the question of a "pardon to the president should he resign." Ford asked about the powers of pardon. Mr. Haig handed him a legal memo concluding that the president had authority to grant a pardon at any time, even before any criminal action had been initiated.

The next day, on advice of his own counsel, Ford told Haig he could not make a commitment that would advance him to the presidency. That left Haig and Nixon free to conclude that Ford would play ball, but could not be in the position of establishing a quid pro quo.

[WI_DEM]

2. As I said, it can be debated and should be. I think Ford gave a good rationale

for the pardon.

[John Q. Citizen]

3. I think they should have pardoned

Timothy McVeigh, O.J., and Osama. And for the same reasons '..Can you imagine if Tim McVeight, O.J. and Osama bin Ladin went to trial? there would have been years of proceedings and they would have made a mockery of the legal system, tying it up in knots...'

It's a good argument, WI_Dem, what can I say?

We should always pardon the accused for every crime for those same reasons. I'm with you....(not)

I was a young adult at the time of the Nixon pardon and i felt betrayed than and still feel betrayed now.

But I did learn an important lesson:

Patriotism is the the last refuge to which a scoundral clings,
Steal a little bit of money they put you in jail
steal a lot and they make you king.

There only one step down from this place,
It's called the land of permanent bliss
What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this? - Bob Dylan from the song "Sweetheart like you."

[johnmccarthy]

4. Ford's Gift....so we could MOVE ON.....as in Warren Commission

The Death Of John Kennedy
Why Nixon resigned instead of facing impeachment.

Nixon resigned over an obstruction of justice charge (with some of the legal groundwork prepared by a young Hillary Rodham). Nixon resigned gracefully, the media declared the incident over and Gerald Ford declared that it was time to "put the whole affair behind us and move forward". This was done because the last thing anyone wanted in Washington D.C. was an impeachment trial. Even Nixon's worst enemies dared not allow it. The reasoning was simple. Sooner or later, someone would ask the following question.

"Why, when Nixon's re-election was a study in foregone conclusions, was it necessary to break into the DNC headquarters at the Watergate?"

The answer to that question, never asked by politician, never asked by a servile media, was THE dark secret that could not be revealed; the secret that would have brought down the entire government!

Years later, it did come out what had been the motive for the break-in. It was connected to what Nixon called "Hanky Panky" on the White House tapes.

The DNC had gotten copies of the photographs taken of the three tramps in Dealey Plaza, and identified two of them as long time Nixon henchmen E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis. This put the DNC in a position to at least blackmail the President, if not expose him outright. This is why E. Howard Hunt lead the break-in; it was his own ass he was trying to save.

The photos resurfaced as part of a news story, and E. Howard Hunt sued the publisher, Liberty Lobby. He lost. Attorney Mark Lane provided witnesses that placed E. Howard Hunt in Dealey Plaza at the time that John F. Kennedy was killed.

[johnmccarthy]

5. Commentary From Boston Globe

International Herald Tribune
Commentary: Ford's act of clemency
Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
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This article was first published on May 24, 2001.

Caroline Kennedy presented former President Gerald Ford with the 2001 Profile in Courage Award this week, saluting his "controversial decision of conscience to pardon former President Nixon and end the national trauma of Watergate." In so doing, she said, he "placed his love of country ahead of his own political future."

But in the days leading up to his bombshell announcement on Sept. 8, 1974, Ford never imagined that his act of clemency would jeopardize his political career. "Sure, there will be criticism," his biographer James Cannon quotes him as saying during an Oval Office meeting eight days earlier. "But it will flare up and die down. If I wait six months, or a year, there will still be a firestorm from the Nixon-haters, as you call them. They wouldn't like it if I waited until he was on his deathbed. But most Americans will understand."

Most Americans didn't understand. A Gallup poll taken shortly after Ford granted Nixon "a full, free, and absolute pardon" found that 59 percent of the public disapproved. Nearly two years later, their ire had barely cooled: In July 1976, 55 percent disapproved.

The reviews were merciless. "This blundering intervention," The New York Times raged, "is a body blow to the president's own credibility." It amounts, fumed The Washington Post, to "nothing less than the continuation of a coverup."

Slamming the pardon as "a betrayal of the public trust" Ted Kennedy demanded, "Is there one system of justice for the average citizen and another system for the high and mighty?" (Brazen words, his critics said, from a man who had himself evaded justice for his fatal misadventure at Chappaquiddick five years earlier.) Ford's own press secretary called it a "double standard of justice" and resigned in protest. In a savage comparison, the American Civil Liberties Union likened it to Nuremberg trials "in which the Nazi leaders would have been let off."

There was a minority view. Elliot Richardson, who had resigned his post as attorney general in what became the Saturday Night Massacre, called the pardon "compassionate and right for the country." Hubert Humphrey said it was "the only decision President Ford could make." And while a Boston Globe editorial suggested that the pardon was "a gross misuse, if not abuse, of presidential power," the paper's Washington bureau chief took a different tack.

"Maybe it's battle fatigue an eagerness to say goodbye forever," wrote Martin Nolan, whose journalism had earned him a place on Nixon's notorious enemies list, but "President Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon is all right with me."

It has taken a while, but Ford's pardon of Nixon is all right with most people now. History often changes hearts and minds that way, elevating villains about whom nothing good can be said into human beings whose motives can be seen as reasonable - even, at times, courageous.

That, of course, was a key message of "Profiles in Courage." JFK wrote the book not only to celebrate political fortitude, but to show that it occurs on both sides of the aisle. The senators he profiled were a diverse lot: liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, Federalists and Whigs. "Some demonstrated courage through their unyielding devotion to absolute principle," he wrote. "Others demonstrated courage through their acceptance of compromise."

But until this year, that lesson appeared to be lost on the Kennedy Library and the Kennedy family. With one exception, the Profile in Courage award had never gone to a Republican - and the exception was John McCain, who was honored for a campaign finance bill most Republicans find odious. For a while, the award seemed to be turning into a consolation prize for haughty liberals whose disdain had turned the voters against them.

In 1992, the honoree was Lowell Weicker, detested in Connecticut for having shoved an income tax through the state Legislature after assuring voters he would never do such a thing. In 1993, the award went to Jim Florio of New Jersey, who had likewise run for governor promising no new taxes, then flagrantly broken his vow. In 1995, the recipient was Mike Synar, an Oklahoma congressman who seemed to specialize in taking positions that his constituents detested - "abrasive and arrogant," Oklahoma's leading paper called him, "quick to label someone who disagrees with him a tool for a special interest."

With its award to President Ford, the award committee has at last followed JFK's lead in looking for courage on the other side of the ideological divide. Ford is the first recipient to be honored for doing something that Ted Kennedy and those close to him once vehemently opposed. President Kennedy would have been pleased.