alternative hippopotamus

I was probably too young to take the bus from Rockville down to Nixon’s second innaugural parade. But, I did anyway. I’m glad I did, as this was the only time I had a chance to see a Vietnam protest first-hand. There were a lot of scary adults dressed up in skeleton customes, joining hands, surrounding the city blocks along the parade route.

It was cold. Unlike today’s Carolinaesque winters, those days, we had real winters, where your nose froze off. So, I waited for an hour or so, shivering from the cold. But, I loved parades, and wanted a chance to see the president. Imagine my dissapointment when it turned out that Nixon decided to do the “parade” from within a closed, and I’m sure warm, limousine. As the limousine zipped along, I could barely make out someone waving at the crowd. I guess it was Nixon, but it could have been anyone in a dark suit.

Later I saw this as a symbol of the Nixon presidency: Us against Them. A nation on the sidewalks shivering, unified in protest of the Vietnam War; a president safe, insulated. Since presidents often have an inate sense of metaphor, I wonder if this was Nixon’s way of sending us a message. Perhaps he was letting us know that America had become that much more closed. Perhaps, as Bush put it, these protestors had no more effect on him than another focus group.

I was in Junior High School when Nixon resigned the presidency. That makes me just old enough to have coherent memories of an announcement over the loudspeakers, and raucous applause from the class (Correction: I was thinking of Agnew’s resignation, when I remembered the announcement over the loudspeakers.). It also makes me too young to have joined in on the frenzied post-resignation parties, which also helps me in the coherent memory department.

Now, at the time, I didn’t understand why everyone was so upset that Ford pardoned Nixon. I didn’t understand why Chevy Chase (the actor, not the suburb) spent so much time making fun of Ford. I also bought into the conventional line that Nixon had somehow got involved with a bungled campaign operation, and was unfairly being made the scapegoat. The line I remember often hearing at the time was: the only way Nixon was different from other politicians, is that he got caught.

Like many, I totally bought Ford’s line about how our national nightmare was now over. The pardon of Nixon was like a magic wand that brought the bad dreams to an end. It hadn’t occurred to me that the national nightmare wasn’t Watergate, at least as far as the Nixons, Cheneys, and Rumsfelds were concerned. To them it was the investigation of Watergate. That was the nightmare. To use a phrase from this time, the threat to the Unitary Executive was now over.

Ford didn’t create the current Bush administration, or the concept of the Unitary Executive. He didn’t even create Don Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney. He was one in a long cast of players that acted as enablers. Enabling what, exactly? This is something I’ve been trying to put my finger on for years.

Since the love of money and power are two of the pillars of the dark side of the human condition, I tend to believe that has something to do with it. Al Franken has perceptively described it as a war on the 1960’s. If he’s correct, what is it about the 1960’s that they object to? Is it about the struggle for and against a hiearchical society, where a small group of elites are calling the shots?

Update: Avedon has a good point:

His tenure was not marked by any significant horror stories, which left the press corps so bored that they ended up trying to make big stories out of the fact that he occasionally stumbled physically, just like a real person. Ford, a former football player, was no more clumsy than anyone else, and probably more agile than most presidents, but our press corps was never immune from being captivated by trivia, and falsely characterized President Ford as a bumbling buffoon.

We’re all familiar with “serial exaggerator” Al Gore, what with his inventing the internets, and being the inspiration of Love Story. Or, more correctly, how the press took things out of context to create a narrative. For an advanced version of this, see Candy Crowley’s indictment of Kerry for ordering Green Tea at a restaurant (Media Matters). While we on the left are often quick to point to this as a Rovian tactic, perhaps this is more central to the nature of a professional press corps. In lieu of news, they still have to write something.

Also: Bob Woodward’s Ford contribution here. The way I read it, it’s carefully crafted to support an open reading of Ford’s motivations in pardoning Nixon.

The sensational bit is well into the piece:

Haig presented Ford with six options to consider. Nixon could step aside temporarily under the 25th Amendment; he could just wait and delay the ongoing impeachment process; or he could try to settle for a formal censure. In addition, there were three pardon options. Nixon could pardon himself and resign. Or he could pardon the aides involved and then resign. Or, Haig said, Nixon could agree to leave in return for an agreement that the new President Ford would pardon him.

Ford says no deal. Yet he helps to rewrite events in a way that clears Haig of offering a deal. What was going through Ford’s mind, who knows? As a reader, you see how the notion of a pardon was suggested, making it thinkable.