David M. Shribman

Andrew Jackson, once almost universally admired as a personification of refreshing democratic values, now is considered a prosecutor of genocide. Ulysses Grant, once portrayed as a shiftless drunk and political dunce, is a symbol of generosity and prudence. Woodrow Wilson, once hailed as the idealist of his age, is considered a racist. Dwight Eisenhower, once disparaged as a presidential mediocrity principally interested in his putting game, is remembered for putting America on a strong footing for the coming decade of the 1960s.

But the most remarkable transformation of the modern age may involve a president in office a mere 17 months and the controversial step he took at the end of his first month — a decision that arguably cost him his presidency but might have helped the country recover after two years of Watergate-related strife.

Sunday is the 50th anniversary of a Sunday that began in infamy, Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. 

The general reaction was summed up by Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein in a call to his reporting colleague Bob Woodward: “The son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch.”

Ford’s approval rating, at 71% at the end of his first week in office in the middle of August, fell to 60% just after the pardon in September, then to 50% by month’s end — en route to 37% in the following January, according to the Gallup Poll.

Seven years later, the country was evenly divided, with 46% supporting the pardon and 46% opposing it. By 1986, 39% still opposed the pardon, but a majority (54%) approved. 

Jimmy Carter earlier criticized the pardon, saying in July 1976 that he would not have pardoned Nixon “until after the trial had been completed in order to let all the facts relating to his crimes be known.” Six months later, he began his inaugural address with this sentence, which didn’t mention the pardon but spoke of the result Mr. Ford hoped it would provide: 

“For myself and for our nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts immediately branded the pardon “the culmination of the Watergate cover-up.” A quarter-century later, the committee awarding the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum’s Profiles in Courage Award received a high-school student’s essay arguing Ford was an exemplar of political courage. 

Two committee members, David Burke, the former CBS News president, and David McCullough, the presidential historian who through biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman single-handedly changed the nation’s view of them both, said the student was onto something. Paul G. Kirk, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and later a senator, resisted. Kennedy was hesitant but finally came around. Ford was presented with the award in 2001. 

“I finally was OK with it, and had a conversation with President Ford, who said that this was redemption and satisfaction,” said Kirk. “I saw his pride in vindication.”

Ford wrote in his autobiography that the Nixon pardon “wasn’t motivated primarily by sympathy for his plight or by concern over the state of his health,” adding, “It was the state of the country’s health at home and around the world that worried me.” 

The country, at first, didn’t buy his argument. “If Ford can be faulted, it’s how it was done, and how it was packaged,” said Richard Norton Smith, the author of 2023’s “An Ordinary Man: The Surprising Life and Historic Presidency of Gerald R. Ford.” “Ford felt twinges of sympathy for Nixon. He believed Nixon’s health, both physical and mental, was impaired. He thought there was only one way to get Nixon off his daily schedule and, critically important, to change the story in the media.”

Ken Khachigian, a longtime Nixon aide, said Ford succeeded in that goal. “The wailing about the pardon would last only so long, but, while (Nixon critics still) had Nixon to kick around, it was as a long-distance appetizer, not an on-site feast.” 

John Robert Greene, a retired Cazenovia College historian who was one of the first scholars to examine the papers for his 1995 book, “The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford,” was a college-age critic of the pardon. 

“But when I got into Ford’s papers, I found that the negotiation was more about getting rid of the tapes and papers that still filled the White House,” he said. “Ford wanted that stuff out of there. But most important, every press conference since he became president was consumed by questions about Nixon. It was beating at him. He didn’t think he could do anything as president unless he pulled the Band-Aid off the wound and pardoned him.”

Then there is Timothy Naftali, the first director of the federal Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, who felt the pardon was premature. “But I respect Ford and what he tried to achieve,” he said. “It would have been useful for the public to see a criminal indictment, though I know enough about the story to understand that it was unlikely.”

Presidential son Steve Ford also changed his mind. Speaking at a 2009 Kennedy Library retrospective on the Ford presidency, he said, “I raised my hand when this whole thing came up and said, ‘Dad, you know, people are going to kill you. They’re going to crucify you. You can’t do this. I mean, Nixon, he was wrong.’”

Then he added a poignant reminiscence. 

“I remember sitting with him and talking. And he explained that a president was like a father of a family and had to lead a family. And I remember him looking at me. I caused a lot of problems in my household. He looked at me and he said, you know, ‘Steve, if I prosecuted you for everything you did to divide our family… carried it out to the letter of the law, our family would be ripped apart. But I, as your father, give you grace and mercy at times for the betterment of the family.’”

The grace and mercy eventually reached Bob Woodward, on the other end of the “son of a bitch” phone call from Carl Bernstein. In a July 2014 Washington Post panel, he called the pardon “an act of courage.” The country had come around.

A Swampscott High School Class of 1972 member, David M. Shribman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.