by Michael Kazin

Gerald Ford would indeed have been generous and statesmanlike if he'd pardoned those who broke the draft laws at the same time as he pardoned Nixon. But he also would have split his party and perhaps lost his chance to win the 1976 nomination--particularly against Reagan, whose political base despised the anti-war movement. At any rate, I still think the Nixon pardon was a mistake. Granted, presidents should not undergo prosecution while they're still in office. But why should they be immune once they leave it? "Our long national nightmare" did not begin to end until North Vietnamese troops occupied Saigon. It was, after all, Nixon's paranoia about anti-war protestors which led his assistants to organize the Plumbers--who carried out the raid on the Democratic HQ in Watergate, among other illegal actions.