General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDo you know who's utimately responsible for our current situation?
Gerald Ford.
Yup.
He pardoned Nixon. That opened the door for nearly every really serious scandal to hit the Executive Branch that came after his administration.
Iran-Contra? Invasion of Iraq? Worse than Watergate. Thousands died because of them. And neither might have happened had those in charge thought real consequences were a possibility. Rather than learn from the scorn Nixon faced after his resignation, they learned to hide their tracks better, and they learned that even if caught, they could blame underlings and knew no one would really hold them accountable because it would "divide the country."
As much as I loved Barack Obama as president, I will never forgive him for his decision to "look forward" and not hold the higher-ups in the Jr Administration accountable for the invasion of Iraq, for its grotesque mismanagement, and for decisions that allowed men and women in US uniform to torture people. He really dropped the ball on that.
But perhaps he listened to the faux historians who claimed Ford "healed the nation" by pardoning Nixon.
Ford did not heal the nation. He gave us a placebo. He didn't lance the boil; he merely put a smiley-face bandage on it. It festered. It went septic. It was fed by the self-sustaining bacterial feedback loop of right-wing talk radio, right-wing hyperpartisan Republicans, evangelicals, and the centrality that ignoring physical reality was taking among conservatives. Hundreds of thousands died in Nicaragua, Iraq, and elsewhere around the world because of this.
For extended periods, people in other countries could only shake their heads in disbelief as a country that gave the world so much - the Apollo landings, jazz, rock, the ice cream cone, the Jedi knight - elected people who gave every appearance of being illiterate to head its government. The disbelief I encountered while travelling abroad during the GWB administration became downright disdain when TFG came to office. Many expressed sympathy, but many more just stayed away from me, as though I carried something contagious from the red-hatters who simply would not see reality.
I don't know that the prosecution of Richard Nixon would have solved all of our problems, but I am nonetheless firm in my opinion that we would have avoided many of the scandals that brought dishonor to this country.
Phoenix61
(17,003 posts)did. He could have spent every bit of power he had going after Bush or he could focus on getting any of his platform passed.
treestar
(82,383 posts)TFG is different, but the Rs treat it as not, thus every D President would be charged after they left office, and it would not matter that they were acquitted.
Bush II had a lot of horrible policies, but they may not have been definable as federal crimes. Those would be losing cases, IMO.
sprinkleeninow
(20,243 posts)and Gore became CinC. That may have have a more positive bearing on the following course of events?
rubbersole
(6,688 posts)...if Gore had been president. god. 22 years of cleaning up the mess rather than ignoring it and letting the oil companies continue their grip on our government.
Alice Kramden
(2,166 posts)If fucking only
cab67
(2,992 posts)He may not have committed an actual crime, but others in his administration very likely did. But it's hard to know, since they were never properly investigated.
questionseverything
(9,654 posts)Fiendish Thingy
(15,601 posts)America would have been a very different country if Lincoln had survived to oversee Reconstruction.
My second guess:
Sirhan Sirhan
America would have been a very different country if RFK had lived- he would have been the nominee, kicked Nixons ass in the general, and gone on to be a great president.
former9thward
(31,995 posts)Humphrey was ahead in delegates after RFK won CA. The primaries were over. The LBJ/Humphrey forces controlled the majority of the remaining uncommitted delegates. The best RFK could have done is become VP if LBJ would have put aside his hatred of RFK for the good of the party.
krawhitham
(4,644 posts)cab67
(2,992 posts)...the fairness doctrine was doomed. It only applied to networks requiring a broadcast license. That all went out the window with cable.
krawhitham
(4,644 posts)It did covered conservative talk radio, which currently has a bigger audience that Foxnews
The top 20 conservative talk radio shows get a combined WEEKLY audience of 183.2M
Foxnews averages 1.52 million in total viewers a MONTH
Plus the FCC fairness doctrine could just been expanded to cover ULS Licenses instead of being abolished, that would covered Foxnews
keep_left
(1,783 posts)...as far as I know. Please consider making a more detailed OP about this!
crickets
(25,967 posts)certainot
(9,090 posts)but gets all the blame - like a decoy - talking heads watch it to know what right wing media is doing but it's already been or will soon be pounded into the earholes of tens of millions
so the hearings got 20M - pretty small compared to a week of rw radio repetition lying about the hearings
fox is inferior as a creator of alternate realities for many reasons
it can't be locally coordinated like all those radio stations, by state and even by county and town.
fox can't repeat like on radio, they have to be somewhat responsible for their racism and lies, and they spend less time every day on the same propaganda.
the analysts have to become more aware of the talk radio problem - the real reason we are in this disaster. rachel maddow refers to the giuliani/powell press conf as a major trigger/justification for jan 6 but her researchers failed to discover that the event was timed to start at the same time as the limbaugh show that day and he commented on it as he played it. it prob got 100x the audience because of it
if limbaugh had spent 1/10th the time attacking ford for the pardon that he spent deifying reagan and demonizing clintons .....
Elessar Zappa
(13,975 posts)at least not for a long time. These current talk radio guys are amateurs compared to him.
BadgerKid
(4,552 posts)Such as attack the libs at every turn, mock vocal Democrats, question leaders mental capacity, etc. its seems so obvious. They sound emboldened and are in need of a legal smackdown.
certainot
(9,090 posts)30 years of global warming denial alone. set us way back. that's the big one. every year he helped delay real action caused more species extinction and millions of human deaths as well
then nicotine - telling millions every day with great certitude smoking doesn't cause cancer! what a hoot. how poetic.
calling covid a hoax was minor compared to those. it was recently estimated that if the US had followed the australian model responding to COVID 900,000 americans would not have died. what if limbaugh had used all those stations licensed to operate in the public interest to wear masks etc, instead of calling it a hoax for months, as trump wanted him to....
now his half assed replacements have been split up on his 600 stations and the GOP dies a thousand deaths unable to get the same messaging unity out of lesser sex on the wrong brain idiots like the whiny unimaginative bongino and travis and sexton shows
Tumbulu
(6,278 posts)and my question is why?
The cultural shift to the radical right is deep has been many decades in the making.
If it does not take us down and out as a nation, I will be surprised. I am hoping hoping hoping to be proven wrong.
empedocles
(15,751 posts)from the poor, - and screwed many others.
Gore1FL
(21,130 posts)Ford is Nixon's Jim Jordan, though.
keep_left
(1,783 posts)Last edited Sat Jun 11, 2022, 04:21 PM - Edit history (1)
...(as Sec of Ag) who could be called a mini-Trump inasmuch as he was known to shoot off his mouth all the time. Butz was basically the Republican id with no brakes going off the side of a cliff. You can read at the link about some of his spectacular gaffes.
Butz was also known for some really bad ag policies that led pretty directly to the disastrous farm economy of the '80s (collective-farm-sized company farms) and a lot of America's health problems as well (over-reliance on corn products, especially corn sweeteners).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Butz
COL Mustard
(5,897 posts)Butz's comment, per wikipedia, was much more vulgar than Watt's comment about diversity.
cab67
(2,992 posts)Butz was held over from the Nixon cabinet. (He was also Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower.)
keep_left
(1,783 posts)I forgot about the post he held under Eisenhower...guess I should have read my link more thoroughly. I'm not sure when he started to become so problematic with all the Trumplike behavior, casual racism, etc. Maybe he was just one of those people who couldn't make the adjustment into the civil rights era.
It would be interesting to know when he got the really bad ideas about agriculture (mentioned in my earlier post). Maybe those came after he went back to Purdue and started the academic and political ladder-climbing. Eisenhower was quite hostile to anyone who tried to dismantle New Deal programs (for example, see Eisenhower's remarks about Social Security). He probably wouldn't have been too happy with a Sec of Ag who favored gigantic collective-farm-sized corporate farming.
moondust
(19,977 posts)to the worsening corruption of the GQP. I naively assumed Nixon's embarrassing ordeal would prompt the GQP to clean up its act. Instead it went from bad to worse.
flashman13
(664 posts)Another Obama big mistake was when he failed to hold Bundy and his redneck army responsible for the mini revolt in Utah where they threatened federal officers with gun violence. No consequences, hence, more threats and violence.
LiberalLovinLug
(14,173 posts)And that was a big part of his appeal and something I too admired in the man. His optimism about the country working together. His "there are no Red States, there are no Blue States, only the United States of America" speech at the 2004? convention, sealed his nomination in 2008.
But he seemed to stubbornly keep holding onto that impossible ideal even as Trump and the tea party were promoting Birther conspiracies, and posting monkey faces.
It was long past the time to fight back. I'm sure Biden was a big influence as VP. I think even Biden has had the wool pulled over his eyes with his talk on Jimmy Kimmel last week on how McConnell is a "reasonable" man that he could work with. Jimmy tried to interject about the refusal to nominate a Supreme court justice in the final year of Obama, but then pushed through a pick with 2 weeks before the 2016 election. But Joe pretended he didn't hear it.
Maybe it was just a political move to not alienate EVERY Republican leader. But it smacked of hanging on to a fantasy long dissipated. It has to be clear now that its a war between the Trump Party, who Mitch has obviously decided to capitulate to after a brief moment of a raised eyebrow after Jan. 6th, who want to destroy democracy because its not working for them, ........and truth, reason, justice, and democracy itself.
bucolic_frolic
(43,146 posts)Constitutional law is an esoteric specialty. I'd bet 80% of those who teach it barely scratch the surface. Surely presidents don't have time for the subject. Otherwise they'd deal with Congress better.
90-percent
(6,829 posts)that taught Constitutional Law at Harvard would have been enough to right the anti-Constitutional direction the SC decided to take in Bush v. Gore, where the SC based their decision on partisanship rather than law. But, no, better to "look forward rather than backward". Now the SC has gone beyond partisanship into Catholic Religious doctrine as the law of our land. Soon to be replaced by the revered "Proud Boys/Oath Keepers Doctrine".
-90% Jimmy
Botany
(70,501 posts)Ford worked his way through the University of Michigan and with a football scholarship too.
His teams won 2 national championships and he was an All American too. He turned down
a chance to play in the NFL and went to Yale Law School after Pearl Harbor he joined the US
Navy and left the service as a Lt. Commander.
Although I disagreed with him pardoning Nixon and I have no doubt that some kind of
deal was in place for Nixon Ford has publicly said that when he became President Water-
gate and Nixon were taking up 70% of his time so he pardoned him. Nixon never said
thank you to President Ford in private or publicly.
This is a true Gerry Ford story. When in the White House his dog took a crap on the
carpet in the Oval Office and a bunch of staff jumped up to clean up the mess but Ford
stopped them and did it himself and said, "I expect no man to do that for me."
cab67
(2,992 posts)(though LBJ is known to have said Ford couldnt chew gum and fart at the same time).
But his pardon of Nixon has secured his place in history, and its not a good one.
Jerry2144
(2,100 posts)He was the last of the good Republicans. He should have warned us that he was the last
Celerity
(43,333 posts)jaxexpat
(6,820 posts)H2O Man
(73,536 posts)3Hotdogs
(12,374 posts)into the Cold War.
cab67
(2,992 posts)WW2 was not yet over when FDR died. Wallace, for all of his qualities, may not have been the decisive leader we needed at the time. And Truman was no right-winger on the economy.
I dont think either Dulles was needed to steer the US away from the USSR as the time came to define spheres of influence in the early postwar period.
former9thward
(31,995 posts)The Dulles brothers did not come into senior positrons of power until the Eisenhower administration. Wallace was a pro-Soviet and party leaders wanted a change as they could see Roosevelt's health was declining.
milestogo
(16,829 posts)cab67
(2,992 posts)and I think you've got it.
By pardoning Nixon, he enabled all of the abuse of power we've seen since 1980.
malaise
(268,966 posts)Rec
Skittles
(153,153 posts)I remember thinking to myself, DO THEY EVER LEARN
JI7
(89,248 posts)about the previous administration. He would have lost re-election and we would have had more Republicans in office. But he wouldn't have had support from Many democrats either and democrats that did support him in going after Bush would have lost election in many places .
Who is forcing white people to vote for the trashy Republicans in office ? It's the same reason we can't get gun control .
The problem goes back to never dealing with racism and how it's a problem of WHITE PEOPLE and other bigots rather than a "black issue" .
No , we would not have avoided anything if Nixon was prosecuted because racism would still exist . And Reagan would still have been elected .
Trump is a backlash to positive gains made by women and minorities .
The problem goes back to bigotry. That is the root of it all .
Look at how much support Trump got in the 2nd election. Thankfully Biden got a lot more support but that is still a lot of people supporting shit .
WarGamer
(12,440 posts)Seriously...
All the problems the US faces now are remnants of the 250 year old compromise between the Federalists and anti-Federalists.
hydrolastic
(487 posts)We all tried to do the right thing because nobody wanted to disappoint her. I only heard her angry enough to swear a couple of times and one of them was when Ford pardoned Nixon. The other was when Shaffely Nixed the ERA