It’s been 49 years this week since President Richard M. Nixon resigned. He resigned on Aug. 8, 1974 amid allegations of his involvement in The Watergate breakin and the attempted cover-up afterwards. Nixon was never impeached even though the Watergate hearings became news. He resigned and some people say he did it so he could fight the charges better as a fomer President than as a sitting President.
A month after he took office, President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon and said the nation “needs to heal.” Unfortunately, the pardon ruined Ford’s chances of being re-elected. Some people who were diehard Republicans saw it as an insult. Hunter S. Thompson once wrote the pardon led to Jimmy Carter being President because the GOP didn’t support Ford as much. The 1976 Republican National Convention was contested between Ford and Ronald Reagan. Ford had rolled the dice and lost.
He knew if he didn’t pardon Nixon, it could damage the Republican Party, but he was hoping on getting some brownie points by doing so. It was a mistake for Ford to pardon Nixon and many people felt that way. During an episode of That 70’s Show, Red Foreman, no liberal/leftist himself, flat out asked Ford “How the hell could you pardon Nixon?” A lot of people in the mid-1970s were like Red Foreman, they wanted to know the rationale.
My guess is Ford did it to to win favors among the GOP or just because he realized the Democrats would’ve done the same damned thing if it had happened. Nixon would go on to live the next 20 years with Watergate hanging over his head. It was a shameful legacy, but Nixon had brought it upon himself. By 1974, America was still clinging to the idea that the American Dream was still obtainable for anyone that was willing to do what they can.
Now, almost 50 years later, we’ve seen that isn’t the same. Most Red Foremans are now divorced or struggling to get by. They’ve seen politics get more and more corrupted that they just wanted to see it end. They grew up with the Iran-Contra Affair and then saw their votes didn’t really matter for the 2000 election because it came down to a few places in Florida. There would’ve been no Iran-Contra Affair if Nixon had been convicted. We would’ve never had George W. Bush as President. It’s possible not even Reagan would’ve been elected in 1980.
The indictments of Donald J. Trump are a result of Ford’s “healing.” When a doctor prescribe you an antibiotic, you’re supposed to continue to take it until you use them all up, not when you begin to feel better. That was the problem with Ford. He felt that since Nixon had resigned and couldn’t run again, that was all that was needed. That might have been why so many people overlooked al that Reagan had done to America. It was too soon after Nixon.
But America crumbled more under Reagan. The middle class fell apart. Yet no one wanted to suggest that Reagan could be worse when Iran-Contra happened and then we saw those hearings. It was like deja vu all over again as the 1988 President campaign brought out people from both sides. For the most part, President George H.W. Bush wasn’t the best president but his administration knew smart enough not to start a full-scale war in the Middle East. Once Iraq got out of Kuwait, that was it. The elder Bush knew the stakes and risks and he didn’t roll the dice the way Ford did.
Prior to Watergate, there was the Teapot Dome Scandal from the Warren G. Harding’s administration where Albert Bacon Fall, Secretary of Interior, had leased Navy petroleum at Teapot Dome, Wyo., to private oil companies without competitive bidding. That was 100 years ago and today, such a scandal wouldn’t even register with what Trump had done. Remember how he wanted to stay only at his properties and charge the government for the Secret Service who had to stay there?
I think this comes from a society or a people that never did really fully understand the scope of Watergate or Teapot Dome so they didn’t know what to look for until it was too late. I mean Watergate was bad and it should’ve been the one that made everyone straighten up and fly right. But Ford pardoned Nixon. And that led to administrations since then seeing how far they can stretch it. Now, with Trump, you literally have people denying it’s bad and saying President Joe Biden is worse, yet they can’t provide much proof. Even Devon Archer, who was supposed to be the one with the dirt on Biden, didn’t even produce anything worthy.
And quite frankly, I don’t think Biden is the best person for the job. He’s got a few skeletons in his closet but nothing along the impeachment level which the Republicans want to do so badly they think it will help them in 2024. Actually, it will hurt them, I think. Hunter Biden may have done some questionable business deals, but last time I check, he’s not an elected official. What about Jared Kushner or Eric and Donald Jr.?
We can’t just impeach elected officials because we don’t like them. Bill Clinton may have been a bad husband but his policies pulled America out of the early 1990s recession. But it really all came down to the fact that Republicans in the 1990s didn’t want to admit Reaganomics had failed miserably and the elder Bush (who saw the world change during his adminisration) had a horrible policy on issues in America.
Unfortunately, our system of government seems based on a back and forth in the Presidency. Michael Moore, who I have been leery of in the past 10-15 years, said it best when you look at all the Presidential elections since 1992. He noted only once from 1992 to the 2016 election did the majority of the population choose a Republican President. And possibly the only reason the younger Bush won in 2004 was that we were in the middle of two wars and people have a foolish idea that it’s wrong not vote for the motherfuckers who got us into the wars.
But that’s the problem. People don’t understand government because it’s not taught correctly in schools. Civics classes were taught by football coaches. It happened at my school. Civics was for the “dumb kids” while the smarter kids learned politicial science, government and economics. Then, if you went to college, you took one term of poli-sci and that was it. Yet it’s really not that hard to comprehend.
The problem is the same with instructions on assembly items, no one bothers to read the instructions. Even in the news media, you’d be amazed at how little people know who’s who and what’s what. When I was working at the Wagoner Tribune, other people in my company confused the Wagoner Police Department with the Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office. They didn’t know that each county district had their own office and barn. People don’t understand rules of order for Town/City Council, County Commission Meetings or even School Board Meetings. I’ve had people tell me it’s not far they can only vote for one county commissioner or one town council member. That’s how it works. A state senator is totally different and not as powerful as a U.S. senator.
And that’s why we’re here with Trump. I’ve often said there are three times of voters. You have those who always or mostly vote. You have those who hardly ever or never vote. And then, you have those who should never vote. Unfortunately, the ones who should never vote got involved in 2008 when it appeared Barack Obama was going to be President. Racism can’t out in full force for the first time in decades. The Islamophobia that had been riding high since the post-9/11 era had people believing that if Obama was elected, he would suspend the U.S. Constituon, ban pork products, pray on the Koran and and crucify all Christians.
Oh, he was going to take our guns too. Yet that never happened. You see to repeal an Amendment you have to have another Amendment that has to be approved by a certain amount of Congress and Senate, then ratified by a certain majority of states. Such a thing couldn’t and wouldn’t happen in this life time. But because not a lot of people understand that, they feel that all it would take would be an executive order. So they made people thing that Obama signing an executive order would dismantle America.
It was no surprise that after eight years of Obama and while America was turning more liberal and leftist, the conservative right-wingers would do whatever they could to elect Trump, even though Hillary Clinton got 2.5 million more of the popular vote. This is a concept that other countries can’t understand and it proves why the Electoral College needs to be dissolved as soon as possible. Twice within years, voters were told that it didn’t matter and about 80,000 people in a few key states made the decision.
Trump should’ve never been elected President. I don’t even think he wanted to. He wanted to spend the later part of the 2010s going on about how he lost and making money off of it. But he made too much money off the Presidency that he didn’t want to admit that he had lost in 2020. Even worse, Trump couldn’t rationalize why people who voted for him in 2016 didn’t want him back in office.
It was the highest voter turnout since 1900 with about 155.5 million people voting. This included a wide range of Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials and Gen Zers. Biden received more than seven million votes that Trump. He couldn’t lose to Biden. He had to make it out that there was fraud at the polls. The ony problem is people believed him too severely. This had been rising since the 1980s. The Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection coup attempt could’ve been easily squashed with one phone call from Trump, but he didn’t want to do it.
Nixon’s defense was “What did the President know and when did he know it.” Trump’s defense is “Hell’s bells, I didn’t know that was my call.” Even worse there’s reports that Trump actually wanted African-Americans to die from Covid because they were the demographic who were succumbing most from the disease. While it’s highly unlikely people from his inner circle will ever admit this, it’s right there in front of us. We all saw it on the news. The Trump Administration and Republican state leaders put everyone’s lives at risks so BIPOC would die. The rest were collateral damage. And the administration’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic probably resulting in him losing some of those votes.
Trump only cares about himself and how he is remembered. He’s running for president to stay out of prison and people will support him until it’s too damaging for them. It’s an embarrassment around the world that America has always prided itself as the best country ever but yet a major political party like the Republicans want an Christian Fascist dictatorship. That’s the only way they know they can stay in power. People have elected more Democratic Presidents. More populated states are Democrats. Yet we have states with not much of a population having two Republican Senators.
Republicans are probably terrified of what deal Trump will make to keep himself out of prison. Will he turns on the others who may have helped with Jan. 6? I would. And while Fani Willis, District Attorney for Fulton County, Ga., is seeking indictments against Trump, the longer Trump stays running, the more damaging it is for the Republican Party. While people are happy to see Trump indicted, it’s a sad time that we even allowed it to get this far.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would pardon Trump if he is elected President. But any Republican president could and will do that either in 2025 or whenever. It’s likely the Republicans see 2024 as their last hoorah as more people are switching to the Libertarian Party. The Republican Party which once stood for abolition of slavery and equal rights has become the party of white supremacy and misogny. Maybe they understand that the conservative agenda from the Cold War era doesn’t translate more into modern times so that’s why they’re wanting to install Project 2025, which will be the first step toward their authoritative government.
We’re losing our Red Foremans, the people who might have seemed hard and crotchety but were actually smart enough to know what they were doing and to admit their ignorance otherwise. Politicians are praising the loss of the women’s soccer team at the World Cup and the drop in sales at Anheuser-Busch leading to layoffs following the backlash against Dylan Mulvany on the cans (even though I couldn’t find them anyway.) This is now how leaders of this country should act.
This is how the bullies and burn-outs acted in high school as they sat in some civics class while some disinterested coach read from a manual or had them do busy-work. It’s no surprise they support Trump, Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a high school drop-out, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who was reportedly despised by her classmates. They see this as their time to shine because they were treated so rotten. It’s about payback. Just like the person said about Trump, “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be.”
Just like Nixon, they are very insecere with their own hit list. If we don’t stop it now, it’s only going to get worse. We’ve been witnessing a political party falling apart for decades and the only thing that has kept it alive is the voters who have outlived their previous generations. But no one lives forever and they are finally realizing this. If you look at what happened in Ohio on Aug. 8 with the defeat of Issue 1, it shows that people are getting tired more and more each election with how things have gone.
Ford said this nation needs to heal. But the only healing that will happen is if Trump and the rest of the Republicans who have tried to amend laws and even change the outcome of a fair election, are punished for their actions. If it doesn’t happen this time, then the next time, it’ll be worse. We have a lot of diseases in this country we’ve denied. It’s time to take our medicine even though they’re hard pills to swallow.
That’s how a nation heals. However, healing isn’t immediate. It takes time.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 