Rob Schneider wrote on 2 January:
Natalie,
In tonight’s BBC news Matt [Frei] was reporting on ex-President Ford’s funeral in Washington. He said (and I can’t remember the exact quote) that “He was a popular president. But he pardoned President Nixon and the country never forgave him.”
That is simply not true and misrepresents history.
Ford became president on 9th August 1974. He announced his decision about President Nixon on 8th September 1974. That was approximately one month after assuming office. He hadn’t achieved any level of “popularity” during that month. Instead, the country was still reeling from events which lead the resignation of President Nixon. There are vast numbers of people in the country, while regretting that such a pardon was necessary, but still understand that it was the right thing to do. The “country” never considered the issue of “forgiveness” as that’s not really the issue.
Surely the pardon could be on many people’s thoughts as they voted in 1976, when Ford lost to Carter. However there were many other issues, including the economy (it was a period of high-inflation), the remants of the Vietnam War, Republican vs. Democrat (the Republicans had won the two previous elections), etc.
–rms
I can’t claim to know a great deal about the events in American history that Mr Schneider describes, and I have no strong opinion either way on whether the pardon was a good thing. But Matt Frei’s statement that “the country never forgave him” is contradicted by the many recent articles covering Ford’s death saying that the pardon turned out to be a good decision. These articles did not just come from right wing or Republican sources. Here, for instance, is a leading article from the Guardian. If that does not count because it is not an American newspaper, here is another from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. There were many others.