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Wednesday, 17 January 2007 07:02 |
 | | Mark West |
The Romans had a saying, "Say nothing but good of the dead."
The idea was that you should be polite about dead folk, because their spirits might be hanging around and would do you harm if you angered them.
We appear to have the same policy here in the United States. I donët think, though, that we do it because of any fear of the spirits of the dead. Itës the living we fear.
The
Republicans, of course, can say any cruel thing they like. The
screaming twits of talk radio can accuse a war hero like John Kerry of
being a sympathizer of the communists, perhaps even a collaborator;
they can label every liberal as a traitor to the United States, as a
degenerate, as anti-Christian. But let anyone say anything about any
Republican ÇƒÓ particularly about any dead Republican ÇƒÓ and the dogs of
war are loosed.
So now we hear
that Gerald Ford was a statesman for his pardon of Richard Nixon. The
nation, we are told, was almost ready to fall apart. A long trial of
Richard "I Am Not A Crook" Nixon, in which the full extent of his
crimes and of the complicity of the Republican party would have been
enumerated, would have been more than our weak and floundering populace
could have handled; Nixonës high crimes and misdemeanors should go
unpunished, goes the argument, since the nation hasnët the stomach to
hear the crimes of executives aired in an impeachment.
Of course, the
same people who are making that argument were in the forefront of the
charge to impeach Bill Clinton. Somehow the nation was so much stronger
in the 1990s than after Vietnam.
Perhaps it was the efficacy of
Democratic economic and social policies that made the nation able to
bear up under the stress of impeachment hearings. Or perhaps Americans
are inherently more interested in sex crimes than in abuse of power.
In any event, Bill Clinton was fair game, while Richard Nixon got a pass.
And then there
was the Warren Commission report. There may be some American alive
today who really believes that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed
President Kennedy. But, according to public opinion surveys, many if
not most Americans have doubts. What the nation needed, then as in the
case of Nixon, was a full and thorough examination of the facts; what
the public got was something less, and Gerald Ford was once again one
of those in charge.
By the logic of
those now calling Ford a great statesman for his pardon of Nixon,
Jefferson Davis should have been pardoned, no? The nation had been
through a gigantic trauma, culminating in a vast bloodbath; the issue
had been decided at great cost. And at the end of the war, were there
to be trials? Punishment? Hadnët the nation suffered enough? Wouldnët
the best policy have been to forgive and forget?
Wouldnët the same have held for Tojo? For Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall? For the crooks at Enron?
Why do we even
bother to have laws about the actions of Presidents, if they can count
on getting a plenary pardon ÇƒÓ and if those who grant them the "get out
of jail free" card can count on being seen as statesmen?
What were Fordës
foreign policy triumphs? His domestic triumphs? No doubt he was a
kindly man and a consummate politician. He was a fixer of the big
problems for his party, and his party seems often to need such men.
But to call
someone a statesman who fixed a problem for his party and who in the
process deprived the nation of the full disclosure the would have led
to true healing ÇƒÓ and perhaps to laws that would have reined in the
current administrationës endless quest for control ÇƒÓ strikes me as just
the sort of disingenuous misuse of language in which his party has
become adept of late.
ï
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at UNC Asheville.
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