President Bush and History
Will history look favorably on President Bush? Admittedly, things don’t look good.
In April, historian Sean Wilentz told us: “Many historians are now wondering whether Bush . . . will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.”
Although historians may be a liberal lot, they are not the only Americans to think that history will judge Bush harshly.
In a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted last month, 54% of Americans said they believed history will show Bush to be a “below average” or “poor” President, while only 25% felt history would render the same verdict on Bill Clinton, the next lowest-ranked President.
Bush says that he isn’t concerned about the judgment of history. He reportedly told Bob Woodward that he didn’t care how history judged his decision to go to war with Iraq since “we’ll all be dead.”
The truth is that Bush, like all Presidents, cares about his place in history. With his decision to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, Bush is gambling that he can not only change the course of the war, but the judgment of history as well.
But before we dismiss Bush’s action or consign his presidency to the dust bin of history, we should pause to think about a president who just passed away: Gerald Ford. Like Bush, Ford believed that his most controversial decision--to pardon Richard Nixon--would be vindicated by history.
And Ford was right.
Ford’s swift and preemptive pardon of Nixon, coming only a month after Nixon resigned his office, before any charges were brought against him, generated great public outcry at the time. Polls showed that less than 35% of Americans approved of the pardon. Many believed the pardon was part of a deal to get Nixon to resign so Ford could become president.
But Ford publicly stated throughout his life that he pardoned Nixon not for his own sake or for Nixon’s, but for the nation’s. He told a House Subcommittee a month after the pardon that “there was no deal, period, under no circumstance” and never wavered from that position. Ford always maintained that he pardoned Nixon because it was the only way to move the country beyond the destructive partisanship and scandal of Watergate.
The contemporaneous evidence, much of it unavailable at the time of the pardon, and the subsequent writings and statements of others in the Ford White House show that Ford did not make a deal with Nixon (although he was probably offered one) and give no grounds for rejecting Ford’s repeated assurances about his reasons for pardoning Nixon.
Historians are still finding documents that support Ford. I recently found one.
An hour before Ford went before the nation on September 8, 1974, to announce his pardon of Nixon, he called various congressional leaders to inform them of the decision. One of the people he call that historic day, Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, a longtime friend from Ford’s days in Congress, made a record of the conversation.
Ford: This is Gerry Ford. I have made a hard and fast decision, and I am going to grant clemency to President Nixon. I hope you approve.
Scott: I believe you are expending a part of your popularity in order to get this whole thing behind us, but I approve, and I’ll support you.
Ford: I have been talking to Jaworski [Leon Jaworski, the second Watergate Special Prosecutor]. He says a trial could not come up for at least a year, proceedings even lasting longer. . . . Whatever may be said, I am convinced that what I am doing is better than putting the country through the alternative.
The revised thinking about the pardon is not an isolated event but rather part of a larger wave of Ford revisionism. In the years since Ford left office, his standing has grown among scholars and journalists, putting the pardon in a more favorable light. Ford’s reputation for decency and integrity and the continued loyalty and affection shown for him by his White House aides stands in sharp contrast to other modern presidents.
The impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton gave us a taste of what a Nixon trial would have been like and convinced many critics that a trial would not have been in the best interests of the country. Nixon, like Clinton, would have vigorously fought the charges brought against him, nourishing partisan rancor and journalistic sensationalism, and dragging the country along with him in the mud.
Today, most Americans believe Ford was right to have pardoned Nixon. A 2002 ABC/ Washington Post poll found that 59% of Americans now support the pardon. This includes some of the most influential and outspoken critics of Ford’s decision: Senator Edward Kennedy, journalist and presidential historian Richard Reeves, and Watergate reporter and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Bob Woodward.
None of this means Bush's recent Iraq decision is the right one, of course, or that it will be vindicated by history. But it does mean that judgments about our Presidents can change dramatically in a short period of time. Historians, especially, should be wary of predicting how George W. Bush will be judged. The past has a future, too, and none of us knows what it will be.
Related Links
Rick Shenkman: George Bush's Misplaced Hope that Historians Will Rank Him Higher than His Contemporaries HNN Hot Topics: Where George W. Bush Ranks as President HNN Hot Topics: Gerald Ford, R.I.P.