The Long National Nightmare
It was a partly cloudy day in the nation’s capital when, at noon on Friday, August 9, 1974, Washington’s most powerful gathered in the East Room of the White House to witness a uniquely peculiar moment in the history of the American presidency. It was in that same room, just ninety minutes prior, where President Richard Nixon bid an emotional farewell to his cabinet, having resigned the most powerful office in the world in a single—almost cold and bitter—written line to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Vice President Gerald Ford, a Michigan-born man whose political career had spanned from the House of Representatives to the Warren Commission, placed his hand on the Bible — opened, without coincidence, to Proverbs 3:5-6, and was administered the oath of office by Chief Justice Warren Burger.
In that moment, Ford became the only person in U.S. history to serve both as Vice President and President without being elected to either office. He had not sought the presidency. He had not campaigned for it. He was elevated to the office amid a crisis of faith in the very survival of the presidency as a respected institution.
“I assume the presidency under extraordinary circumstances never before experienced by Americans,” he said. “This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.” Americans everywhere who listened knew exactly what he was talking about.
Two years earlier, on Saturday, June 17, 1972, under the cover of night, five burglars were caught breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., to plant wiretaps on telephone communications.
1972 was an election year, one that pitted Nixon against the liberal South Dakota Democratic Senator George McGovern. Nixon won in a landslide; McGovern complained that the campaign was rife with “dirty tricks.” Watergate turned out to be one of them—a doorway to even more. The burglars, it turns out, were connected to the Nixon campaign.
Ever since the Pentagon Papers in June 1971—leaked documents proving the government’s deceptions about the Vietnam War—Nixon sought to crack down on not just leaks, but opposition. He wiretapped journalists and government employees and worked to sabotage rivals using the country’s security apparatus.
Nixon was involved with Watergate from the moment it went south. He paid hush money, used the CIA to obstruct the FBI, and fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20, 1973, triggering the resignations of the Attorney General and his deputy.
Things spiraled out of Nixon’s control. And Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein doggedly investigated and reported the scandal, thanks in large part to a deeply placed White House source code-named Deep Throat—who turned out to be W. Mark Felt, associate director of the FBI.
In July 1974, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon must hand over 64 tapes. One of them proved he was involved in the cover-up from the start. Republican leaders told him he would face certain impeachment and conviction. Nixon chose resignation.
“My fellow Americans,” Ford said, assuming the presidency, “our long national nightmare is over.” He added: “Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.
“As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate.”
Ford entered the presidency with an approval rating near 70 percent. But on Sunday, September 8, 1974, just one month into his tenure, he decided what he knew would cost him everything: he would pardon Richard Nixon.
Addressing the nation from the Oval Office, Ford said of Nixon and the country: “Theirs is an American tragedy in which we have all played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.”
Ford’s concern was “the immediate future of this great country”—the greatest good of all the people. And that meant, in this moment, closing a chapter rather than dwelling in it, letting it further divide the nation before a watching world still shadowed by the Cold War.
“My conscience tells me clearly and certainly that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed,” he said. “My conscience tells me that only I, as President, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book.”
Whatever Nixon’s crimes, whatever justice he deserved, Ford concluded that the nation had to move on—with mercy and grace.
“I simply was not convinced that the country wanted to see an ex-president behind bars,” Ford later wrote. “We are not a vengeful people; forgiveness is one of the roots of the American tradition… It was the state of the country’s health at home and around the world that worried me.”
Ford’s approval rating sank. At the time, many were furious. “The son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch,” is how Bernstein broke the news to Woodward. But the wisdom of Ford’s decision grew clearer as the fog of fury dissipated. Initially “thought to be corrupt,” the move, as Woodward later reflected, “was actually a courageous act.” As Peggy Noonan wrote after Ford’s death in 2006, “He threw himself on a grenade to protect the country from shame.”
At present, America is living through its own long national nightmare—one that has deepened since 2016. Ego trumps dignity, vengeance trumps the common good, and the power of personality tramples the very ideals of the nation. There seems to be no end, but Watergate reminds us that there eventually will be—and it will require much character to meet it.
The pardon of Nixon is the purest distillation of Ford’s character—and the sharpest contrast with the present occupant and moment. He made the most unpopular decision of his presidency, absorbed the full political cost, never complained, and was vindicated by history and by those who had once condemned him. His most hated act became his greatest honor. That’s what it looks like when a man serves the office, indeed the nation, rather than himself.
In the politics of self that dominate us today, history reminds us that the truest Americanism is the politics of humility, service, and goodwill—and an unwavering faith that ideals still matter.