In My Time - Dick Cheney [36]
Ford said he viewed Bush and Rumsfeld as the future of the party, and Rockefeller as the establishment candidate. He went with Rockefeller, in large part because the unique circumstances of Ford’s sudden accession to the presidency called for a vice president who needed no introduction to the world.
On the evening of August 19, 1974, Don happened to be at our house in Bethesda. We listened to the kitchen radio as news reports described the unfolding scene at Rockefeller’s New York estate, where aides and family members were gathering. A fleet of sedans was lined up, and Rockefeller family jets stood by ready to fly the whole entourage to Washington. Don laughed at the superior resources Rockefeller brought to the competition. “Here’s Nelson Rockefeller with planeloads of people flying down from New York,” he said, “and all I’ve got is you, Cheney.”
Shortly after the Rockefeller announcement, the transition team presented its report to the president. Rumsfeld and I went our separate ways, he back to his NATO post in Brussels and I back to Bradley Woods. Thus, like most of America, I was surprised a few weeks later when on September 8 President Ford announced that he was granting a “full, free, and absolute pardon” to Richard Nixon. He described his action as a way to “shut and seal” the matter of Watergate and to mitigate the suffering of Richard Nixon and his family.
All these years later, the wisdom and generosity of Gerald Ford’s instincts have been recognized for their courage and honored for their rightness. But at the time the pardon was controversial and unpopular. I was among the majority of Americans who thought then that it was a mistake. While I was prepared to believe that it might be justified eventually, I was sure that it would cost Ford too much of his support in the near term.
The immediate result was indeed a firestorm of controversy and criticism. According to a Gallup poll, Ford’s approval rating dropped from 71 percent to 49 percent. The press corps declared the pardon indefensible. They condemned the president and lionized their former colleague Jerald terHorst, whom Ford had just named as the White House press secretary. When terHorst was informed about the pardon, he resigned in protest just as the president was about to go on camera. Across the country people who had been relieved by Ford’s becoming president turned negative. There were widespread rumors about a secret deal, with Ford being elevated to the presidency in return for promising to pardon his predecessor. News of all this was accompanied by stories of bitter turmoil and conflict between Nixon and Ford people in the White House—at least some of which were true.
In addition to the negative impact on the president’s own approval rating, the pardon clearly hurt us in the 1974 elections, which followed less than two months after the pardon was issued. Many commentators believe it ultimately cost Ford reelection. The impact of the pardon was intensified by the fact that it was a total surprise to everyone. Ford announced it on a Sunday morning at a time when not many people were watching television, so few Americans heard his explanation directly. Additionally, the announcement was made without any notification to the Congress or discussion in the press. I always believed that the negative impact could have been lessened if more thought had been given to how the pardon was announced.
While I was unfortunately accurate in my assessment of the negative political impact, I was wrong about the wisdom of the pardon itself. It was clearly the right