• KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Another thing you haven’t mentioned is that Nixon had destroyed McGovern in the 72 election. He won every state but MA!

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_presidential_election

      It was insane how far he fell. Watergate proved all his opponents right. And yes, his party turned on him. Half of Republican voters still liked him after his resignation but he literally couldn’t get another job anywhere.

      I recommend going to the Nixon presidential library. They really try to whitewash the events but it literally stops listing things he did after Watergate. Other presidents didn’t even hang out with him.

    • BlemboTheThird@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      I can’t possibly disagree more. I don’t think you understand how restrictive an actual prison is. The man got to live out his days eating good food, going where he wanted, and doing what he wanted. We should all be so lucky to be able to do that at the cost of merely getting some dirty looks here and there.

      Given the war and the oil embargo and everything else that was going on at the time

      I don’t see how pardoning Nixon helped solve any of that or how they make the pardon any less of a travesty.

      Ford gained nothing by the pardon

      You know, other than the part where he only got to be president in the first place by making an agreement with Nixon that if he resigned, he’d get a pardon. He got to bail out his buddy and set an example for the rest of his Republican pals that breaking the law is fine, we’ll cover for you from the very top levels of government! No matter what the general public might have thought of it, the people within the party saw it as a huge service to their political machine.

      Nixon got to live out his days comfortable, happy, and carefree. “He did not even have a state funeral.” Give me a break. By this logic, Trump doesn’t really need to be prosecuted! He already lost one election, and if he loses the next, he won’t have what’s REALLY important to him, and isn’t that punishment enough?

      Of course not. Heinous crimes were committed against the integrity of our country’s ability to have democratic elections, and actual, real, legal conquences MUST follow, or the next asshole will comfortably push things even harder. It’s thanks in part to Nixon’s pardon that the rest of the republicans today are so happy to join hands around their lies about the election being stolen and the Jan 6 rioters being on a tour. They’d never have gotten here so easily without the precedent they have of covering for each other no matter what, no matter how serious, and no matter how high the office.