Of Bears and Penguins

The lawyer makes his case
Although I was not there and can't imagine the time, I do recall that when I read "All the Presidents' Men" I was shocked and apalled. I kept asking my parents what it was like, if it really happened that way, was everyone outraged.

My most lasting impression of Ford is the image of him falling down the steps of Air Force One. I know he was a lawyer, from Michigan, and played football for the University. Maybe the balance of one's time in office can be measured in one brave act, and so perhaps Ford can rightly be remembered as a brave man, who sought to do right in a situation the country had never faced before.

He makes his case doesn't he? He doesn't just explain why he is pardoning Nixon, but he convinces you that you should go along too. There are many compelling lines, that procrastination would be weak and dangerous, that one should be troubled and feel compassion toward Nixon, that not as president, but as a man Ford would be judged without mercy should he fail to give it.

And of course the most compelling argument, that to proceed down a path of litigation would reignite ugly passions and weaken American credibility around the world. Keep in mind that after Vietnam this credibility may have already been tenuous.

Maybe there are times when God grants those in leadership a special clarity of vision and foresight, and extra measure to guide their decisions. Ford says that an American president who had resigned was in danger of being cruelly persecuted out of a sense of meted out justice. I think this a common urge in man - to desire excessive punishment for those who should have known better, and who betray our trust mightily. In punishing Nixon, could the nation have avoided it's own part in the tragedy, always knowing that he had been elected of the people? Surely that recriminating thought would not have been healthy for the country.

The legacy of Ford's pardon is that the Nixon I remember from the news and commentary, indeed the Nixon who is still invoked, is the one who removed us from Vietnam, the one who made diplomatic envoys to China -a action widely hailed as good diplomacy. Had the pardon not occured, we would never have been allowed by our own conscience to remember what might have been good in Nixon's administration.

Today there is a bent to extremism, one is good or bad, and if one is bad one must always be bad. What would Nancy Grace have made of Nixon? Or of Ford's pardon? How would Geraldo have covered it? There is no grace in our society, no mercy know for the fallen. How heartening to know that there was a time not long ago when a man reminded us that the two existed, and that the extension of it from one to another helped both the giver and the recipient. I remember well that my Dad told me once that he supposed there was good and bad in all of us, and I have remembered that those qualities co-exist and complicate matters. I have found that it is grace and mercy which allows one to move forward whichever end of the situation one is found.

And then there is the matter of God. Just as Ford speaks of his role as president, and his conscience as a man. I think he also speaks of two Gods - the Creator of inalienable rights found in the Declaration of Independence, the Deity popularly invoked during the philosophy of that time, but also the God that Ford meets at church, the God of mercy and of justice and of judgement.

I draw the distinction because in our time we are intensely concerned with the separation of church and state, and with the ferreting out of what the mention of God might mean about a person's belief. There is a mistaken tendency to believe that a mention of God is the equivalent of propagating a Christian theocracy, and proselytizing the masses. This tendency proves one to be ignorant of American history and rhetorical tradition. I do not think that every President who has uttered the word "God" has meant by that a faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of one's sins and the salvation of one's soul.

The Creator Deity invoked in our founding documents should neither embolden those zealots who would marry government and religion, nor frighten those citizens who choose a different faith and creed. Surely if the founders had meant the God to which Christianity is ascribed, they would have perceived that it would have endangered the religious freedom of the citizens, and the right to free speech, not to mention the fact that they probably would not have been as vague as Creator in His official description.

I do not know the thinking behind including the Creator in the documents. I suspect that it was to remind Americans that there is a purpose greater than our own self interest, I suspect it was to give a particular significance and weight to the documents of a mewling babe of a nation, to acknowledge the unique and spectacular embarcation of a nation such as the world had never known. And perhaps even at some level, even in the hearts of our most doubtful and uncertain founding Fathers, a desire to get off on the right foot with the Creator whoever he might be.

The documents do not, however, mention God's mercy, or His ability to be met in church, or the accountability which all men have to Him. When Ford says "we are a nation under God" - can you imagine the maelstorm that would be today, what would Christopher Hitchens write? - no thinking person would imagine by that he meant we were all to go to church and confess Christ. When Ford says that he is invoking rhetorical tradition, and imploring America to remember something greater than its immediate desires to yell for the tar and feathers.

But when he talks about himself as a man before God diligently searching out his conscience, when he mentions that he will be judged without mercy should he fail to grant it, any moderately literate person is able to recognize the Christian tradition and theology. How wise of Ford to so delicately separate the God of a President and the God of a man.

Before someone leaves an angry comment calling me a heretic, let me affirm that I do believe that some of the founding Fathers were Christ-professing men, Christian. I believe that this nation has had presidents who in their great hour of need called upon the God of mercy and justice, rather than the shadowy, absent and vague Creator of American rhetoric. But we are a society ignorant of sublties, for us it must always be one way or the other.

How good to be reminded by the speech today that things are more complicated than one way or the other. To be reminded that in our country citizens are free to practice their creed without fear of persecution. To be reminded by our rhetorical tradition that there is an end beyond ourselves, a greater call than our individual pursuit of happiness - the sustaining of our democracy and our freedoms therein.