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But I felt like the occasion called for it.
it. As always, I really appreciate you listening. I think we got another interesting one here today based on a specific and really, I think, unique experience that I had recently that made me think quite a bit about the legal moment that we're in. So as always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks again for listening. And let me know any thoughts, questions, or comments. Send them in to letters at cafe.com. Here's a historical thought exercise for you.
What would John Dean, the one-time White House counsel who famously turned on Richard Nixon and blew the roof off the Watergate scandal? The president told me I had done a good job and he appreciated how difficult a task it had been. And the president was pleased that the case had stopped with Liddy. What would John Dean think about Gerald Ford's 1974 pardon of Nixon? What do you imagine John Dean would say here? You can see him coming out either way on that, can't you?
Okay, I'm not going to leave you hanging. We actually do know the answer. Because a couple weeks ago, Dean, who has become a personal friend through our work at CNN, agreed to speak to the class that I teach at Rutgers University. We were doing a unit on Watergate, and I thought, who better on Watergate than John Dean himself? I asked him, he graciously agreed, and he spent about a half hour zooming into my class. By the way, kids, state schools rule. Anyway,
Dean gave us a unique and candid insider's view on history. He responded thoughtfully and with self-effacing good humor to questions from my students and from me. At times, he surprised us. For example, Dean said that for all the evil Richard Nixon was capable of, Nixon also had a fundamental human decency to him.
For example, when brand newly elected U.S. Senator Joe Biden lost his wife and child in a car accident in December 1972, then President Nixon took time to call the relatively unknown Biden and offer sincere condolences.
As we wrapped up our session, I asked Dean the question that opened this column. What did he think of Ford's pardon of Nixon? I honestly had no idea what he would say. Well, Dean thought for a moment and then he answered in two parts. At the time, in 1974, Dean began, he felt the pardon was the right move. We all needed to move on from the Watergate scandal to end the long national nightmare, as Ford would famously put it.
And while Dean had testified against Nixon, he nonetheless was not yearning to see the former president and his own one-time boss and mentor behind bars. Dean also opined that Ford had some self-interest because he was dogged by constant media questions about whether Nixon should be prosecuted. The pardon ended those questions and, according to Dean, allowed Ford to move on with his presidency, though the pardon itself became a longer-term political albatross for Ford.
But then Dean added a coda. Looking back now, nearly a half century later, he has changed his view. He now believes that Ford's pardon of Nixon was ill-advised because it sent a message to future generations that a president can be above the law and can escape meaningful consequences for even the most flagrant criminality.
Dean drew a straight line from the Nixon pardon to the seemingly countless scandals swirling around and caused by Donald Trump nearly 50 years later. Dean argued essentially that the Nixon pardon created a permission structure for Donald Trump.
My initial reaction, I'll say candidly, was skepticism. It felt like a stretch to me. First, are we even confident that Trump knows about the Ford pardon of Nixon in the first place? I understand Trump was a sentient adult at the time it happened, but let's face it, he isn't exactly an attentive, curious, reflective student of history.
And even if he does know, it's not as if Trump carefully considers the import of historical precedent in forging his own path to power. To put it another way, if Ford had not pardoned Nixon and if Nixon had been successfully prosecuted, would that have meaningfully deterred Donald Trump? Is Trump even deterrable at all?
We can consider a similar dynamic when looking forward from here. How will Trump's ultimate fate speak to and impact future generations? We've all heard the common and quite sensible refrain that if Trump escapes justice, then that extends an open invitation to future would-be law-breaking autocrats. After all, if Trump does not pay a meaningful price, then the next guy will see that and try it himself.
On one level, I'm not so sure about that. What's the thought process of our hypothetical future would-be Trump imitator? Hmm, let's see. I'm considering doing what Donald Trump did, and all that ever happened to him was he got impeached twice, he got voted out of office, he got sued for tens of millions of dollars, he got put out of his own private business, and he got indicted four times. Sounds like a breeze. Sign me up.
But John Dean's point on reflection isn't really about direct deterrence. It's about what we collectively are willing and able to tolerate. Richard Nixon avoided prosecution and prison, and the pardon was met with widespread, though not universal, anger and disappointment. Yet the world continued to spin on its axis and our democracy carried on.
But in another sense, the damage was done. It became a permanent part of our history and our democratic structure that a president could break the law and still walk away deeply tarnished, but largely scot-free. Consciously or not, Trump has barged down the same path forged by Nixon, hacking away at the boundaries and leaving them even wider than before.
So to extend Dean's view, what matters here isn't so much what happens to Donald John Trump, the individual. What matters is how his prosecution, perhaps prosecutions, reflect on our democratic process. And this, by the way, is why I've been so insistent that, yes, Trump ought to be prosecuted. But no, we cannot make excuses for shoddy prosecutorial practice.
Eventually, we'll need to ask not only whether Trump met a just end, but whether we got there fairly and within our existing prosecutorial norms and ethics. There are no easy answers here. The criminal justice will play out over the upcoming months and years. And yes, it will take that long. And we simply don't know how this ends. Will Trump emerge triumphant and untouched like the action hero casually walking away from the conflagration that he caused?
Or will he wind up on the chow line in a jumpsuit? I guess, if I had to, that we end up somewhere in the middle and there are plenty of available landing spots along that spectrum. But I don't know. Nobody knows right now. The stakes really are bigger than Trump himself and history will take note. Few people would understand that better than John Dean. Thanks for listening, everyone. Stay safe and stay informed.
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