Gerald Ford, R.I.P.
I’d say the pardoning of Nixon is outweighed by the fact that he presided over my birth, surely a great boon to the Republic.
More substantively, he doesn’t seem to have done nearly as much active harm during my lifetime as a number other presidents I can think of. For one thing, he avoided war in the Middle East. And he did appoint John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court, who is currently holding the line against some of the more unfortunate encroachment of executive power that the current administration favors.
Of course, not having started any wars or presided over any massive expansion of government power, he fatally blew his chances of ever being ranked as a “great” or even “near-great” president by historians.
P.S. On the other hand, I’m reminded that President Ford was the first to inflict both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld on the long-suffering American public.
A Thinking Reed 