I remember being quite upset [about the pardon] at the time, but was surprised that my parents (who hated Nixon) didn't seem to object. But to this day, I'm still a bit upset about it. Sure, without the pardon, the Nixon case would have occupied the newspapers and congress for a while, but surely it would still have been mostly in the background, just as most investigations only come to the forefront when there is something new. In any case, I don't think Nixon should have been pardoned until it had been determined exactly what laws he had broken.I think he's right to still be upset about it. If Nixon had been forced to stand trial for his crimes, future presidents like Bush might not be so confident that theirs would also go unpunished. I also think there was a deal - perhaps unspoken, perhaps not. One NPR interview with a former insider from the time said that Ford, soon before Nixon's resignation, was asking "theoretical" questions about the scope of presidential pardon powers - and that Nixon's awareness of Ford's probable pardon was one of the factors that clinched his decision to resign.
Whether the deal was explicit or not, the pardon was a terrible move, and I fail to see why the media are falling all over themselves to glorify a lackluster caretaker president whose most important major decision was a bad one. I guess it's because the current president is such a disaster that there's some nostalgia for ANY former president.
