Donald Trump has run afoul of the rules-based order. And in a manner so-often emblematic of America’s approach to the world, he has pugnaciously declared that the rules don’t apply to him. “Our whole country is being rigged right now,” Trump said at the door of the court, moments after a jury found him guilty on all counts in a hush-money case.
Trump is America’s first felon president. That historic title is more a gift of politics than law. Back in the 1970s, Richard Nixon should have been tried and convicted for his role in the Watergate scandal. But Nixon was pardoned after stepping down from the presidency.
The justification for that pardon, though controversial still, holds lessons for today. Joe Biden, the man who holds the power of pardon now, should consider whether to exercise it. Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, no fan of Trump, had said Biden made a mistake by not pardoning Trump earlier. (Update: And as readers have pointed out, this applies to the federal cases Trump faces, not the state conviction.)
Back in 1974, the burglary at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate transfixed America, the cover-up far more than the crime. The United States was bitterly divided. So, Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, made this plea when granting Nixon a pardon for all offenses he might have committed against the United States as president:
As President, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the people of the United States whose servant I am. As a man, my first consideration is to be true to my own convictions and my own conscience.
My conscience tells me clearly and certainly that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed. My conscience tells me that only I, as President, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book. My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquillity but to use every means that I have to insure it.
Trump is going to appeal his conviction, that much is certain. America’s bad dream will go on. He also has other cases to defend, so this chapter is far from closed. Trump will fight, continue to dominate the headlines, claim the system is rigged against him, and draw succour from his supporters. He has declared that the 5 November presidential ballot is the only verdict that matters. He might lose and then complain of a rigged outcome, but he might just win. The Biden campaign is already warning the verdict is not an end.
Biden’s opportunity to argue from the high ground has to be better than wrestling in the mud with Trump.
Biden could dramatically change the game. He could look back to Ford, who said of the prospect of dragging Nixon through the courts:
During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarised in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.
Biden could rob Trump of one of his most potent political assets, the persecution complex, which Trump uses to gin up his base. Biden could show “the law is a respecter of reality”, as Ford put it, because the presidential pardon is very much a part of the US legal system. At the stroke of a pen, Biden could remove much of the circus-carnival atmospherics that dominate this campaign.
Would it be controversial? You betcha. But Biden’s opportunity to argue from the high ground has to be better than wrestling in the mud with Trump.
True, Ford lost his next election. But his chalice was poisoned, whereas Biden can argue he is cleansing the waters of American democracy. Nixon was never tried. Trump already wears the opprobrium of a verdict. When Ford died in 2006, Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor and a Democrat, reflected that while he would have preferred more culpability from Nixon, “in the end, Ford may have been correct in believing the facts would sort themselves out well enough”.
It’s not a case of supporting Trump to want America – and the world – to move on.
