Ford, Nixon, 'The Nation'

The consensus seems to be that Gerald Ford, who died December 26, at 93, was a healer. And his pardon of Richard Nixon, although controversial at the time, is now cited as perhaps his most significant achievement. History, it has been said, has been kinder to him than the voters who turned him out of office. Not so fast.

Ford was indeed a nice guy, although he did--before he was named to replace the disgraced Spiro Agnew as Vice President--call for the impeachment of liberal Justice William O. Douglas, ostensibly because Douglas had contributed an article to The Evergreen Review, an avant-garde publication too racy for the Congressman's taste. But missing from the otherwise near-universal encomiums for his helping to put what he called "our long national nightmare" behind us is any serious questioning of his own version of the story behind that pardon, which in the long run may have more to do with his historical reputation than the fact of the pardon itself.

We should know, if for no other reason than that in 1979 Ford's publisher, Harper & Row, sued The Nation over a story we published concerning that pardon. Technically, the suit had to do with the fair-use doctrine: Had The Nation, which had been leaked an advance copy of the manuscript of Ford's memoir, quoted more of Ford's words than the fair-use doctrine permits? The Supreme Court, overturning an appeals court decision, said we had. In fact, we had only quoted a few hundred words from Ford's 110,000-word book. But the Court, voting 6 to 3 against us‚ didn't buy our position that public figures, who have every right to profit from their memoirs, have no right to copyright the news. So be it.

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