Criminal Presidents?

[dazzleman]

I think every president broke laws while in office.  It's really a matter of degree, not an either-or thing.

Clinton, Nixon and LBJ were the most egregious of the modern presidents, in my opinion.  But I don't think I would want to see any of them thrown in jail.  Putting former presidents in jail on a consistent basis is the hallmark of politically unstable regimes.  There is also the great danger that policy differences will be criminalized, as some in our political system have attempted to do.

But to put it in perspective, I'm not sure we've ever had a president who was truly evil.  Some had better character than others, but I don't think there were any who deliberately harmed the American people.  I could be wrong, but we've been pretty lucky in our history.

[dazzleman]

I think every president broke laws while in office.  It's really a matter of degree, not an either-or thing.

Clinton, Nixon and LBJ were the most egregious of the modern presidents, in my opinion.  But I don't think I would want to see any of them thrown in jail.  Putting former presidents in jail on a consistent basis is the hallmark of politically unstable regimes.  There is also the great danger that policy differences will be criminalized, as some in our political system have attempted to do.

But to put it in perspective, I'm not sure we've ever had a president who was truly evil.  Some had better character than others, but I don't think there were any who deliberately harmed the American people.  I could be wrong, but we've been pretty lucky in our history.

I would agree with you in your analysis. Fortunately we are, as Gerald Ford put it, a republic of laws and not of men.

Laws written, enacted, and enforced by men.

Haha, true. Though what Ford meant, of course, is that the criminal actions of one President cannot bring down the Presidency, because we have a system in place to deal with that, and the system is not dependent on the character of the people within it, as we, as Americans, have loyalty to the office and not to the person themselves.

That's the basic advantage of any bureaucracy; as long as people buy into the system, it works quite well with interchangeable parts, and thus can endure indefintiely.

Ford is actually an excellent example of his own theory.  He was appointed to the vice-presidency by a president who was ultimately discredited and forced from office.  While he was confirmed by both houses of Congress, he was never elected by the American people.  And he issued a blanket pardon to his predecessor a month after taking office.

And yet his legitimacy as president was never questioned, so strong was the belief of the American people in our constitution.  He was the legitimate president under the constitution, and that was that.  In another country, he probably would have been under constant threat of being overthrown, but not here.  And the American people came within a whisker of electing him to a full term in his own rite.

[dazzleman]

I voted none of the above.  In considering presidents throughout history there are many who I have differences with, some over major issues.  But each have made positive contributions to our nation's growth, even, I must admit, Jackson.  Nixon comes closest to being criminal, but I would stop short of applying that term.  And while he was guilty of possible criminal acts at Watergate, his appointment of Ford was entirely constitutional and, he probably had in mind a desire to find the man best qualified to be president, with the good of the nation in mind, since by then he likely knew he would probably be impeached.  

I agree.  By the standard of malicious criminality, I don't think we've ever had a bad president.  And I think that Ford was a good choice by Nixon.  He was actually Nixon's fourth choice.  Nixon would have preferred John Connally, Ronald Reagan or Nelson Rockefeller, but had to rule each one out for one political reason or another.  So he went with Ford, who turned out to be the president that we needed at the time.  We have been very lucky, all in all, in who our presidents have been.