To know her is to love her:

Cheney’s memory is a great fallacy that haunts us today, just as the misbegotten Iraq war will haunt us 30 years from now. It was a huge mistake to pardon Richard Nixon and I say that as someone who thought it was the right thing to do at the time. I was very young and had a soft heart and thought that it was gratuitous to punish him more after his terrible humiliation and that it would be good for the country to “move on.”

Allowing Nixon to get away with his crimes while his fellow Republicans angrily stewed over the injustice of his downfall is what led to the ongoing usurpation of the constitution under Republican rule. They believe the president is above the law and the constitution. Why wouldn’t they? They do these things and there’s no accountability so they do it again the first chance they get, always upping the ante. When they finally lose an election and take a breather from illegal wars and pillaging and shredding the constitution, the Democrats are so busy beating back political attacks and trying to clean up the mess that they decide accountability isn’t worth it. They “bind up the wounds” allowing the infection to fester until the next time it happens.

Cheney thinks that history vindicated Ford and therefore history will vindicate him too. Not in a million years. History will show that from Nixon to the Codpiece, the Republican Party has been progressively more criminal and more aggressively undemocratic and imperialistic. But the problem is, to quote our Dear Leader(ironically paraphrasing Keynes and not even knowing it) “history … we’ll all be dead.” And unfortunately, a lot of people are dead much sooner than they need to be because people like Dick Cheney know they can get away with murder.

It’s a shame this generation of Americans lacks the will and spine for a democratic refresher moment; it would serve all of us, even the wealthy, if we could return to the rule of law. But I think the curve of history is against us, and it won’t be until our grandchildren are grown, that Americans regain a compelling interest in the social contract. I hope I’m wrong.