Let’s give Trump’s followers something to howl about
by Leonard Pitts Gerald Ford was right. It was years before I understood that. I was 17 years old on the day in 1974 when the 38th president pardoned the 37th, Richard Nixon, for his crimes in the Watergate affair. Like millions of others — like Ford’s own press secretary, who resigned in protest — I was disgusted by this largesse. It wasn’t until years later that I came to see it as an act of political courage, freeing the country to move on from a sordid affair that had left us mesmerized and paralyzed. As Ford put it, had Nixon gone to trial, “ugly passions ...
