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There are two reasons Barry Werth's 31 Days is important. One has historical implications; the other is connected to the current administration. Day by day, Werth describes the 31 days between President Nixon's resignation Aug. 9, 1974, and successor Gerald Ford's controversial decision on Sept. 8 to pardon Nixon.
Werth forces the reader to look at Ford with new and impressed eyes. Instead of being a continuation of the whole ugly Watergate debacle, Ford's decision was brave, principled and necessary for the nation's healing, Werth writes. Moreover, Werth describes it as an authentic expression of Ford's compassionate, quietly religious nature. Werth's presentation of Ford is part of an ongoing historical re-examination of the Republican from Grand Rapids, Mich.
And without nestling too deeply into the amateur psychiatrist's couch, Werth sees the pardon as an extension of Ford's past. Ford served as peacemaker for a 25-year-long child support battle between his mother and his biological father, Leslie King, who had physically abused Ford's mother and abandoned his firstborn son. At 25, Ford urged his mother to take a settlement from his ailing father instead of going to trial. Forgiving a sick old man who had done terrible things was familiar ground to Ford.
In 31 Days, Ford cuts a very different figure from the buffoon/political hack once lampooned by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live.
Werth also notes that, after the pardon, the now-powerful post-Watergate media had an unfair tendency to view Ford and every misstep of his fledging administration through the prism of conspiracy, deliberate deceit and crisis that Nixon had spawned.
What connects 31 Days to the present is the way so much of the 1974 drama parallels controversies today, and how political figures such as Donald Rumsfeld and a 33-year-old Richard Cheney were shaped by their experiences in Watergate Washington. Both served Ford in various roles.
Among the developing crises that began in the early '70s: the emergence of oil as a political tool and the first inklings of Islamic rage.
31 Days takes a microscope to a short but crucial moment in the nation's history. Werth keeps his gaze on the big players such as Ford, Henry Kissinger, Nelson Rockefeller and Nixon in exile. But Werth describes a time with eerie parallels to our own, with Iraq as our Vietnam.
The questions remain: Who limits presidential power? What role should the media play? Is the government above the law? The president? Werth skillfully captures how these questions shook the nation in 1974 and how Americans today continue to search for the answers.
31 Days: The Crisis that
Gave Us the Government
We Have Today
By Barry Werth
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
398 pp., $26
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