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31 Days: The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today

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For those of us old enough to remember the summer of 1974 when the House Judiciary Committee voted articles of impeachment which ultimately led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, Barry Werth's new book, "31 Days" is a wonderful chronicle of that time. Although the book begins with the Nixon resignation (after the House vote) and ends essentially with Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon, Werth presents a fascinating view of 1974....not only regarding the political scene but related areas which affected President Ford during his first month in office.

Needless to say, Ford entered the presidency as no one before him had. He needed to make decisions about the soaring inflation the United States was facing as well as growing unemployment on the homefront. In international policy Ford had to address not only the beleaguered American presence in Vietnam, the continuing problems in the Middle East but also a coup and subsequent Turkish invasion of Cyprus. On top of that Ford needed to find a vice-president.... to replace himself. However, the largest piece of the picture was what would Ford do with Nixon? "31 Days" centers around this aspect and it's a fascinating walk down memory lane.

How it was that Gerald Ford decided how and when to pardon the disgraced former president makes "31 Days" riveting. No one had a clue that Ford would use his power of pardon and Werth accurately describes the aftermath of that early September announcement. The honeymoon Ford enjoyed was over in a flash. Yet it is also a good connection that the author makes about how Ford might have decided things with regard to Nixon....he was contemplating a concurrent, limited amnesty for Vietnam draft dodgers and as he wanted them to "work their way back" into American society, so, too, had Ford wished to get a deeper sense of "mea culpa" from Nixon....something he really never got. As Werth points out, Ford's own relationship with his natural father and his peacemaking abilities he demonstrated between his father and mother almost certainly played a role in Ford's pardon. He simply wanted to do what was right for the good of the country and move on with life. However, as Werth points out in his epilogue, Ford's actions made things worse....it cost the Republicans massively in the midterm elections that fall and without a doubt contributed to Ford's narrow loss to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

There are one or two things which reminded me of how long ago 1974 seems, sometimes. One cannot even fathom today a Republican president choosing a moderate to liberal Republican like Nelson Rockefeller as his vice-president. To think as well that Democrats controlled the Congress in large numbers...many of their ranks coming from southern states. Werth makes some good parallels to the current administration, noting that Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were instrumental characters during the Ford years. And as if the author weren't prescient enough.... how alike the Bush White House is to Nixon's......two secretive administrations dealing with unpopular wars.

"31 Days" is a book I highly recommend....not only for the revelations of the behind-the-scenes White House activities of August, 1974, but the analogies to the current political climate in Washington today....analogies which seem to unfold on a weekly basis. Werth's book is a good lesson in history.

My first political job was in President Ford's White House in 1975. I went in at a very low level, and on my second day all the Nixon people quit. I had no idea what I was doing, however, people who did were brought in did, it was an open environment, and we did what we had to do. Fortunately, I wasn't in charge of national security.

This book is excellent. I have worked in many political jobs and around many politicians since President Ford. What he did for our country needs to recognized. It's time to do that. This book is an excellent start.

It reads like the show "24." I think then people around President Ford are written well. And it is like reading people's mind.

I do believe that if President Ford's first 31 days were dealing with the Nixon papers, the Nixon people, and the Nixon pardon --- among running the nation, run away inflation, and foreign policy. Thank you, Mr Werth, for reminding us that President Ford is responsible for Alan Greenspan.

I can remember the sigh of relief that everyone breathed when President Nixon resigned. Even jaded talk show hosts--here I'm thinking of WBZ's late Jerry Williams--called Jerry Ford, "a breath of fresh air" when he assumed office.

The book offers a fascinating look into the behind the scenes maneuvering that went on between the (relatively) Boy Scout-like Ford staff and the Nixon White House holdovers.

Yes, it is true that Ford made things much more difficult for himself when he pardoned Nixon. Still, it was a matter of putting his own political career and Republican aspirations aside for a larger consideration, that being the welfare of the country. Can you imagine someone doing that today with this being the age of Delay et al?

Nixon falls and we escalate Ford into the Presidency, after Agnew was knocked out of the picture as well. The brillance of our goverment and this book is that there were no tanks, no soldiers, no havoc. There was confusion and this book details how our goverment functioned during the most internal strife in the history of the Presidency that was not Assasination related. The author portrays Ford's intent to be a moral and strong leader very effectively. The book could have benefitted with some pictures from that period in time.

31 Days provides an in-depth account of the first thirty-one days of Gerald Ford's presidency, from the delivery of Richard Nixon's resignation letter to Henry Kissinger to Ford's controversial pardon of the former President. The book provides an insider's perspective on the developments in the White House and at Nixon's residence in San Clemente during this time, and concludes with a fascinating epilogue which traces the progress of key players in the Ford administration through the Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr. administrations right up to the present-day controversies surrounding the war in Iraq.

I found the book to be engaging for several reasons. First, the day-by-day presentation (thirty-one chapters, one for each day of the period covered) is an imaginative means of communicating the significant events during this time. Additionally, the "behind closed doors" dialogue of individuals whose interests were sometimes aligned and sometimes in conflict constructs a detailed picture of the challenges and uncertainties driving the actions of the major players in power at the time. Finally, the book's development of the political paths not only of Ford and Nixon, but of Reagan, Bush Sr., Rumsfeld, and Cheney generates an intriguing connection between today's political landscape and events which happened over thirty years ago.

31 Days is, for those of us who grew up during the period known as "The Watergate Era," a wondrous refresher on the perilous times of Summer 1974, when President Nixon was on the verge of impeachment and Vice President Ford was elevated to the presidency on Nixon's resignation. This period led to the only time in US history where both top officials of our government had not been chosen by voters in a national election.

I remember August 9, 1974 vividly. I was a junior at UCLA, and a Republican who had worked in the campaign of Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1970. (I remain a Republican today.) Nixon's gambit during a constitutional crisis came in a time when news and its analysis was slow to disseminate other than through the reporting of the "Big Three" networks and some responsible newspapers. (Me, I trusted Howard K. Smith and John Chancellor, even when they were at odds with one another.) I gave Nixon the benefit of the doubt, and, truth be told, despised his accusers, a bunch of radical, anti-nuke beards, until Senator Barry Goldwater decided against Nixon's alibis. Gerald R. Ford was inaugurated on August 9th, and told the country, "Our long national nightmare. . .is over." I liked Ford immediately, and do, to this day.

Werth has put together an outstanding book that will remind readers of "No Ordinary Time," Doris Kearns' magnificent history of the White House during World War II. Reason? Werth pieces together the most pertinent secondary sources-- Watergate histories, polemics, biographies, and autobiographies, news clips, court testimonies, etc.-- with some new interview material, then threads it all together to provide a credible, and unslanted, look at the 31 days between Nixon's resignation and Ford's unequivocal pardon of the 37th president following an agonizing thought process. ("Title" is one of the four essential elements of a best-selling book, you may know, and Werth and his editor have hit a home run here with "31 Days." Think "48 Hours" or "Seven Days in May," ad infinitum.)

Disclosure: I voted for Ford in 1976, and, as you might guess, for Reagan, in 1980 and 1984.

Now: there are several omissions which may have otherwise provided the lay reader (without knowledge of the tumult of Watergate) additional information. Werth could have credited William Ruckelshaus, a great public servant, with being the Deputy Attorney General who, in October 1973, as Elliot Richardson's second-in-command, refused to fire Archibald Cox and resigned, with Richardson, in the event popularly known as "The Saturday Night Massacre." Werth could have expounded more on the fate of John Connally, a dynamic man whose hubris led to his downfall-- and, more important, on Connally's lawyer, Edward Bennett Williams, who acquitted the former Treasury secretary after the timeline in this book, but to whom Nixon, in exile, famously told, "I wish you were MY lawyer!" (See Evan Thomas, "The Man to See"; Fireside, 1992).

But Werth more than makes up for these slight omissions by recalling the behind-the-scenes efforts of a young Antonin Scalia, then a junior justice department lawyer, and by revealing more of the Machiavellian, predatory behavior of America's Strangelove, Gen. Alexander Haig.

Go buy 31 Days, now. If you can't afford it, borrow it from your library or steal it from a friend's house. If you are over the age of 40, you will be gratified. If you are in college, in poli sci, or American History, you will enjoy it and marvel at the extremely good organization. There is not an ounce of laziness-- intellectual or otherwise-- in Werth's book. It will grip you. It will also save you the $2,000. or so I've spent over the years on Watergate-era books.

The problem of 31 Days is one of focus. Author Barry Werth assumes the task of writing a concise history of a small slice of time: the first month of Gerald Ford's presidency, which started with the resignation of Richard Nixon and ended with Ford's decision to grant a pardon to Nixon for any crimes he may have committed while in office. The history is given in a day-by-day account which really is the story of Ford coming to grips with the problem of reuniting a country and leading it past the largest political scandal of its history.

But this story is ill-confined within the chosen format. To understand the challenge faced by Ford, one must have context, and context includes a more than passing understanding of those events that shaped this era, including Vietnam, Watergate, and Middle-Eastern shuttle diplomacy to name just a few. Allowing the reader to understand these things and their significance requires that the author jump back and forth in time to fill in the crucial background. As a result, the daybook format becomes disjointed and garbled.

The problem of focus also inheres in the development of the book's subtitle: "The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today." Here, the author wants to tie the Ford presidency to the ascendance of the neocons, which he does principally by foreshadowing the rise of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. The problem is that these two characters are not significant to the core story of the book; their importance comes later in the Ford presidency. Cramming eight years of Reagan, eight years of Clinton and eight years of Jimmy Carter/George H. W. Bush into an eighteen-page Epilogue hardly justifies the book's subtitle - although the Epilogue does make for an interesting essay and potentially another, better book. One senses that of the many things that resulted in giving us The Government We Have Today, few of them actually happened in August and September of 1974.

Though flawed, the book is readable and entertaining. However it only partially conveys the spirit of the times, and for that we must look to more ambitious and less constrained histories of the period.

Barry Werth's 31 Days is an intriguing look at the first 31 days of Gerald Ford's presidency. The book intertwines a look at Richard Nixon, Watergate and how staffers such as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney would go on to help shape the political climate of today. Mr. Rumsfeld & Mr. Cheney are a very small part of the book (Cheney isn't really looked at all), but the overall tone foresees the Bush White House. Mr. Werth provides a short bio on Mr. Ford and how his decision to pardon Mr. Nixon essentially destroyed his re-election bid. Mr. Ford was the accidental president never being elected in a general election, but the ramifications of his short presidency set the stage for Reagan and the two Bushes.

This is a fantastic book and I really enjoyed learning about how big a deal Watergate really was. As a person born after Watergate, I really don't know as much as I should about it and its impact on our government. Also, I've always assumed that Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon was shady at best; however, after reading the book, I have a new found respect for Gerald Ford and the difficulties he faced in office - pardoning Nixon was no easy decision.

This is an account of the maneuvering within the Ford Administration between his inauguration on 8 Aug 1974 and the controversial pardon of his predecessor 31 days later. I felt Mr. Werth presented a balance and non-judgmental synopsis on a daily basis - for the first 31 chapters.

The main characters of this drama were President Ford, his staff, deposed President Nixon, his staff who went with him to California (primarily Ron Ziegler), his staff that stayed behind at the White House to participate in the transition (primarily Alexander Haig), and the lawyers -- both those representing Nixon and the special prosecutor. It becomes obvious to the reader the complexities surrounding Nixon's case. But prosecuting a former president and the impact that would have had on the country were issues that all sides were concerned about. Would it be fair to the Nixon aides who were to stand trial for following the orders of their boss who would stand trial? Was the nation prepared for additional months and maybe years of Watergate or should the nation just move on and put that unhappy event behind them?

President Ford had a difficult decision to make and the members of his administration were pulling him in different directions. I think for him -- and the book indicates the special prosecutor as well -- the issue was never really in doubt. At some point President Nixon would be spared. The bigger questions were when and how. Although the main scene was within the new Ford Administration, Mr. Werth also showed the actions going on within the former president's compound in California.

I remember well the outrage when President Ford made the announcement. Before the announcement things were looking up for the Republican Party in the November elections -- not that they would have picked up seats but they could have minimized their losses. Once the pardon was official whatever hopes the GOP had to minimize their losses were dashed. But I personally felt at the time -- and I was in the minority doing so -- that President Ford did the right thing. Now many historians concur that his ability to govern was being negatively affected until the fate of his predecessor was resolved once and for all.

The first 31 chapters -- each representing a day between Nixon's resignation and Nixon's pardon -- were straight forward without passing judgment. The Epilogue, however, was editorial. Mr. Werth sub-title of "The Crisis That Gave Us The Government We Have Today" overstates the significance of those 31 days. It is true that some of the power brokers of the George W. Bush Administration had roles in the early Ford Administration - mainly Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney. But Werth tries to draw a parallel that their roles in the Ford Administration somehow twisted and turned into the Bush Administration's policy toward the Mid-East - primarily Iraq - that Werth makes little effort to hide his disagreement with. To me, to equate the policies of George W. Bush in Iraq to something that happened thirty years earlier - granted some of the individuals were the same - is a stretch. After 31 chapters of solid reporting of the events of 1974 Werth's summation drifted too much into an editorial that was inconsistent with the rest of the book.

Another problem - and I had the same issue with another book I reviewed, Strange Bedfellows, an account of the less than optimum relationship between President Nixon and Vice President Agnew - is the lack of photos. Photos could add so much to the book and give a better feeling for the environment the players were operating in and, for that matter, who the players were. As with Strange Bedfellows, there were certainly many photo opportunities to supplement this book but Mr. Werth did not take advantage of them.

Werth's editorializing in the Epilogue, in my opinion, detracts from the book. But overlooking that and the absence of pictures, this is still an excellent book - for the first 31 chapters.