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At bottom, the decision to pardon Nixon was a political judgment properly within the bounds of Ford's constitutional authority. The specter of a former president in the criminal dock as our country moved into its bicentennial year was profoundly disturbing.

While I do not believe Ford was wrong to pardon Nixon, the timing of the pardon was premature and may have cost Ford the margin of victory in the 1976 election.

Gerald R. Ford was a decent and honorable man. Under his steady hand, the nation began the process of recovering from the terrible trauma of Watergate - the lies, distortions, cover-ups, misuses of federal agencies to exact political revenge, illegal wiretapping, burglaries.

In many ways when Jerry Ford pardoned Nixon, in a certain way, he did speak for the country.

President Gerald R. Ford was never one for second-guessing, but for many years after leaving office in 1977, he carried in his wallet a scrap of a 1915 Supreme Court ruling. 'A pardon,' the excerpt said, 'carries an imputation of guilt,' and acceptance of a pardon is 'a confession of it.'

When Richard M. Nixon resigned and Ford became the 38th president of the United States, the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office, of which I was a member, was preparing for the criminal trials of Nixon's top aides - H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell.

Nixon had some large achievements in foreign affairs. They will be remembered. But a president probably gets remembered for one thing, and Watergate will head the Nixon list, I suspect.

I believe that President Nixon was right in what he did at Watergate. Lack of respect for authority and things like socialism are turning this into a weak, effeminate country.

An attempt is already underway to revise history - to leave the impression that the former president had nothing to do with Watergate. But there is no doubt about his obstruction of justice after the Watergate break-in.

I contend that, in spite of all that might be said about Watergate, Richard Nixon was good for the poor people of America.