Good Intentions

 

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

Baby, can you understand me now?
Sometimes I get a little mad
Don't you know, no one alive can always be an angel
When things go wrong, I seem to go bad
 I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood 

The problem is that the road to hell is paved with good intentions! 

If you could change one historical event in your lifetime, what would it be? Mine would be Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon. Do I believe that the pardon was done with the best of intentions.  It was Gerald Ford after all, and I personally believe that he had ONLY good intentions. The spectacle of a criminal trial would be devastating to everyone in the  United States. Take the fascination with the  OJ Simpson trial and then go nuclear. That is just the general public who are not invested in the outcome of the trial. The fight put up by Richard Nixon and his allies would have also been epic, costly, and damaging. A consequence of the pardon is that the spectacle and fight did not take place. However it also meant that crimes committed by a President while in power were never tried and possibly punished. If there was no pardon of Richard Nixon, then maybe there would have been no Ronald Reagan presidency, no George Bush presidency, no Donald Trump presidency, and no partisan Supreme Court to grant an opinion of presidential immunity to Donald Trump. It might have been with good intentions at the time, but 50 years later, boy was it misunderstood.