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THE SCIENCE OF GRACE #1
THERE’S ONLY ONE PRESIDENT
Time was running out for Bob . . . and he knew it.
There was only one person who could keep him out of prison, and he wasn’t
sure he could get through to his elusive benefactor.
He started off by calling Larry Higby, his former employee – just to feel
him out. What was the mood there in the EOB, or Old Executive Office Building?
And, lowering his voice, he dropped just the first hint. A presidential
pardon would sure be nice. Of course, Higby didn’t have any authority
to hand one out, even to his boss.
But Bob Haldeman was just getting started. Tuesday, August 6, he placed
a phone call to Alexander Haig, Richard Nixon’s new chief of staff. Of
course, that had been Haldeman’s old job – and the crew-cut ex-employee
knew that Haig had Nixon’s ear just as he had once had. Was a pardon possible,
he wanted to know. Haig thought that politically it was a bad idea but
promised to pursue it.
Wednesday, the 7th, the clock was really ticking now. Haldeman got with
his lawyer, Frank Strickler. The end was surely in sight, according to
all the networks and the mood on Capitol Hill. If Haldeman was going to
get a pardon, he’d better get it in writing right this minute. The document
got over to Haig at the White House, and he ran it by Barry Goldwater,
the conservative senator from Arizona. “I don’t think it would be wise,”
Goldwater said slowly. “But [Nixon] has the power, and if that is the
cost, so be it.” By now Goldwater was so anxious to get Nixon out of the
White House, he was willing to sign off on almost any deal.
So Haig, now really confused, got together with Leonard Garment, one of
Nixon’s personal lawyers. Could Nixon give his old friend a pardon? Was
it possible, here in these final moments of Watergate, for the President
to hand out “Get out of jail free” cards to his entire team of co-conspirators?
And Garment came completely unglued. No way, he said. Absolutely no way.
Quoting from the classic Woodward/Bernstein book, The Final Days:
“Totally out of the question. It would be grotesque.
Up to this point, [Nixon] has, oddly enough, worked within the system,
even though it is undoing him. Pardons would be outside the system. It
would be saying to hell with the system, with justice. It would bring
the roof down.”
Garment was so mad he could feel his entire body flushing
red. “It would be the single most devastating thing that could be contemplated.”
And you know, it finally came down to Thursday afternoon, August 8, 1974.
The very day Nixon went on television to resign . . . and Bob Haldeman
was still trying to get through the White House switchboard and pull strings.
At 4:18 that afternoon, he placed a call to the Oval Office, and was headed
off at the pass. Haig wouldn’t let the call go through. Later that night,
after the televised speech to a watching, shellshocked nation, as Nixon
was back in the White House residence with his family, stricken with grief,
Haldeman called again, still desperate for a last-minute, almost last-SECOND
pardon.
The call was rejected, and Bob Haldeman, former aide to the world’s most
powerful political leader, quietly accepted his fate and went to a minimum-security
prison where he served an 18-month jail term for his crimes.
Well, friend, it’s hard to believe that this tangled web was spun a good
thirty years ago. And there are a lot of spiritual lessons we’ve learned
over the years from that nine-letter word “Watergate.” As we begin an
extended radio study we’re entitling THE SCIENCE OF GRACE, this desperate
Bob Haldeman quest for a pardon comes into full view for sure. Because
here was a man who desired a clean slate. Forgiveness. He wished above
all things that his guilt should not be counted against him, that he should
receive unmerited favor. Put bluntly, he didn’t want to go to prison!
He deserved to; his deeds demanded that he be locked up. But he didn’t
want to go. And so he made the phone calls; he wrote out on a yellow legal
pad his “case” for clemency; he marshaled his arguments. Nothing would
have made him happier than to get a friendly dose of grace.
But the reason we kick off our radio adventure with this story is this:
there was only one place Haldeman could get grace: from President Richard
Nixon. Only the Chief Executive could hand it out.
The President’s lawyers couldn’t do it. Haldeman’s aide, Larry Higby,
certainly had no “standing” to give away a pardon. Haig had zero authority
on constitutional grounds. Vice President Ford couldn’t do it. Oh, 24
hours later, when he was sworn in, THEN he had the Presidential pen in
his hand. But here on August 8, there wasn’t any purpose to calling Ford.
Only Nixon enjoyed the privilege, the constitutional clout, provided for
in Article II, Section Two. With a simple signature, Richard M. Nixon
– and only Richard M. Nixon – had the power to grant reprieves and pardons
for offenses against the United States.
Not long ago, some of us here at the Voice of Prophecy were just blown
away by a great journal that came into our lives like a beacon of warm
light. It was a special edition of the Adventist Review, official weekly
journal in my denomination, prepared as a “Week of Prayer” series of readings
for 2003. And the magazine’s theme was this: “Overflowing Grace.” It contained
eight awesome, life-altering articles, all bathed in grace, for the blessing
of the entire church. And for these next few weeks, I’d like to invite
you to look through our church windows a bit and just let God’s grace
nurture and cleanse you as well as we study this most magnificent of heaven’s
gifts together.
The lead article, “Meaningful Grace,” written by our “General Conference”
President, Jan Paulsen, makes a powerful point immediately. Four words:
“Grace is from God.” Simple as that. If a man or woman needs grace, needs
forgiveness and undeserved love, then God is who and what they truly need.
Because God is the provider of grace. It is His thing, His creation, His
invention, His attribute, His character, His purpose.
Notice how Paul begins his letter to his Christian friends in Ephesus:
“Grace and peace to you FROM GOD our Father and the
Lord Jesus Christ.”
Six chapters later, at the close of this eloquent letter,
he finishes by wishing his friends peace, and love, and faith, and grace
– again “from God.” In the seventh verse of chapter two, Paul informs
us that:
“. . . In the coming age [God] might show the incomparable
riches of HIS GRACE, expressed in HIS kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
Now, friend, let’s think about this a little bit. Haldeman
could only get a pardon from one place: the man sitting behind the desk
in the Oval Office. Only the President could write out forgiveness on
a piece of paper and have it mean anything.
What about with us? Yes, there is a way where you and I express grace
and forgiveness to one another. We agree to overlook some things. We shake
hands and tell each other that such-and-such misdeed is forgiven. And
we should do that; that is a biblical thing. But the grace we share among
ourselves, sweet as it is, is really nothing more than an agreed-upon
attitude. It’s a kind of good mind game. But there is nothing cosmically
LEGAL about it. In terms of lasting effects, of punishment, of “standing”
in heaven’s courtrooms, our shared expressions of forgiveness among ourselves
are really just Christian courtesies.
But when a man or woman comes to God, to the source and author and provider
of grace, something very real happens. Your sins truly are washed away.
They are gone. They are no more. People within the faith, standing in
the mighty ocean of this grace, like to say: “It is as though you had
never sinned.”
It’s interesting that when President Gerald Ford decided to pardon his
predecessor, just about a month after Haldeman’s futile search for absolution,
he used this expression:
“Only I, as President, have the constitutional power
TO FIRMLY SHUT AND SEAL THIS BOOK.”
And as of that moment on Sunday, September 8, 1974,
something absolutely real happened in America. The heavy door of constitutional
power and authority was slammed shut. Nothing could open it. The bulwark
of forgiveness was as strong as America itself, because, friend, there
is nothing as mighty here in the United States as our constitution. Presidents
and armies and entire populations bow before it. And just one man, the
man with the power of the presidential seal, was able to forgive in a
way that gave a beaten and broken sinner named Richard Nixon absolute
assurance that he would never go to jail or be punished for his sins.
Interestingly, as Ford was doing research for this wrenching, difficult
executive decision, lawyer Benton Becker dug out a 1833 statement from
Chief Justice Marshall, calling a presidential pardon “AN ACT OF GRACE
. . . which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed, from the punishment
the law inflicts for a crime he has committed.”
So friend, if you and I are in need of an act of grace, and we want grace
that has some reality behind it, all of heaven’s cosmic authority – then
there’s only one place we can get it. The river of grace only flows from
one throne.
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