No. After Nixon resigned as President, his Vice President, Ford, became President. A month into his presidency, Ford pardoned Nixon.
The reason I used the word “attempt” is because I was referring to what I feel would have been the correct response, which is to not permit such an abuse of power.
Ford was never Nixon’s running mate, so that weakens your argument significantly.
You know what I mean. He was Nixon’s Vice President.
An alternative would be turn the U.K. into a republic, but that would require rather more legislative work, and more consultation with the Commonwealth realms that have H.M. as their monarch.
Since when has ‘mental defect’ or even being a latent serial killer been incompatible with ruling an empire?
Yeah, I’ve been watching “The Tudors” on BBC America.
I seem to recall that England (not the UK) kinda-sorta tried that, a while back. It didn’t work too well as such, and they switched to a limited monarchy system.
There’s been more experience with republics in the last 350 years, including new ideas on how to choose the head of state. (Richard Cromwell seems to have become head of state simply because he was the previous Lord Protector’s son – that sort of thing happens in dictatorships like North Korea these days, with democracies using recent innovations like elections to choose the president.)
Tangential question: how do our fellow Brit Dopers actually feel about the monarchy? Do the majority of British people view it as absurd, a treasured tradition, with ambivalence, etc?
It really doesn’t impinge very much on most people’s lives. There’ll be a fringe of people with strong views either pro- or anti-monarchy, but it’s not a pressing concern amongst the people I know (anecdotal, I know, but couldn’t find a survey with a cursory search). The current Queen has been there for nearly 60 years, she’s part of the national furniture.
Most people, including me, are quite happy with the current Queen acting as our figurehead. Mainly because she behaves herself and is diplomatically adept (well, you’d have to be with Phil the Greek for a husband.)
I don’t think there is any popular push for unseating the monarchy as long they keep up Lizzy II’s example and continue to be of net financial benefit to the country.
Unfortunately, next in line is Charles. That may tip the balance if he isn’t very careful.
And I say all of this as a republican at heart.
Yes, but he became Nixon’s VP only after the resignation of Spiro Agnew.
Agnew resigned in October 1973, well after the Watergate break-ins were committed and well after Nixon’s cover-up attempts were in full swing. Ford was nominated to the vacant spot and confirmed by the Congress. There is no reasonable way to say that Nixon’s crimes were committed for Ford’s benefit; he had nothing to do with them. They were never running mates, nor were they particularly considered allies. Ford was House Minority Leader, and as the then-new 25th Amendment gave the President the right to nominate a replacement to a vacant VP slot, the nomination had to be confirmed by Congress:
But the crimes weren’t committed for Ford’s benefit - they were conducted for the benefit of Nixon-Agnew. As a matter of fact Nixon was curiously uninterested in congressional elections in 1972. He raised massive amounts of money for his own reelection and engineered a massive landslide victory, but the Republicans lost two Senate seats and gained only twelve seats in the House.
Nixon had no coattails. And when Gerald Ford was appointed Vice-President in 1973 he came from the House leadership.
Different people, different views. I’m perfectly happy with it.
That’s perfectly expressed!
Fight my ignorance: how does the Queen/the monarchy manage to be a net financial benefit to the country? Does the royal family have all its own money or do they have access to the treasury at will…how does that work?
I kinda figured it was along these lines.
I’m married to a UK citizen, and lived there for some time. He and his family and our neighbours talked about the monarchy the way we talk about, well, anything from parking meters to sales tax to the mayor: they grumbled about it here and there, made some jokes, and generally didn’t think about it at all. I knew more people with strong pro- or anti-monarchy opinions when I lived in western Canada. I mean, not only is the monarchy just part of the fabric of the UK, but Lizzy’s been around so long that most people have never known the country without her. It will probably come as no surprise to you that Charles is regarded as a bit of a dolt, and presumably people will not be so fond of him as King as they were of his mother as Queen, but since the Queen appears to be bionic, his reign may be pretty short. The well-liked Prince William and his pretty, middle-class wife may weigh the balance back to the good side when Wills ends up King.
There was a long thread on this not that long back, IIRC, but I can’t be bothered to try and find it - so here goes:
The Queen gets an annual budget from the Civil List (which is our taxes); with that, HRM Incorporated is financed, with her effectively as CEO. The Royal Family then use that to do their jobs, pay staff, all that sort of stuff.
In exchange for that budget, we (the taxpayers) get the income from her estates etc. - which comes to far more. Plus there’s the (unquantified) tourism revenue which comes into the country.
It’s worth a quick search for the other thread, because there were figures in there which were quite interesting.
Interesting, thank you. How long has that situation existed? The monarch being the CEO of what is essentially a corporation whose shareholders are the people has to be a fairly recent development.
And if she takes a foriegn nobleman prisoner in battle I believe she gets to keep the ransom.
At least, that was true in the 14th century.
The corporation thing was just an analogy, but looking it up, it actually is a statutory corporation!
There’s info on the civil list here:
Seems it originated in 1697; and that it will be abolished in 2013 in favour of a new Sovereign Support Grant linked to a portion of the revenue of the Crown Estate.
It is £7,900,000 annually; and in exchange for that the Crown Estate revenues which go to the taxpayer are around £190 million for HM Treasury every year.
Pretty good deal, really.
(Dammit, you made me go and look stuff up!)
For context, this is loosely after the Restoration, after we’d been a republic for some years following our Civil War, and decided that actually we wanted take-backsies. And then more revolution happened. Basically it was a time when the whole monarchy business was pretty in flux.