1) Maybe he says matter-of-factly in his first press conference that he is leaning toward pardoning Nixon but has not made his final decision. That way it's not such a shock.
2) Ford and Brezhnev did meet in Vladivostok in the western Soviet Union in Nov. '74 for a SALT II treaty. In part, this was derailed by the requirement that treaties be approved in the Senate by a damn two-thirds majority. That's part of the Constitution, one of several parts I might disagree with, well, so be it. All the same, President Ford may have done a better job of selling this to the American people as moving forward with peace, being a beacon of freedom, and anything but appeasement.
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your ideas please . . .