They don’t need pardoning anyway. They didn’t do anything wrong. Make those currently in power face up to that fact.
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They don’t need pardoning anyway. They didn’t do anything wrong. Make those currently in power face up to that fact.
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If President Bush holds these officials to be innocent of wrong doing, he has, I believe, a responsibilty to use his constitutional power to protect them from the very real, if unlikely, possibility of lawsuits, especially when considering the effects on national security operatives these lawsuits are likely to have. To leave the ‘fate’ of these officials to the political calculations of the incoming administration seems cynical.
We may have reached a point in American political history where to have a well  functioning security apparatus these pardons need to be the norm, with the President, who cannot be pardoned, inheriting responsibilty for wrongdoing allowed by administrative neglegence under his administration.
I have enormous sympathy for those under the gun being wrongly persecuted.
However, there is a bad precedent set if Presidents make a habit of simply pardoning everyone in their administration as their last official act. If that becomes acceptable–and it started under George H.W. Bush, continued with Clinton, and now if it repeats under George W. it will be a definite precedent-cementing trend–then what we set up for the future is the idea that future Presidents can encourage all sorts of blatantly illegal behavior with the promise (now unstated, but in the future possibly openly stated) that any wrongdoing will be pardoned.
Refusing to issue pardons will make the party taking power in the White House have to make some very hard, and very adult, choices. They’ll have to openly face the possibility that they’ve maligned good people and should avoid doing that in the future. They’ll have to consider what might happen to their own people now or in the future.
The ideal here, frankly, should be that President Bush refuses any last-minute blanket pardons, and leaves it for President Obama to decide–and for President Obama to stop the madness by issuing the pardons himself. Which, being a basically decent man, I suspect he would. Underneath the cold cynical calculating and at times dishonest Obama is, I think, a genuinely decent man.
Or let’s drop the whole pretense, go ahead with the investigations, and let the chips fall where they may. If these people really committed crimes that a jury would convict on, then fine. If not, they’ll be exhonerated, and won’t spend the rest of their lives feeling like criminals who just got a "Get out of jail free" card from their old boss.
And maybe the insanity will abate.
That said, I’d have to swallow hard were I the President, because on the one hand I’d be cementing a bad precedent ("just pardon everyone at the end of your administration and don’t worry about the law for now"), on the other, I’d be leaving good people hanging out to dry. As President I’d be psychically and spiritually hurt by not protecting my people, but I’d have to think about the good of the country first.
Alas, Bush like us all has strengths and weaknesses. One trait that’s a little of both is a fierce loyalty to those who work with him. So he’ll probably issue the pardons. I think that’s probably bad for the future of the country, but it’s probably what he’ll do.
Bush shouldn’t grant pardons because it would be seen by the public as admitting guilt. The public will not stand for a gov’t that appears to openly condone criminal activity by said gov’t. The message would be clear: "What accountability? We’ll do whatever the hell we want and you’ll like it."
Obama shouldn’t try to prosecute because it would be seen by the public as criminalizing policy differences. Likewise the public will not stand for a gov’t that openly condones political imprisonment. The message would be clear: "It is a criminal offense to disagree with Obama."
Both would be a nail in the coffin of democracy.
Hopefully, niether one of the two are so stupid as to want either scenario to happen.
Yeah. I’m really hoping that’s how it goes down, Yu-Ain. It’s the way it SHOULD go down.
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