This is exactly what I want to happen, but the way it is now the closest “short order” we can manage is two years until the next Congressional election. Nobody stays outraged at the party of a candidate who hasn’t been in office for two years enough to make that matter.
Then the subject isn’t terribly important then, is it? Hell, it’s more than 30 years since Roe v. Wade and that decision still gets folks excited on both sides.
Not everything that is important remains critically relevant. If I pardon a white collar criminal friend of mine who was blatantly guilty and received a fair sentence, are you going be pissed off about my blatant misuse of power? Likely. Would you do something about it if you had immediate redress? Likely. Two years later would it still annoy you enough that you would punish others in my political party for it? Probably not.
Roe v. Wade is still important because it affects how people live their daily lives and is likely to be changed or modified.
You don’t punish someone for doing something wrong only if enough people remain angry about it 30 years later. Letting the president avoid the only castigation available for his pardons would be like saying speeding tickets are only prosecuted two to four years after the crime and only if there were no bigger crimes committed since then.
No. But if the decision pisses enough people off, that will persist. And lets keep in mind that rather blatant acts of corruption like the selling of pardons in the Blanton case could still be prosecuted regardless of the inherent powers of the executive.
Of course illegal activities can still be curtailed.
For something to last a full two years and still remain a political liability for people other than the one who actually committed it, it would have to be, as was mentioned in another thread, the equivalent of pardoning Hitler.
Let us break this down into three smaller arguments as I think we have a lot of common ground.
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The proper control on the use of Presidential pardons is from the electorate, not from the other branches of government. I think we both agree on that.
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It would be better if the law existed in such a way that the President and his party would be held immediately responsible for the act rather than the existing two year wait for elections affecting his party and almost none for him (as he is leaving office). I think you may agree to this with some caveats.
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The law should be changed to accomplish that. I do not think you think it is worthwhile enough to make the change.
How do you feel on these points?
But your proposal would be that only presidents seeking a second term would have the power to pardon, and then only in their first term, and then only before election day?
At that point, why not just eliminate the pardon?
Let’s think of some of the pardons that pissed people off the most, shall we?
First of all, we have the Libby commutation. Now, whatever political effects it might have, I think you will agree that they will happen soon, right? The primaries aren’t very far away at all.
Secondly, the Nixon pardon. Now, Ford could not wait until 1976 to issue it, given the legal proceedings against Nixon at the time and Nixon’s precarious health. This had immediate and horrendous effects on the Republicans in the 1974 congressional elections.
The Clinton pardons did not turn out to have lasting political effects for the Democrats, though it remains to be seen whether they will resurface as an issue for Hillary.
If you have some others, I would love to hear them. But the fact is that most pardons aren’t terribly controversial, and what controversy they gin up is pretty transitory. Furthermore, it seems that many of the more controversial ones are not saved for the lame duck period, at least not historically.
I don’t see this worthy of tampering around with constitutional prerogatives of the executive.
No. There are only two times when the President’s pardon power would be restricted.
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Between one week prior to the Presidential election and the tally of the vote. No Pardons at all here, though he can suspend a sentence until this brief (only about a week) period elapses to take care of emergencies.
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Between the election of a new President and his taking the oath of office. During this (about two month long) period the sitting President would need some other confirmation of the pardon, possibly by the president-elect.
So, a one term President would have restrictions for about two months and a week (about 4.5% of his time in office), and a two term President would have restrictions for about two months and two weeks (about 2.5% of his time in office). Not that significant amount of time chronologically, but quite significant politically.
Yep. Bush had to do something immediately to keep Libby out of jail, yet he still did not give Libby a full pardon. He knew it was wrong and he knows we think it is wrong, therefore he can’t do it now. What would stop him from doing so a week before he leaves office though?
That is my point. If someone is going to do this, they should have to face the consequences.
Two points with this. First, I think a lot of the reason they did not have an effect is due to the timing, which is exactly what I am trying amend. Secondly, I think people put a lot less emphasis on these things when there is little or no course of retribution. When a President does this while leaving office he is already old news and it gets glossed over. I think if he pardoned exactly the same people in the middle of his term that the country would have been much more up in arms.
It is like the White House releasing bad news on a Friday or Saturday so that by the time the new week comes along and people are watching the news again it has already blown over. They do it because they know the political effect of something is critically linked to its timing.
This is why I brought up those the three points in an earlier post. I know you don’t think it is worth doing, either because of precedent or potentially unforeseen consequences, which though you have mentioned several times you have yet to elaborate upon, but not considering the difficulties of making it happen, do you think the idea itself has merit?
Someone out in blogland (can’t remember who, alas) had a better idea, which I’ll refine as follows: the Presidential pardon authority shouldn’t apply to acts committed by Executive Branch political appointees in the course of their jobs. That power could be handed over to the Senate, preferably by some sort of supermajority. (I’d settle for 60 votes.)
This would require a Constitutional amendment, of course, but it would be worth a shot, IMHO.
That is a good idea, but does not address the same problem as we are talking about here.
But whatever anger the Henry Cisneros and John Deutch pardons engendered, plus the numberless other controversial eleventh-hour Clinton pardons, I recall few calls to “reform” this process then.
Weren’t Cisneros and Deutch part of the Clinton administration? And if so, why wasn’t this “reform” a high priority then?
I think this is just another Beltway slapfest, sadly. And your side has a red face and a red palm both.
You’re right - I don’t either.
What this leads me to believe is that, whatever the problems with those individual pardons, neither side saw them raising an issue that questioned the validity of Presidential pardons themselves.
Or it could be that I see a problem with a President’s ability to give a get-out-of-jail-free card to those who might otherwise be tempted to testify against his closest aides, and possibly the President himself.
With the possible exception of the pardons of Caspar Weinberger et al. by the current President’s father, I don’t recall an instance where the Presidential pardon power was used in this manner in modern times.
I might add the obvious fact that a limitation on Presidential pardoning power would apply to future pardons, not past ones. If it makes you unhappy that my proposed reform would prevent a future President from pardoning subordinates in the manner that Clinton pardoned Cisneros and Deutsch (which it would), I’d be delighted if you’d expand on that somewhat.
My guess, though I cannot be sure, is political advantage. What political benefit is there in railing against a President who is already out of office when your guy just got in? You are stealing the attention away from him, you have nothing to gain from beating down the ex-President, and you would be taking away a power that will next be available for use by you. All highly partisan reasons.
I think that this is a major reason we don’t see too much outrage at these last minute pardons. The guy to be outraged against is already gone and the new guy is making news. Without someone to blame and take vengeance on the story dies. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t wrong.
Come now. You really aren’t serious, are you?
Susan McDougal was pardoned by Bill Clinton, and among her crimes was civil contempt of court (federal) for refusing to testify in the Whitewater investigation.
Slap slap slap.
I am.
From Wikipedia:
So as odd as it may seem to you, I don’t see how Clinton used his pardon power in the McDougal case as a means of giving a get-out-of-jail-free card to give McDougal reason not to testify against him.
Yeah, you do seem a bit slap-happy. 
Now, if you’ve had your fun, maybe you would care to address my proposed amendment on its merits.
Bill Clinton wasn’t guilty of anything in the Whitewater inquistion. The contempt charges against Susan McDougal were lodged by a corrupt and unethical prosecutor who was incensed that she refused to lie for him in his faked up case against Bill Clinton. Ken Starr’s MO was to go after the Clintons’ friends for income tax infractions and then use those convictions as leverage to get them to say what he wanted them to say about Whitewater. Susan McDougal refused to play ball. She went to jail because she refused to lie under oath. This is not the same thing at ALL. Susan McDougal was an innocent bystander who had her life destroyed by a psychopathic political zealot bent on destroying a President who got more pussy than he did. Libby had a sentence commuted to protect the most corrupt White House in modern history (W makes Nixon look like Carter) from public exposure and investigation, not for debunked allegations about some obscure land deal in the 70’s, but for the spiteful outing of an undercover intelligence agent as a reprisal for her husband having exposed a blatant lie told by the President as part of an attempt to justify the unprovoked and illegal invasion of another sovereign nation.
These cases are not remotely comparable. Bush Sr.'s last second pardons of anyone who could implicate him in Iran-Contra are much more on point.
A prosecutor can’t send someone to jail for contempt of court. A judge does that. Ken Starr didn’t sent McDougal to jail for contempt of court, for “refusing to lie”.
She didn’t refuse to lie, she refused to testify.
Whether Ken Starr was a deranged prosecutor or not, she had an obligation to testify and an obligation to tell the truth. You don’t face contempt charges just because you don’t testify the way the prosecutor wants you to testify.
I guess if you start out wanting there to be a difference between what Bush is doing here and what other presidents have done, then you can easily find differences. After all, no one has pardoned anyone named “Scooter” before, so there’s a difference right there!
Edit: Commuted the sentence of, not “pardoned”.