They were all relatively anonymous bit players, many who had been swept up in the Whitewater net, a damaging episode for all involved, democrat and Republican alike. Most knew none of those folks by name before, and so there are few surprises in the blase reaction to their pardons. Ken Starr’s excesses leant a legitimacy to Clinton’s, to some extent, even when some of the pardoned had nothing to do with any of it.
If Libby were convicted and pardoned, I doubt many would raise much of a fuss. Rove is a much more important, well-known, and divisive character. He’s “Bush’s brain”, after all, a policymaker as well as a strategist, a man with unprecedented influence and access for a deputy Chief of Staff. His contributions to the current success of the Republican Party are inestimable. A Rove pardon would be, I think, in a far different class than the Clinton pardons.