The Mating Dance Known as Presidential Pardons

From all signs, the Senate will engage in heated debate over Eric Holder's nomination for Attorney General because he served in the Clinton Justice Department at the time of the Rich pardon. Republicans intend to make this the focus of their deliberations. They should be careful not to push their agenda too strenuously lest they force the current president's hand in his own pardoning endeavors.

Making too much of an issue about the pardon process could also prove embarrassing for the Bush family. Jeb and Father Bush excused Cuban terrorists who apparently differ from other kinds of terrorists. While not pardoned, known terrorist Orlando Bosch was freed from prison and provided safe haven by the senior Bush. FBI and CIA prosecutions were dropped, requests for his extradition refused - - this for a man accused of many terrorist acts, including placing a bomb on a Cubana airliner that killed 73 passengers.

And then there were all those Iran-Contra-connected pardons the first President Bush granted - - Casper Weinberger. Elliot Abrams, Robert McFarlane to name just a few. The participation of these men in secretive dealings involving the Nicaraguan conflict has never been satisfactorily explored. Their pardons served to insulate them and the president who insisted that, although he was the vice president during the Reagan years, as far as Iran-Contra was concerned he was "out of the loop." And damned if Elliot Abrams didn't reappear in the current Bush administration.

Oh Well, that was then, this is now. What kinds of pardons will George Bush proffer on his way out the door of the White House? One of the criticisms of the Rich pardon is that, in addition to tax evasion and fraud, he was trading with Iran during the hostage crisis. Reagan just sent a bible. But in the ‘90s when Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton he directed the firm toward "aggressive business dealings with Iran in violation of US law... It was Halliburton's secret sale of centrifuges to Iran that helped get the uranium enrichment off the ground, according to a three-year investigation that includes interviews...with more than a dozen current and former Halliburton employees." (http://www.mondovista.com/ - article by Jason Leopold)

So will Bush grant pre-emptive pardons like President Ford did with Nixon? Will people like Cheney be excused for past or more recent excesses? What about former Attorney General Gonzales, still receiving intense scrutiny for his trashing of the Justice Department?  Will Scooter Libby be further gifted with a pardon in addition to his commuted sentence of which he served not one day?

We have become inured, well almost, to the president's garbled language and blatant misrepresentations - - from Iraq's non-existent WMDs, through Katrina's "heckuva job Brownie", to his final lap during which he assured us "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" as the country descended into a thoroughgoing recession. But how out of touch and tone-deaf must he be to have granted a pardon, in times such as these, to a scam-artist like Isaac Toussie whose real estate dealings proved so ruinous to so many?

In revoking the pardon two reasons given were that 1.the Pardon Attorney has not provided a recommendation in the case because it was filed less than five years from completion of his sentence and 2. Toussie's father had contributed to the Republican National Committee. (NY Times 12/27/08 article by Sewell Chan and Ray Rivera) But what is most remarkable, given the country's mortgage scandals and the financial crisis they have engendered, is that the president would even consider pardoning someone whose fraudulent activities in the housing market led to his original conviction.

Intent on polishing his tarnished record, the president is working feverishly to gild his legacy. Wife Laura has even come out to assure everyone that her husband is "not a failure", vaguely reminiscent of Nixon's claim that "your president is not a crook." The years have not been kind to Nixon, and it is hard to imagine they will embellish the failed policies of the Bush years.

Undoubtedly, Republicans will employ intense partisan maneuvering during the Holder hearings. In the meantime, the president-in-residence will either dispense his pardons in a dignified manner or behave with the same arrogant disregard for honorable conduct that has been the hallmark of his presidency and something of a tradition in his family.