Candace

Talmadge

Read Candace's bio and previous columns

December 26, 2008

Pardon Us, Mr. President!

Will you or won’t you? Issue pardons, that is.

With the New Year upon us, prognostication runs rampant over the likelihood that you, George W. Bush, just before vacating the presidency, will pardon your entire administration, including you.

Go ahead, Mr. President. Make our day. Pardon yourself and every one of your cronies in crime, too. Forget the howls of indignant protests or the congressional resolutions. The president’s power to pardon is both wide-ranging and constitutional. Small wonder you have used this power so sparingly to date. You always did prefer to throw your weight around in an unconstitutional, illegal manner.

Let us assume, then, that you issue those last-minute get-out-of-jail-free cards. Your vice president’s admission to ABC News that he knew about and supported the use of waterboarding for interrogations is a good indication that you plan to spread those pardons around oh-so liberally (pardon the expression). After all, in the past this country prosecuted people for using waterboarding and sentenced those so convicted to death. Waterboarding is torture.

In doing so, you and yours get a pass, of course, but you also free the remaining grownups to look in earnest into the countless ways you and your feckless administration bollixed up everything you touched or attempted, all the while trashing the Constitution and drowning the federal budget in an ocean of red ink.

Across-the-board pardons might just lend some muscle to the resolve of congressional invertebrates, who to date have refused to consider actual prosecutions, much less something like impeachment. (Apparently we now reserve impeachment only for misdemeanor sexual misconduct, not for actual high crimes.)

And while we’re about all this fact-finding, maybe we can also trace the whereabouts of some of the endless money ($10 trillion, at the latest estimate) you and your retainers squandered doing your worst. We want and need to dig up all the skeletons so we know precisely what to watch for next time. Perhaps, if we give your filthy laundry a thorough airing, there will not be a next time.

The best part of a presidential pardon en masse? Your political party will not get much traction posing as victims of presumed partisan vendettas, because the point of any post-pardon probes will be purely educational, not prosecutorial.

The truth may set us free, but in this case, it more than likely will also make us gag in disgust.

Just imagine. The likes of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Douglas Feith, Joshua Bolten, John Bolton, Richard Perle, Harriet Miers, John Yoo, etc. having to sit before the Senate and sing like canaries, no longer able to plead the Fifth because they won’t be prosecuted for what they reveal. Of course, if they lie under oath, they can be prosecuted for perjury and you won’t be in a position to commute their jail time the way you favored I. Lewis Libby. Poor dears.

And while you pardon felons around every corner, we will keep Karla Faye Tucker in mind. Surely you remember her – the Texas convict put to death in 1998 while you were governor for violent murders she committed as a young woman strung out on drugs. While awaiting her date with the state’s grim reaper, Tucker became a Christian and a model prisoner, inspiring other inmates.

Political leaders worldwide, including members of the Christian right, begged you to commute Tucker’s sentence to life in prison. You did not. Mercy truly is not your strong suit, except when it comes to caring for your own. Not long after Tucker was executed, you instead made fun of her, appalling a conservative commentator who witnessed your mockery and told the world about it.

Even with Secret Service protection, however, you (and your cohorts) had best not count on much foreign travel for the rest of your days. Other countries might not be so charitably inclined, they have long memories, and they might decide to do something far worse than throwing a couple of shoes at you.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column #CT133. Request permission to publish here.