Does outrage over Libby have an outlet?

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - The spectacular pardon or reprieve has become a reliable end-of-presidency event. As he was about to leave office in 1992, George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and other officials convicted in the Iran-contra affair.

Six years ago, during his final hours in the White House, Bill Clinton pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich, whose ex-wife Denise had given generously to Clinton’s campaigns and to his presidential library.

The most famous case, President Ford’s pardon of former President Nixon, was a presidency-ending event in another sense — it led directly to Ford’s defeat in the 1976 election.

President Bush’s commutation of the 30-month prison sentence of former vice presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby fit the pattern set by his predecessors.

And the reaction to these acts of clemency had a familiar ring.

Compare “the arrogance of this administration's disdain for the law and its belief it operates with impunity are breathtaking” to the statement that the president “will never live down the arrogance of his final departure.”

MSNBC video Bush commutes Libby’s sentence July 2:  President Bush commuted the prison sentence of former Cheney aide Scooter Libby.  Tucker Carlson talks with MSNBC’s David Shuster about Bush’s decision.  Situation

'Arrogance' then and now
The first “arrogance” quote came Monday from Democratic presidential contender Bill Richardson. The second quote came from Jim Webb, now the Democratic senator from Virginia, criticizing Clinton’s pardon of Rich in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal in 2001.

On Monday, Democratic presidential contender Sen. Joe Biden called on “all Americans to flood the White House with phone calls tomorrow expressing their outrage over this blatant disregard for the rule of law.”

Flooding the switchboards with outrage did seem to work last week in persuading senators to kill the immigration bill that Bush supported.

But in the Libby case, the deed, now done, can not be undone. The Constitution allows Congress no remedy, no repeal of a presidential pardon or commutation.

After Ford pardoned Nixon, then-Sen. Walter Mondale, D-Minn., proposed an amendment to the Constitution that would have allowed a pardon to be over-ridden by a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate.

Some in Congress revived that idea in 2001 after Clinton’s pardon of Rich and others. But in a week or two the fury subsided and the idea was forgotten.

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