I demand that Bush get it over with and Pardon Scooter Libby TODAY.
I had a queasy and sickening feeling in my gut when I heard the news that Bush had commuted Scooter Libby’s sentence. Maybe part of it was that I had simply not eaten dinner yet. But it was this feeling that goes beyond my loathing of the George Bush presidency and the basic piling up of one item after another.
There is something off with the American political system. It cannot seem to handle and sort out and destroy Pure BS. I say this thinking that I need to pull together some Nixon era and Watergate era material for a future post regarding The Weary. The writing was on the wall when every one of the Republican presidential candidates said that Scooter Libby ought be pardoned, chief cheerleader being Fred Thompson, the better to pander to a narrow part of the Republican base — the 29 percent of the American voters who support Bush. The writing was on the wall when Lawyers of the Right, including would be Supreme Court Justice Bork, mind you, defended Scooter Libby. The writing was further on the wall when the David Broders of the world waxed on the pleasantness of Scooter Libby personally. Or if you go further into the Movement Conservative ranks, the storyline that the National Review and the Weekly Standard and Fox News commentators have which flips the entire course of events on its head.
I have a reaction is “OH, COME ON!” Once upon a time I mocked the oh-so-sensible and serious Joseph Biden for giving a statement like that to one of the Bush Administration’s perfidies, but it dawns on me where Biden is coming from. To react in proper order to the Bush Administration is to come out with drastic measures that will slide you into the role of fierce partisan. It is the Flaw of the American system, why anybody seeking the Republican Nomination has to have that funny-vision view of Libby as Victim, and why if I stick around long enough someone might throw the example of my low opinion of Joseph Lieberman as hypocrisy, which adds to this weariness.
It is one more item of a barrel of insults, in its truest essence an item of “Obstruction of Justice”, the continued blocking of Fitzgerald’s vision of that game he is umpiring, commuted so that he will be pardoned when Bush gets ready to leave office. Frankly, seeing as how Bush is at his low ebb in public esteem, and has nothing much to lose really, I think Bush oughta go ahead and Pardon Scooter Libby today.
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:29 am
Like all good liberals you’re a day late and a dollar short.
Besides, Libby was just a regular paper-pusher in the White House. He didn’t occupy any political office and he was not guilty of any real crime. He should have cooperated from the start – but would you or I be so easy to cooperate with a power-hungry over barring Congress?
Sorry, but Bush pardoning a regular person doesn’t compare with Clinton’s pardons back in 2001 of real criminals – most of which were guilty of financial crimes like income tax evasion, fraud, theft, distribution of meth., – even armed robbery.
Prisons should be occupied by people whose crimes have had a detrimental impact on others – especially when violence or the threat of violence has occurred. Leave the others out.
July 3rd, 2007 at 10:02 am
You’ve proven my central point, the basic breakdown of our system of discourse. Who cares and for what reason am I supposed to drag myself to the 17th Greatest President in American history?
Actually, if you look at that list of day of exiting pardons for Clinton — Marc Rich and Pincus Green roll around with a shrug, as the name Roger Clinton is a tad bit more entertaining. (You do know the policy decision that is beating in the background for why “all good liberals” are where they are at with this, don’t you?)
In terms of purely political siding into straight lines into the two camps, Susan McDougal might be the more apt comparison with Scooter Libby for cause celebres.
But, for the sake of bemusement, please elucidate me on the reasonings for George Herbert Walker Bush’s pardons, and compare and contrast with Bill Clinton’s.