The White House recently announced that President Bush issued pardons to 16 individuals. Their offenses included bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the government, possession of marijuana and cocaine, and mail fraud. During his first term, Mr. Bush issued a mere 31 pardons and commutations. To date he’s issued 113 pardons and three commutations. That’s less than any two-term president in the modern era. In fact, you have to go back to George Washington to find a president who served two-terms and made fewer acts of clemency.
The president’s power to grant pardons was clearly enshrined in the United States Constitution, Article II, Section 2: “The President…shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” Although the Framers of the Constitution debated clemency, it was not viewed as a controversial idea. There was some debate over making presidential pardons subject to the consent of the Senate, though this was quickly rejected.
As the Founding Fathers were hammering out the details of the Constitution in Philadelphia, they seem to have essentially agreed that the privilege to exercise mercy, on which the power to issue pardons was founded, could be most easily granted by a single person, rather than a legislative body or even judges. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist Number 74, wrote “… one man appears to be a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of the government than a body of men.”
Over the years, presidents have issued pardons to and commuted the sentences of a motley band of crooks, criminals, and scoundrels. President George Washington gave amnesty to the instigators of the Whiskey Rebellion, while President Johnson did the same for Confederate rebels. President Harding pardoned fiery Socialist labor leader and convicted felon Eugene V. Debs. President Nixon issued a commutation to organized crime figure Jimmy Hoffa, only to be pardoned himself by President Ford following the Watergate fiasco.
President Carter gave amnesty to the Vietnam War draft resisters, and commuted the sentence of bank robber Patty Hearst. President Reagan issued a pardon to George Steinbrenner of the New York Yankees for illegal campaign contributions he made in the 1960s. President George Bush, Sr. pardoned Iran Contra scandal figure Caspar Weinberger. President Clinton infamously pardoned fugitive financier Mark Rich, whose wife had been a major contributor to the Democratic National Committee.
Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the most pardons and commutations of any president. Over the course of his four terms, he issued 3,687. By contrast, George Washington issued the least, only 16. Two presidents in American history, William Henry Harrison and James Garfield, chose not to use their power to pardon.
President Bush is now notable for issuing so few pardons and commutations. In comparison to his current record of 116, Mr. Clinton issued 456 during his two terms. Mr. Reagan issued 406. Mr. Eisenhower issued 1,157, while Mr. Truman issued 2,044 acts of clemency.
During his time as Governor of Texas, Mr. Bush issued fewer pardons than any other Governor in Texas since the 1940s. He issued only 16, compared to 70 for Ann Richards, his immediate predecessor. When questioned about his low number of pardons in an interview with the Star-Telegram newspaper, then Governor Bush suggested that it had less to do with any particular political philosophy and more to do with his experience with one pardon he issued. He pardoned an individual in 1995 for a marijuana conviction, and a few months later the individual was arrested for cocaine possession.
Today, it’s hard to think of President Bush apart from his political philosophy of “Compassionate Conservatism.” After all, he went out of his way to promote the concept. Given that the Founding Fathers gave the presidency the power to pardon as a means of demonstrating the government’s mercy, you would think that President Bush would make good use of it. While it’s difficult to think of compassion in numerical terms, issuing a paltry 116 pardons and commutations doesn’t seem very compassionate.
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December 29, 2006 Gene C. Gerard taught history, religion, and ethics for 14 years at several colleges in the Southwest, and is a contributing author to the forthcoming book “Americans at War,” by Greenwood Press. He writes a political blog for the world news website OrbStandard at www.orbstandard.com/GGerard e-mail: genecgerard@comcast.net and genecgerard@yahoo.com
