Would Bush Pardon Clinton?

Just before Christmas is historically the time when presidents use the exclusive power the Constitution grants them to wave a magic fountain pen of forgiveness.

Pardon applications from an intriguing handful of hopefuls reside in the Oval Office in-box, including headliners such as Michael Milken, the former junk-bond king, and Whitewater buddies of the president and first lady, Webster Hubbell and Susan McDougal.

None, though, is of such blockbuster political significance as a theoretically possible pardon of Bill Clinton, after he leaves office Jan. 20, by – and this may be hard to envision – his successor, George W. Bush.

Despite Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives, he has been convicted of no crimes – at least not yet – and there is that possibility hanging over him as he goes forth to become just another private citizen.

But the precedent of presidential pardons for whatever laws ex-presidents may have violated is well established.

President Gerald Ford gave such an open-end pardon retroactively to resigned-President Richard M. Nixon, who hadn't been convicted of anything, either, but was well on his way to certain impeachment and removal from office for his role in the Watergate burglary and cover-up.

The haunting questions hanging in the air as Clinton goes about deciding thumbs up or thumbs down for those on his maybe-pardon list are:

Would he have the audacity to ask Bush for a pardon after he leaves office that would exempt him from any possible prosecution?

Would Bush then have the audacity – some would say magnanimity – to grant such a pardon?

In its Friday issue, the Christian Science Monitor takes a look at that possibility, as well as who's on the list of people asking Clinton for a pardon in their Christmas stocking this year, and finds that:

• A Bush pardon of Clinton could be a spectacular way of trying to heal a nation beset by political rifts.

"The pardon is a politicized process," said Professor Herald Krent, associate dean at the Chicago-Kent College of Law in Illinois. "I don't think a pardon for Clinton is out of the question at all.

"It might be seen as statesmanlike and help heal wounds from the contested election."

Would Bush actually pardon Clinton?

"I doubt it," said Donald Robinson, professor of government at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. "But who knows? It would be a fairly spectacular act.

"Would Gore have pardoned Clinton [had Gore won the election]? We'll never know."

• The most-spectacular criminal beseeching Clinton for a pardon is undoubtedly Milken, who had to pay more than $1 billion in fines after pleading guilty to six counts of securities fraud in the early 1980s.

He then served 22 months of his sentence of 10 years in prison.

Now his good friend, supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, who owes much of his own financial success to Milken, wants Clinton to wipe all that out.

A major contributor to the Democratic Party, Burkle is no stranger to the president.

• One of the stickiest pardon decisions confronting Clinton has to do with Native American leader Leonard Peltier.

Peltier languishes behind bars for the murder of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in 1975. The very idea of his walking free drives FBI agents up the wall.

More than 500 agents and former agents opposing Peltier's release carried out an unprecedented march with placards in front of the White House recently.

It adds to the stickiness for Clinton that the march was approved by FBI Director Louis Freeh, who supports a continued investigation into the campaign fund-raising practices of Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

• Then there are Webster Hubbell and Susan McDougal, both close personal and political figures in the lives of the Clintons. They want their slates scrubbed clean.

Hubbell was so close to Clinton he became his inside operative at the Justice Department. McDougal spent 21 months in prison for refusing to testify about the president's financial dealings in Arkansas.

It would surprise few if they both received holiday-season pardons from the man for whom they both so loyally kept their lips zipped.

• Compared with earlier presidents, Clinton has granted relatively few pardons – 75 since he took office in 1993.

It was not uncommon, said John Standish, a former pardon attorney, that presidents would grant as many as 125 pardons a year.

But presidential acts of clemency have become rarer in recent administrations, with President Bush and Clinton issuing fewer on average than any other chief executives in the past century.