Last night, during a report on Scooter Libby’s predicament, Andrea Mitchell told MSNBC’s audience that White House officials are “going to try to really tamp this down and appeal to the polling which indicates that most people think, in fact, that he should be pardoned. Scooter Libby should be pardoned.” I’m not quite sure where Mitchell is getting this impression — unless she’s polled the GOP establishment in Washington — because the public seems to have an entirely different idea.
Nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose a presidential pardon for former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby after his conviction on perjury and other charges related to a CIA agent’s exposure, according to a CNN poll out Monday.
Just 18 percent said they would support a pardon for Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, while 69 percent said they opposed the idea. Meanwhile, a narrow majority said they believe Cheney was part of a cover-up in the case. […]
And asked whether the vice president was “part of a cover-up” to keep special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald from learning who leaked the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, whose husband had become a critic of the war in Iraq, 52 percent said yes; 29 percent said no.
Now, as far as I can tell, conservatives don’t find the poll persuasive and still want Bush to pardon Libby. (One high-profile conservative blogger argued, seriously, that CNN’s poll is unreliable because it was conducted over the weekend. “[P]olling on the weekend always means a left slanted poll,” the blogger said. “Republicans are never home on the weekends as they know how to enjoy life.”)
Nevertheless, following up on a post from last week, I’m still inclined to believe that they should get what they want.
Michael Kinsley adds to the case that a Libby pardon would have considerable upsides for White House critics.
[S]tart piling up all the lies told by this Administration in advancing its war in Iraq. Rank them in importance. Where would you put Scooter Libby’s unconvincing faulty memory about who told what to whom about Valerie Plame Wilson? Not very high, I think. If President Bush has a shred of humanity in him — if he has suffered even a tiny moment of doubt about this huge and tragic mess he has gotten our country into — how can he let the clock tick him out of office without pardoning a very small player in this tragedy, but the one who happened to get caught?
As for Democrats and liberals, I feel as vindictive as any other. But ask yourself: if, a couple of years from now, Dick Cheney is going around giving $75,000 speeches and George W Bush is accepting honorary degrees and planning his presidential library, will you feel better or worse that some guy named Scooter Libby is languishing behind bars?
I would argue that Libby’s crimes are probably a bit more serious than Kinsley suggests, but his point is well taken. For White House critics, the ultimate goal need not be seeing Libby in a federal penitentiary. If the president bucked public opinion, caved to pressure from far-right activists, and granted Libby a pardon, Bush opponents would get:
* a renewed emphasis on the White House’s (and the president’s) role in the scandal;
* an opportunity to exploit the pardon to make Bush look even worse;
* and an end to the White House defense that officials can’t comment on an ongoing legal matter.
Bring it on.