I was pleased to see that New York Gov. George Pataki announced yesterday that he was extending a posthumous pardon to comedian Lenny Bruce, 39 years after being convicted of obscenity for using profanity in a Greenwich Village nightclub act and 37 years after the controversial comic died.
It would be even better news if George W. Bush were as generous giving pardons to people who are actually alive.
The Wall Street Journal’s Gary Fields had an excellent item today explaining that “when it comes to pardons…Bush is scrooge.” (sub. required)
So far, that’s meant very few pardons in very safe cases, among them a man who got probation in 1962 for making moonshine, a minister sentenced to two years in 1957 for not reporting for his military induction, and a 1971 case where a postal worker served one year for stealing $10.90 from the mail.
Oh yes, and then there are Stars and Stripes, the Thanksgiving turkeys pardoned by Mr. Bush last month and sent off to enjoy retirement at Frying Pan Park in Fairfax County, Va. If you include the two turkeys that Mr. Bush has pardoned every year, that raises his pardon total to 17.
Don’t expect another one anytime soon. In the traditional season of presidential forgiveness, when pardons and commutations are usually meted out, the White House doesn’t “anticipate any more this year,” said a White House official familiar with the deliberations.
That leaves Mr. Bush’s three-year total of pardons at 11. He hasn’t commuted any of the nation’s 174,000 federal inmates. The statistics make him the least pardon-friendly president in the history of the presidential pardon.
The WSJ article also provides key historical context. At the same point in his father’s presidency, for example, the first President Bush had granted 38 pardons and commuted one sentence. Reagan, not exactly Mr. Compassion, granted 181 — over 10 times Bush’s total at the same point in his presidency. Hell, Nixon even had 522 after three years in office, and he wasn’t exactly a criminal coddler.
Only two of the nation’s leaders had statistically fewer pardons than Mr. Bush: William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia within a month of taking office; James Garfield was shot four months into his term and was bedridden until he died two months later.
This is consistent with the same kind of compassion Bush showed as governor. Not only did he execute Texans at a record clip, but he extended only 18 clemency grants, making him the stingiest Texas governor in the latter half of the 20th century. This isn’t a partisan matter, of course. As the WSJ article noted, the last Republican to hold the office before Bush, Bill Clements, used the power 822 times — or about 46 clemencies for every Bush one.
White House spokeswoman Claire Buchanan told the WSJ, “The president has been judicious in granting pardons.” Judicious? How about miserly?