Word: pardon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...could George W. Bush look like a healer and still knock some of the spring out of Bill Clinton's step, the wind out of his victory tour and a zero off his book advance? Pardon him, as soon as possible. With special counsel Robert Ray--Ken Starr's tenacious successor--now weighing whether to indict Clinton for obstruction of justice, Bush might want to pre-empt Ray and pardon Clinton before any indictment. Bush could wrest the Bible out of William Rehnquist's hands, turn to an appropriate Psalm of forgiveness and make it the heart of his Inaugural...
...easy to see why Bush would hesitate to let the guy off the hook. Doing so would really tick off his right wing, which has held on to the prosecution of Clinton like a dog to a postman's leg. Pardoning Nixon ruined Gerald Ford's election chances. The Wall Street Journal editorial page might never get over it. And it might be really, really hard to do, now that Clinton has spent the week making headlines by taunting Bush at every stop on his farewell tour, lauding the "Gore victory," suggesting that Bush won by stopping the Florida recount...
...What is emerging is a political chess game: Already, some in the GOP, no doubt concerned at the specter of Clinton continuing to dominate the Washington landscape, are urging Bush to consider a pardon. "I would pardon [Clinton]," Republican senator Orrin Hatch told Fox News Sunday. "I think it's time to put this to bed." And while the senator's interest in a pardon is likely based in political self-interest - how better, after all, to finally clear Clinton from the national radar - his message is not easily ignored. (Hatch to Ray: The GOP has lost its bloodlust...
...Clinton, meanwhile, is comfortably ensconced in the catbird seat: He knows that a pardon, or his embrace of such an idea, would only fuel continuing doubts about his innocence. Far better, from his vantage point, to let the GOP do his work for him - so he's stubbornly refusing to consider such a possibility, insisting instead that he will fight every charge and eventually prove his innocence. And that promise, of course, raises the scenario that makes Republicans cringe: A wildly popular ex-president with plenty of time on his hands dusting off the old law books and planting...
Does Baum know something Bush doesn't? Can Ashcroft be trusted to oversee the investigation of alleged voting-rights abuses in Florida, which many blacks believe disenfranchised them and delivered the presidency unfairly to Bush? This is one nomination that, pardon the pun, should be consigned to the Ashcroft of history...