Dear President Bush: Pardon Yourself
By Ned Resnikoff - Nov 14th, 2008 at 9:35 amSeriously. You’ve earned it.
Now, of course, this would preempt any liberal fantasies of George W. Bush being brought up on charges for his numerous crimes, but I highly doubt that was ever going to happen anyway. The options were:
1.) We move on and just sort of pretend that nothing ever happened.
2.) Congress does a big investigation. Republicans and the press bemoan how this has tainted Barack Obama’s message of bipartisanship, and the whole thing ends up costing a lot of time and political influence. Congress might end up making a few very firm declarations about how the last few years have really sucked and the Bush administration has done some really terrible things. But at the end of it, Bush will still head back to Crawford and get someone to ghost write a memoir for some vanity press.
To be clear, I’d still prefer option 2 over option 1. But there’s a third way:
3.) Bush preemptively pardons himself and his cabinet. Not only is this a tacit admission that there are numerous crimes to pardon, but a self-pardon is also so breathtakingly ballsy that future generations will remember that his very last act as president was to cover his own ass from suffering any repercussions for his actions. It would be a fitting addition to his legacy.
Also, it would mean that Congress could get to work figuring out having to undo all of his numerous assaults on the Constitution without first having to go through the motions of proving that they occurred.
So do it, Mr. President. Nobody will blame you.
Well, okay, that’s not true. We’ll blame you quite a bit. But if you think of the last eight years as a long, painful joke, then this would be an awesome punchline.
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