Easy Commute

George W. Bush once promised that anyone in his Administration who broke the law would "be taken care of." At the time, he appeared to mean they would face the consequences of their actions. Then he took care of I. Lewis Libby, and all at once, his words assumed a somewhat different tone.

Ever since March, when Libby was convicted for lying about his role in exposing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, a lot of people have wondered whether the President would step in to keep him from going to prison. On the one hand, Bush has never been a man inclined to spare people from prison time or execution. As Governor of Texas, he issued only a small fraction of the pardons offered by his predecessors from either party. And as President, his Justice Department has consistently pushed for tough sentences.

But Libby's was a case close to his heart, to say nothing of the heart of Libby's former boss Dick Cheney, who was known to feel that the conviction of his former chief of staff was an injustice in itself. So Bush decided on a measured approach to mercy: commute Libby's 30-month prison sentence without reversing his conviction or lifting the $250,000 fine he has to pay.

The paradox of that decision is that it was an exercise in presidential power made easier by the steady decline of the President's power generally. With his approval ratings at historic lows, Bush didn't have to worry about spending political capital by making an unpopular decision, one that opened the way to questions about buying Libby's silence. If he let Libby go to jail, his critics still wouldn't love him. And what support he continues to command comes mostly from conservatives who were strongly in favor of his helping Libby. Just days after the defeat of the White House--backed immigration bill, to which conservatives were cool or worse, the Libby commutation could let the President renew some of his old luster in their eyes.

So Janis Joplin had it right in that song about Bobby McGee: "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." This time, the freedom was Libby's. And it was the President who had just about nothing left to lose.