To Forgive Would Be Divine

How 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 Address. No one remembers Inaugural speeches anyway (can you quote one other than Kennedy's?), and Bush, who is not given to flights of rhetoric, could make his speech memorable simply by wrapping it around a pardon.

It's 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--and, for good measure, saying he had some untold jokes about Bush's failed nominee for Labor Secretary that would leave his audience "howling in the aisle." A pardon? How about a punch in the nose?

Nor does Bush want to give Clinton one more occasion to gloat. Each time Clinton eludes the noose, he practically nominates himself for a Nobel Prize for defending the Constitution. As he told Esquire magazine, "They"--we all know who "they" are--have "spent over $100 million on these special prosecutors and congressional investigations...and they have yet to come up with one example of official misconduct in office--not one." What's more, he said, "they" owe the country an apology.

O.K., so Clinton isn't going to make it easy for Bush. But this is not about Clinton, it's about Bush--and there's less downside than meets the eye. Bush has already fed the right wing with the antigay, antiabortion, anti-affirmative action John Ashcroft and with Gale Norton, who would open the South Lawn to drilling if she could. The chattering class on the right might howl for a while, but it's not going to abandon Bush unless he abandons tax cuts. And Ford isn't an apt comparison. Some thought, without evidence, that Ford had cut a deal with Nixon, and Nixon haters, with nothing but the bloodless Watergate hearings to feast on, felt they had not got all their licks in.

Until now, Bush has wisely been at pains to avoid being seen as part of the get-Clinton posse. The impeachment hunt produced more casualties among the pursuers than among the prey, returning many unwillingly to private life. In the House that impeached him, Republicans lost two seats. In the Senate they went from five up to deuce. Clinton's wife won a seat there.