Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Deft doings

Partisan Politics

Given even the slightest chance, the Bush administration has shown an amazing ability over the past several years to choose the worst of all possibilities presented to it in any given circumstance.

However, with last evening’s commutation of prison sentence for Scooter Libby, they appear finally to have gotten one right.

Libby’s head was hung on a pike for public political enjoyment (and no, I neither have time nor feel like going into the details), and his case has not reached even its first appeal. The happy dance so far engaged in by the judicial class in Washington DC has served to do nothing but continue the political theater and public shaming of Libby. The courts’ having ordered him to begin his jail term with his appeal in process, while not unheard of, is far outside the bounds of standard practice in these matters.

For anyone who might disagree with that characterization, I’ve got two words for you, words that in any rational comparative world would cause snickers and insistence that Libby receive full exoneration and the apologies of the government for its having hassled him: “Sandy Berger”.  And the fact that they both have little-boy first names is only a coincidence.

Back to my point - Bush had several choices which would have made a hash of this matter, including doing nothing (wrong, not because it might have upset “the base”, but wrong because loyalty and fairness dictated action of some sort), and issuing a full pardon (wrong, because he was convicted, however potentially wrongly, and his appeals have not yet run their course).

Deft handling of the matter, via a focus on the one ragingly unfair portion of the story - the immediate incarceration, was as welcome to see as it was surprising. I’ve come to expect the Bush administration to regularly puke in its own lap, and this time, they didn’t.

The fine stays in place, along with the probation, all pending completion of the appeals process. If those appeals are unsuccessful, for the record, I’d react badly to an end-of-term full pardon, just so we’re clear on things. Based on what I’ve seen of the judicial process so far, however, I expect Libby to eventually clear his name in the courts. Allowing him to do so outside of the Graybar Hotel seems quite fair to me.

For the first time in quite a while, then, I’m in a position to compliment Bush for not fucking up something simple. Which is a blessing and a shame, now that I think about it.


Posted by Patton on 07/03/07 at 04:56 PM
Partisan Politics • Permalink