Never before has an outgoing President sought to meddle in an election to the degree apparently being considered by Barack Obama.
While our constitutional and democratic foundations sag under the weight of allegations of secret recordings and intragovernmental feuds as described in a recent Wall Street Journal lead headline, the Washington D.C. chattering class is atwitter at the prospect of another November surprise: an election eve (or thereabouts) pardon of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Such a short-game strategy would be consistent with President Obama’s record of domestic and foreign policy misadventures. But it would raise to a new level his miscalculation of consequences.
Any attempt by President Obama to absolve through presidential pardon the high crimes and misdemeanors committed by candidate Hillary Clinton and her posse will serve only to plunge this nation into either a two-year constitutional impeachment crisis (in the event of her election victory) or a protracted judicial circus (in the event of her election defeat, which appears more likely every day).
A presidential action of this proportion is best understood in the broader context of the seven-plus year administration of moral corruption by which it was preceded. The political abuse at IRS, the mistreatment of veterans by a dysfunctional VA, the deliberate misinformation about the Affordable Care Act — all symptoms of the larger issue. Simply stated, President Obama is the Moral Relativist in Chief whose situational ethics serve his administration’s and his party’s cynical and self-serving ends.
If President Obama chooses this reckless path, he will surely cite former President Ford’s actions in the wake of the Watergate Scandal as justification. And then, having crossed the previously inviolate line of political decorum whereby sitting presidents remain above the fray of their successor’s election, there’s little to stop him from issuing a blanket pardon to the hundreds of political appointees who served his administration – criminally or otherwise – absolving them of any and all offenses they committed against the United States while in office.
For historical context, President Ford’s 1974 pardon of former President Richard Nixon was justified at the time on grounds documented in the Pardon Proclamation: “the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States.” While Richard Nixon was punished by the loss of his office, a preemptive pardon of Hillary Clinton represents a direct threat to our Constitutional Republic and to the rule of law.
Other than protecting his legacy, such as it is, there is little political downside for President Obama tossing out Constitutional absolution like beads at a Marti Gras parade. Unlike Ford, who assumed office and could therefore have run for two more terms under the Constitution, Obama faces no post-pardon re-election. So while he may feel that he has little to lose, his Nation and his Party surely do.
Should Barack Obama take this unprecedented and unilateral action to interfere in his successor’s election, he will perhaps unwittingly force the hand of Congress, or that of the Supreme Court, to counteract what can only be recorded as the most democratically destructive presidential thumb ever placed on the scale of justice in the history of the United States.
In theology, an unpardonable sin is one that evolves over time through determined effort. It is not a sin committed on a whim. Any pardon of Hillary Clinton, whose family foundation U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican from Arkansas, recently described as “one of the largest money laundering and influence peddling operations in the world,” would be yet another Clinton-centric disaster for our nation and perhaps for Western Civilization.
Gregg E. Bauer is a business executive, retired United States Naval Intelligence Officer, and former Chief of Staff to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense.