Twenty Days of Bush

As I begin writing this, Bush has 20 days and 9 hours left.  While he has been preoccupied over the last month or so with environmental destruction of a truly deranged character (opening wilderness up to mining, for example, and Endangering Species already listed as Endangered Species under the Endangered Species Act), I suspect that the last 3 weeks or so are going to be devoted to business of a more personal nature.  To wit, undertaking necessary measures to ensure his own freedom from incarceration over the balance of his life.

One thing we know about Bush is that the outrageous does not faze him.  The commutation of sentence of Scooter Libby, for example, was so clearly a repudiation of his own pledge to deal harshly with classified information leakers within his administration that one might have been forgiven for thinking that even Bush, that most hypocritical and morally indifferent of men, would second-guess himself on that one.  No, he went right ahead with it.  He didn't even pretend that the putative reason given (the sentence was "too severe," although it was actually less than federal sentencing guidelines) had any plausibility.  He would have been content, I'm sure, to give no reason whatsoever.  I am virtually certain that one of the things he'll do during these last 20 days is to grant Libby a full pardon.

I suspect, however, that Bush is reluctant to grant himself a pardon, either through an unprecedented auto-pardon or by the Cheney Two-Step, where Bush resigns close to the end of his term so that Cheney can preside over the Bush Absolution.  There may, in fact, be legal ramifications to resignation of a President, even for so brief a period as one day, of which I'm unaware.  But mainly I think that Bush, who is in a curious way obsessed with his "legacy" (a narcissistic fussiness about his historical image), does not like the ignominy which attaches to so craven a legal dodge.

Which must mean that his Administration is actively engaged in conversations with the Obama transition team. The historical precedent is the Nixon-Ford "understanding" reached at the time Nixon resigned.  Ford, for the good of the country, would put it "all behind us."  Certainly, in the smoking ruin that Bush has bequeathed us there are plenty of rationales for getting things behind us so we can focus on pressing concerns such as our economic survival. 

In a larger sense, however, a Bush Auto-Pardon would contradict the reigning ethos of the Bush Administration.  Bush& Cheney are devoted to the principles of illegality without accountability; it is their credo, their calling, in a way.  The Unitary Executive was an exercise in lawlessness.  They were most at home with themselves when blatantly breaking the law and defying a prostrate Congress to do anything about it, which Congress never did.  Never even a successful censure motion.  Think about that.  With all we know about what has gone on, from the fraud used to sell an unnecessary war, to the lack of preparation and seriousness re: the attacks of 9/11, to the torture regime, to the warrantless wiretapping, to the felonious disclosure of a CIA agent's identity, not a single peep out of Congress.  That, more than anything, will be the the Bush/Cheney Legacy: a completely broken system of checks and balances.  And any act of contrition, such as that implied in a pardon, even if prophylactic, demeans this proud legacy of doing whatever they felt like doing. It would almost amount to some sort of tacit admission of doing something wrong.

It's a chancy play, an obeisance to vanity, but I think Bush will risk it.  He will sneer at Congress one more time by going "bare," leaving office with no pardon in his pocket.  It's probably not that great a risk.  Since the attitude of indifference is now so firmly established, since Congress, no matter who's in charge, seems institutionally incapable of taking remedial action, I suspect that Bush may safely forgo that final safety measure of complete executive exoneration.  He will strut out of the Oval Office one last time on January 20, having hastily signed a final batch of Executive Orders authorizing nuclear testing in ANWR, and oil drilling in Lake Tahoe, and head off toward the sunset in the West, to his strange retirement in Texas.  If he does things that way, I doubt that Cheney will get a pardon either.  It's not like Bush to be selfless.  He'll withhold Cheney's clemency out of spite, just to razz him.

Obama & Co will look into things, form a commission, let the statute of limitations expire, and that will be that.  We'll all move ahead as if nothing happened.  We don't want to criminalize, you know -- policy differences.  Or much of anything else, as long as it happened in the Beltway.  The true Bush Legacy is that the nation's capital has become an accountability-free zone.