Does President Bush WANT the Democrats to Have the White House?

In case you didn't hear, President Bush commuted the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby today. It's not a pardon. Libby remains a convicted felon, still must pay the $250,000 fine, and is still on probation for 2 years. He will not serve the 30-month sentence associated with his conviction on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. The timing of the decision is related to a judge's decision that Libby must be encarcerated pending an appeals court ruling. I don't know a ton about the case, but the charges related to Libby testifying to at least two different timelines regarding the leak of information about an undercover CIA agent whose spouse had been critical of the administrations policies. No charges were related to the actual leak of the information, only when he knew and who he told about it when. My guess is that he told someone something he shouldn't have about the undercover agent, later found out that it was a political enemy, and tried to cover up what he said. I seriously doubt he tried to blow the cover of anyone. (Not saying that he didn't, just that I don't think he did it on purpose.) Once he got caught, the case got blown out of proportion and every inconsistancy was scruntized for an ulterior motive. Again, I think he's probably guilty of the crimes he was convicted of, but I don't believe the intent was political payback.

The real question is what is President Bush thinking? I know he's a friend and that it's a legit Presidential power, but has Bush gone off his rocker? The Democrats jumped on this before the ink was dry. My dad told me he heard on the news that an analyst said it's probably not going to cause much turmoil because the people who get up in arms over it were already against Bush and those already supporting him weren't going to leave him over this. While I'm sure this analyst is well paid and probably has a political science degree from a great school (local community colleges can be great schools, so I've been told), but he's flat wrong. Democrats who didn't like Bush but maybe were sitting back because none of the candidates are all that impressive are going to jump in now because this is a clear example of Bush's "corruption" or "cronyism" or whatever you want to call it. Republicans who supported Bush are going to scratch their heads over this and mayeb stay home on election day. I will say, there is an advantage to the timing - the election is still way away. Yes, everyone is running already, but it's still more than a year until the actual voting. Most people wouldn't normally remember this a year later. Except I doubt the media will drop it. I know Osama, I mean Obama, and Hillary will use it to fundraise as they try to win the nomination. I'm sure Obama needed the help, what with only raising $31 million last quarter (lowest estimate I've heard).

Lee and I have talked about the fact that Bush is probably the worst public speaker we've ever seen in the White House. Granted, we've only seen 4 presidents and Reagan and Clinton were two of the best speakers ever to hold the office. Until now, I haven't seen a major policy decision which, at the time, I disagreed with so strongly as this commutation. No Child Left Behind has failed, but it was worth a try at the time. I still support both military actions, whether to remove a terrorist government in Afghanistan or a psycho from Iraq. Some revisionists are going back and saying those were bad decisions when they supported them at the time. No sane person could have asked for a better campaign in either place. Perfect world, yeah, I guess we don't lose a single soldier, but we've been in Iraq for more than 4 years, freed an entire country, and lost fewer than 4,000 soldiers. Do I like that it has cost lives? No, but American servicemen and women know that they'll be called on in the service of freedom. Two countries are free today that weren't free when President Bush took office. While I'm in the neighborhood, I love that Hollywood wants us to get involved in Darfur when our military, they claim with the same breath, is already overstretched on two fronts. What's going on over there is terrible (educate yourself if you don't already know), but we do have to pick and choose our battles. We have committed to freeing two terrorist regimes who wanted nothing better than to destroy us while committing their own genocides, so we do need to concentrate on those. It's not that the military couldn't do it, but why actually stretch it? When did it become the business of the United States to get involved with every conflict in the world? We're expected to solve Israel-Palestine (because that hasn't been around for more than a few millenia), stop the genocide in Darfur, quell riots in Liberia and Nigeria, but not Venezeula, because all the Hollywood actors like Chavez down there and ignore the fact that he's not-so-quietly killing dissidents, destroying all but state-controlled media, and generally starving his people while he gets rich off oil.

This started with the Libby situation, so let me get back to that. Libby did the same exact thing that Clinton was charged with (perjury and obstruction of justice). Libby gets a big fine, a prison term, and probation. That's probably a fair sentence for those offenses, and I don't even mind the sentence being tougher because he was a public official. Clinton got a pat on the back and a new box of cigars (yeah, I went there). Adultery with your intern doesn't compare with leaking classified information, but those weren't the charges. The charges were lying about it.

President Bush isn't as dumb as people want to believe, but this was the wrong way to handle this. A pardon at the end of the term? OK. I don't like that he'd be forgiven for the lying, but he's a friend and was a high-ranking guy in your administration and pardons are there for political favors (come on, they are). Bush needed to let this go away quietly and handle it on his way out the door.