The Daily Background

While conservatives are going horse screaming at the White House to pardon convicted felon Lewis Libby, the New York Times provides some background on why a Libby pardon would be so dramatic:

President Bush has pardoned 113 people during his presidency, including a Tennessee bootlegger and a Mississippi odometer cheat.

But none has drawn the public scrutiny, nor posed the same political challenge, as the candidate that many conservatives hope will be Bush presidential pardon No. 114: I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, who was convicted of lying to investigators in the C.I.A. leak case and sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison.
[…]
But Mr. Bush has never been very eager to grant pardons, and in fact is among the stingiest presidents in history, said P. S. Ruckman Jr., a political science professor who studies pardons at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill. Mr. Bush took office as his predecessor, Bill Clinton, was facing harsh scrutiny for granting a pardon to Marc Rich, whose former wife, Denise, had donated heavily to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library.

If Bush pardons Libby, he will be granting the first pardon to a high-profile criminal during his time a president. All of the other pardons he has given so far have been to small-time criminals.

The NYT also notes that Libby would not technically qualify for a pardon, since Department of Justice guidelines say that “a convict should generally have to wait five years after conviction or release from confinement before being pardoned. Those who received pardons are also generally expected to accept responsibility for their criminal conduct, and should be seeking forgiveness rather than vindication.” Bush could easily ignore these statutes and pre-emptively pardon Libby however, as other presidents have done in the past.

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