As known, the President of the United States is expressly authorized by the Constitution (Art.2, sec.2, clause 1) to unconditionally (except in impeachment) grant a pardon for federal crimes. President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for the shocking and widely publicized, major crimes identified by the media as “The Watergate Scandal.” Donald Trump pardoned the psychopathic bigot, Sheriff Arpaio, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, his son-in-law’s father, and dozens of his errant supporters and political figures, a remarkable total of 73 pardons and 70 commutations.
We have eternally been intellectually troubled and morally disappointed by the bizarre incongruity of the Founders’ inclusion of the Presidential power of pardon and commutation in the Nation’s constitution and their inconsistent statements of avowed purpose. Such replication of the unjust and arbitrary power of the historical European Monarch is bizarre in that it is in bright contrast with their expressed intentions regarding the foundational philosophy and dynamics of their “radical experiment.” Those intentions saw effectuation in the elimination of privileged classes, and the creation of a Nation, distinguished from the despotic rule of a Monarchy, or the Established Church, and one that promoted citizen equality and functioned “by and for the People.”
Our readings indicate that at the Constitutional Convention (1788) Founder, George Mason argued against this Presidential franchise, concerned that a future President (unlike George Washington) might not always be someone of sound character and intelligence. He stated that a President might even be someone who wanted to change our form of government. In our view, Mason’s concerns were eerily prescient, as best evidenced by the shameful recent episodes of the despicable use of this vestige of the atavistic, arbitrary, and unjust rule, historically prevalent in 18th-century Europe. The above-referenced, expedited pardoning by Trump, cynically accomplished in his final hours of office, of hordes of criminal politicians, his supporters, and criminal confederates, in our view, was not only un-American but visibly obscene.
As we see it, the concept of the Presidential power to pardon appears inarguably, inconsistent with the avowed concept and dynamics of a legitimate Republican Democracy. Like the human appendix, the same is an atavistic (and inappropriate) vestigial impediment toxically existing in the American body politic; the same being of no positive use and one that should be surgically removed prophylactically to prevent further infections of political peritonitis as our Nation’s history has clinically presented and most evident in the toxic Trump term of Presidency (and is empirically predictable, should he, heaven forbid, be re-elected).
“No one is above the law,” is among our basic and most fundamental democratic principles and should have no exceptions; most especially, including instances of criminal wrongdoing, contextually forgiven in an arbitrary manner by officially (constitutionally) designated franchise. A Constitutional Amendment providing for the surgical excision of this toxic and vestigial roadblock to the authentic practice of democracy and the salubrious health of the American body politic would be logically consistent with our Nation’s traditions, its avowed aspirations, and with universal moral justice.
-p.
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