Presidential pot to kettle: “your clemency decision is so black”

I have never been much of a Bill Clinton fan in part because his presidential criminal justice record was so disappointing.  As noted here, President Clinton supported and signed legislation that increased the severity of federal and state sentencing terms, broadened the applicability of the federal death penalty, and sharply restricted habeas corpus rights for prisoners.  And, Bill Clinton’s highly suspect pardons on his final day in office tarnished the reputation of executive clemency power and provided another ugly mark on Clinton’s overall criminal justice record.

Consequently, I am a bit disgusted by this news report that Bill Clinton has now “blasted his successor’s decision to spare former White House aide Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby from prison.”  Putting aside the fact that Clinton himself avoided any formal criminal charge for his own alleged perjury and obstruction of justice, Clinton’s efforts to attack President Bush for his commutation strike me as a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black.  Of course, strong partisans on both sides can (and likely will) say that the other team has an uglier clemency record.  But, quoting another Bill in this setting, I say to Clinton and Bush “a plague on both your [white] houses.”

UPDATE:  This strong USA Today editorial hits all the right points when noting that politicians on “both sides are long on sound bites and short on ethical consistency.”  Here is the closing thoughts from the editorial:

Is Libby a threat to the public who needs to be confined? Obviously not. Is his attempt to con a grand jury in order to protect an administration unique?  Sadly, that also is not the case, as the Clinton and Nixon administrations so amply proved.

The important question in the Libby case was whether Bush could rise above that sickening precedent.  He failed, and the message that’s left is unmistakable: If you stand in the way of justice, you can get off easy if you have a friend in the White House.

As noted in this prior post, the Federal Sentencing Reporter in 2001 produced a special double issue on pardons (on-line access here) which examined Clinton’s ugly end-of-term pardons and explored the history and practicalities of executive clemency  more generally.  FSR‘s publisher has made several articles from that issue available for free on the linked site.