Should never granting a pardon be a point of political pride?

As documented here, now running in Iowa is a TV spot from the campaign of Mitt Romney that attacks Mike Huckabee for being soft on meth offenses and for granting over 1000 pardons and commutations while Governor of Arkansas.  The ad also states, as an apparent point of pride, that former Governor Romney “never pardoned a single criminal.”  Interestingly, the Huckabee campaign has issued this official response to the ad, which includes this notable discussion of clemency issues:

Some Governors are content to simply deny the vast majority of clemency applications without bothering to consider their merit. Governor Huckabee, however, believed that respect for the legal process required that he give them the consideration for which they were entitled….

Very rarely does the public oppose a clemency because almost all are granted for minor offenses, involve reductions in fines, or reduced prison sentences that were longer than the average for a particular crime….

Before the mainstream use of background checks, most people could have some youthful arrest, change their lives and become good, tax-paying citizens without that earlier arrest coming back to haunt them. Governor Huckabee found during his time in office that each year the number of people needing clemency to clear their record increased. Denying their request prevented them from continuing to earn a good living and pay taxes. The majority of the clemency requests he granted were for this reason.

I find the effort of the Romney campaign to make political hay out of clemency issues especially interesting in light of the significant Republican call for pardons for Lewis Libby and for the Border Agents.  Also, the ad indirectly suggests that Romney hopes to bring more attention to Huckabee’s “Willie Horton” problem in the form of Wayne Dumond, the rapist paroled in Arkansas when Huckabee was governor who murdered a woman after being released (background here and here).

As I have suggested before, various crime and punishment issues will surely play some role in the heated 2008 Presidential campaign.  I am hopeful (though not especially optimistic) that excessive tough-on-crime demagoguery by particular candidates will backfire as the general public becomes more informed and balanced in their understanding of a range of criminal justice issues.