From Ford to Trump Redux—The Vagaries of Presidential Mercy

On his first day in office President Jimmy Carter ordered a sweeping amnesty for Vietnam era draft resisters including those who had fled the country or gone underground.  It was no small irony the flags over the Capital where Trump was sworn-in were flown at full staff despite the official 30 day mourning period for the late President after Trump expressed his displeasure over the display of respect.

Forty-eight years ago another incoming President on his first full day in office, January 21, 1977, issued a blanket amnesty of most draft evaders, including those who went to Canada or assumed new identities and went underground in the states.

President Jimmy Carter’s controversial act, which brought harsh criticism from veterans’ organizations and near mutinous grumbling from some high level officers in the military, was not unexpected.  It fulfilled a campaign promise.  The idea was to put the bitter national divisions over the Vietnam War and the Nixon years behind us, or in Carter’s own words, “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

The accidental President, Gerald Ford, had issued a conditional pardon for draft offenders, including those who were abroad, in September of 1974.  That was mainly to provide cover on the left for his pre-emptive pardon of his predecessor, Richard Nixon for any offenses that he “may have committed.”  The Ford conditional pardon is generally better remembered than Carter’s much more substantial action because of that linkage despite requiring those who accepted the pardon to work in alternative service occupations similar to those of conscientious objectors for six to 24 months.  Far fewer men than expected took Ford up on his offer.

Gerald Ford's limited conditional pardon for draft resistors and evaders was meant to placate the Left and distract from his pardon of Richard Nixon for "crimes he may have committed.

Carter’s action was much more sweeping, but a little noticed provision said that amnesty would be given to all offenders who requested one.  Some resistors refused to make a request because to do so was an admission that they had committed a crime in the first place.  Many, many more were unaware, because of hazy press coverage, that they had to make a request.  The Justice Department did not even make a cursory effort to inform the eligible by a letter to a “last known address.” 

The wording also was unclear on an important point for men like me—did the amnesty cover those who were already convicted and had served sentences for draft offenses?  I don’t think that last point has yet been fully answered.

None-the-less tens of thousands of draft refusers, evaders, and military deserters acted on the assumption that they were covered and the Justice Department de facto ceased actions against anyone who could have been covered by amnesty. 

More than half a million young men were either charged with draft evasion and resistance, avoided, or refused to serve in the Armed Forces and were never charged during the Vietnam War.

During the war and continuing after it ended until Draft call-ups stopped in 1973, 209,517 men were accused of violating draft laws, and another 360,000 were never formally charged.  Around 100,000 went abroad, 90% of them to Canada.  The exact number who went “underground” has never been established but is thought to be in the tens of thousands.

Upwards of 50,000 of those in Canada chose to stay there rather than return home.  Most were granted Landed Immigrant status and eventually Canadian citizenship.  A highly educated group with significant resources, these people had an impact on Canada.  Many became leading figures in academia, the arts, and in politics.  They are widely credited with/accused of moving Canadian politics generally to the left.

Likewise, a good, but unknown, number of those who went underground chose to continue to live their lives under the identities that they assumed.  In the 1960s and early ‘70s it was absurdly easy to establish a new identity.  It was thought that as this cohort became eligible for Social Security or died many of these assumed identities would unravel, but that seems to be exception rather than the rule.

As for an old Draft con like me, I never got any amnesty papers.  But I have lived my life quite openly and even drawn some modest attention to myself without further molestation.  So far so good.

 

Barack Obama was unusually active with clemency orders and pardons in his last days in office.

In 2017 Barack Obama spent the last days of his Presidential term churning out sentence commutations.  Hundreds were given to non-violent drug offenders facing draconian sentences under the exceptionally harsh Federal Sentence Standards, the most vindictive in the world.  But there were so many of those victims of the failed war on drugs that the commutations hardly made a dent in the American gulag.  Also given leniency were some white collar criminals, the kind of offenders that drew the stingier grace of Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush.  Even a beloved baseball icon, Willie McCovey of the San Francisco Giants who was convicted on Income Tax evasion was one of 64 that drew and outright pardon from the President.  

Most controversially Obama commuted the sentences of whistleblower Chelsea Manning, the former Army Private Bradley Manning, and Puerto Rican nationalist leader Oscar Lopez.  Inexplicably he did not commute the sentence of ailing American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier who was behind bars for more than 40 years.  

Neither did his successors until Joe Biden in one of his last acts buried among a flurry of preemptive pardons for prominent critics of Donald Trump and members of his own family.  Except for those on the Left who have been urging a pardon or clemency, no one noticed.

The headlines were all about using his executive prerogative as a shield against revenge by the return of the Orange Menace his while also guaranteeing his closest relatives aren’t subject to future prosecutions and clemency for Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members of Congress who served on the committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.  It was announced early Monday morning minutes before Trump was to be inaugurated. Biden also issued pardons for members of his family: his brothers James and Frank, his sister Valerie, and their spouses.
The pardons were a stunning flex of Presidential power that is unprecedented in history. They protect several outspoken critics of the incoming President, including former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, whom Trump has vowed retribution against.

After Obama no one, except possibly sex offenders, gun nuts, and White nationalist terrorists could expect any such displays of mercy from Trump’s first term in  the Oval Office.  On the contrary.  The former Pumpkin-in-Chief and his administration sought to swell the prison population with those who resisted his autocratic rule, immigrants, and minorities of every sort.  And the recipients of his tender mercy were of a very different sort including pardons for the ilk of Arizona racist sheriff Joe Aripio, Watergate figure Scooter Libby, right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza, Army Lt. Michael Behenna who was convicted of murdering an Iraqi man, right wing Canadian media mogul Conrad Black, Chalmer Lee Williams convicted of illegal firearms sales, Army Major Mathew Golsteyn who was awaiting trial on a charge of murdering a suspected Afghan bomb maker, Lt. Clint Lorance convicted of murdering two Afghan civilians, and a slew of former officials, aides, and associates who might testify against him.   

Trump's first end-of-term batch of sentence commutations included well connected bank fraudster Sholom Rubashkin, arsonists Dwight and Steven Hammond who inspired Nevada anti-government extremists Ammon and Ryan Bundy in their armed seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and Medicare scammer Ted Shul who ran faith-based behavioral healthcare treatment centers for juveniles.

 Do you detect a pattern here?  Because it repeats its self. 

 

Joe Biden and Donald Trump swapped Inauguration Day pardons and commutations.

Trump was undoubtedly outraged by Biden’s last minute move that put many of the targets he boasted about prosecuting/persecuting out of revenge but there was nothing he could do about it.  Even boldly trying to overturn them in defiance of the law like his attempt to end birthright citizenship for a blustery show for his most rabid supporters was not an option  because arguing that Biden exceeded his authority would undercut the legitimacy of his own sweeping actions.  He had long signaled plans for pardons for Capitol Siege insurrectionists but had hinted that might not include those convicted of actual physical assault on police, but he pardoned them all.  “These are the hostages, approximately 1,500 for a pardon, full pardon," Trump said during remarks from the Oval Office. “This is a big one.”

Clearly those pardons are a signal to his most extreme and dangerous supporters including armed Militias, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Klansmen that they will face no consequences for using violence and intimidation on his behalf.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.



 

 

A Warm Bucket of Spit—The Tale of the American Vice Presidency— Part III Since World War II

 

Harry S. Truman did not get many moments with FDR before he died and was completely out of the policy loop.

Note—As World War II wound down ailing Franklin D. Roosevelt dumped his liberal Vice President for a relatively little known Missourian

When the ailing Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for a fourth and final time he replaced Henry Wallace with Missouri Senator Harry S. Truman who had made a name for himself—as well as becoming something of a nuisance to the administration, as the tough minded Chair of the Senate Special Committee on Waste and Abuse in military contracts.  Bringing him on board made things quieter in the Senate while boldly staking out credentials for the administration as its own watch dog.  After taking office in January 1942 Truman, despite Roosevelt’s alarming physical deterioration, was not brought into the inner circle at the White House and was kept in the dark about many military matters and about increasing tensions over post war arrangements with Russia.  Famously, he did not know anything about the Atomic bomb program until he was briefed shortly after Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1942.  No wonder he felt like “the moon and the stars have fallen on me.”

Many people, not the least of which was Eleanor Roosevelt, thought that Truman was a light weight and unfit for the Presidency.  Instead, he would quickly prove to be both tough minded and sharp in the way that many widely read self-educated men are.  Anyone who took Truman for a fool or pushover was in for a rude awakening.  In 1948 with Congress in Republican hands, the Cold War getting under way in earnest, and his own party shattered left and right with the defection of the Dixiecrats over his civil rights policies and his VP predecessor Henry Wallace leading a challenge from the left calling for accommodation with war-time ally the USSR, Truman fought back with his famous whistle stop Give ‘em Hell Harry tour and upset Republican Thomas Dewy to win a term on his own.

Perhaps it was the unexpected success of Truman, but in his wake the Vice Presidency began to be seen differently.  Instead of a throw away office to be filled with any politically useful hack it became the grooming ground for future Presidential candidates.  Almost every subsequent VP starting with Dwight Eisenhower’s uneasy relationship with anti-Communist star Richard Nixon, came to be viewed as the natural successor.  

1952 GOP nominee Dwight D, Eisenhower, nearly dumped his anti-communist running mate Richard Nixon over a campaign fund scamming scandal until Nixon's televised Checkers Speech.

During the 1952 campaign Eisenhower had to come to the defense of Nixon amid charges that he used a political slush fund as personal income.  Eisenhower came close to dumping him until his famous televised self-defense, the Checkers Speech.  Especially in his second term Eisenhower used Nixon to represent the country abroad.  He faced Yankee Go Home rioters in Latin America and engaged Nikita Khrushchev in a kitchen debate in an exposition in Moscow.  After the President’s heart attack, Nixon was included more regularly in high level security briefings.   Nixon ran in 1960 and narrowly lost to John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy picked powerful Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate and then assigned him high level administration duties—a break from the past—including overseeing the nation’s space program.  Other presidents would follow suit giving their VPs more to do, including them in Cabinet and high level policy discussions while they spent less and less time presiding over the Senate except for ceremonial occasions and for a dramatic tie vote breaker if an important issue came up.  The Vice Presidency for the first time was becoming fully integrated in the Executive Branch.

On November 22, 1963 Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office on Air Force One on the tarmac in Dallas with a stunned Jacqueline Kennedy still in her blood soaked suit next to him.

Johnson, of course, became President when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.  He would surprise many as a first Southerner in the White House excepting border state Truman and Woodrow Wilson whose mother was a Virginian, since before the Civil War when he completed Kennedy’s legacy and twisted arms to get two landmark Civil Right Acts passed.  He also launched his War on Poverty, an echo of the New Deal. 

On the other hand, he let himself be talked into ever deeper involvement in the Vietnam War that he had inherited from Kennedy.  By 1968 he found himself abandoned by White Southerners who flocked to Alabama segregationist Governor George Wallace on one hand and rising anti-war protests on the other.  After a disappointing showing against Senator Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary Johnson went on television to proclaim, “I will not seek, nor will I accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for President.”

Hubert Humphrey accepted the nomination for Vice President before a bitterly divided Democratic  convention while police still rioted in the streets.

His VP, liberal icon Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, was able to win nomination only after a Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968 which was marked by demonstrations and a police riot in the streets and chaos on the floor.  Humphrey lost that fall to Richard Nixon on the comeback trail.  Nixon ran as a law and order candidate with a secret plan to end the war.  He won in an Electoral College landslide. 

He balanced the ticket with Maryland Governor Sprio T. Agnew who had a reputation as a relative party liberal and as a Greek-American was the first Vice President not of British Isles or Northern Europe decent.  Agnew became the administration’s designated attack dog going after liberals and the critical press with famous alliterative sound bites—i.e. “nattering nabobs of negativism.”  But while Nixon was slowly being dragged down by the Watergate scandal, Agnew was indicted for amazingly cheap and penny ante corruption as Baltimore County Executive and Governor even continuing to take cash as Vice President.  He was forced to resign on October 10, 1973 and became the first and only Vice President convicted of felony charges when he accepted a deal to plead guilty to a single count of tax evasion and money laundering on $29,000 in bribes as Governor.

Nixon and Ford.  As Nixon's presidency unraveled Ford became careful to not be photographed with the president.  Later he would pardon Nixon for any crimes he might have committed and deflected criticism for that by also extending amnesty to Vietnam Draft offenders. 

Nixon then chose House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford of Michigan—the first Vice President chosen under the terms of the 25th Amendment which allowed vacancies to be filled by appointment with the advice and consent of the Senate.  By this time Nixon himself was in deep trouble and facing possible impeachment.  Legend had it that he chose the affable but supposedly low wattage Ford because he believed that no one would drive him from office if the Congressman was in line to take the job.  In fact, Democratic Speaker of the House Carl Albert recalled that Congressional leaders from both houses and both parties, “gave him no choice” but to pick Ford.  When Nixon resigned seven months later in August of 1972 Ford became the first President to ascend to office without ever having run on a national ticket. 

The Accidental President got to appoint his own Vice President and shocked conservatives by naming liberal Republican icon former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller.  Rocky became the first VP to occupy the new official residence in Washington’s in the former Naval Observatory building.   In January 1979, two years after leaving office, Rockefeller died during a tryst with a 27 year old aide.

Although the pleasant Ford was a welcome change from the scowling and brooding Nixon, the weight of Watergate was too great to overcome.  He was defeated by Democratic Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter and his running mate, Senator Walter Mondale of Minnesota.  The Carter administration was burned with the OPEC oil Boycott, stagflation, crumbling rustbelt cities, that famous malaise, and finally the disastrous attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran.  

Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush at the 1984 Republican National Convention.  Bush was considered the most widely experienced Vice Presidential candidate since John Quincy Adams. 

Ex-movie star and conservative Governor of California Ronald Reagan swept the Carter Mondale team aside in 1980.  Transplanted New Englander cum Texas oilman George H.W. Bush, a former Congressman and CIA Director, was Regan’s pick for Vice President.  When Reagan was wounded by would-be assassin   John Hinckley, Jr.  Bush rushed back to Washington from Texas but never assumed official duties.   Subsequently he and Regan began an unusually close relationship having weekly lunches together he also accepted a number of high profile assignments from the President in the national security area as well as heading a waste in government taskforce that began to shore up his shaky relationship with party conservatives.  

New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro made a big splash as the first woman and the first ethnic major party nominee for Vice President but it was not enough to overcome Ronald Reagan's astonishing popularity.

In 1984 Reagan and Bush faced former Vice President Walter Mondale and his running mate New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman and first Italian candidate.  Although the earthy Ferraro bested the patrician Bush in their sole Vice Presidential debate, Reagan’s popularity coasted the ticket to an easy victory.

On July 13, 1985, Reagan underwent surgery to remove polyps from his colon which required him to undergo general anesthesia.  Bush became the first Vice President to temporarily assume the duties of President.  He was acting President for about eight hours during which time nothing much important happened.    

Almost as soon as the second Reagan term began, Bush started planning his own run for the presidency.  He raised money and courted party leaders.  He spent a lot of time trying to placate conservatives who were convinced he was a liberal in Texas clothing. In his convention acceptance speech in addition to his famous 1000 Points of Light, he touched on and endorsed most conservative hot button issues and uttered his equally famous “read my lips, no new taxes!” pledge.

When Dan Quayle misspelled potato on a classroom visit he was widely and probably unfairly mocked as stupid.

For his running mate he chose youthful and obscure Indiana Senator Dan Quayle, who quickly turned out to be a pretty boy light weight.  Many thought that Bush was nervous about being overshadowed by a better known or more accomplished choice.  He said he thought Quayle’s good looks would help him with women.  No matter, the pair had no trouble trouncing the inept campaign of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis and Texas Senator Lloyd Bensten.  Bush thus became the first Vice President elevated directly to the Presidency by election since Martin Van Buren.

Unfortunately for him, like Van Buren, he was destined to be a one termer.   

Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton burst onto the national scene with high energy enthusiasm, boyish charm, a reputation as a policy wonk, and a wife so politically talented herself that they were advertised as getting “two for the price of one.”  Despite bimbo eruptions and Hillary’s seeming derision of moms who stayed home and baked cookies, Clinton bested rivals including California Governor Jerry Brown to win the nomination.

He defied conventional wisdom in picking a running mate.  He did not balance the ticket but opted for another young moderate liberal Southerner, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee.  Clinton said that he resonated with Gore and felt comfortable.  Even their high power wives, Hillary and Tipper Gore seemed bonded.  Instead of sending his VP candidate separately out on the road as an attack dog saying things it was not polite for the Presidential nominee say, both couples hit the road together in a campaign coach road tour.   

Happy warriors, the Clintons and Gores on their campaign bus.

The close relationship continued in office which was cemented by an unusual two page written agreement outlining Gore’s role as a chief advisor to the president with weekly scheduled meetings and daily access as needed.  Gore was given several important assignments including work on streamlining government and cutting waste, encouraging technological innovation including the use of robotics in industry, and fostering the new information superhighway—the emerging internet.   He also became an expert on the environment and the administration’s point man on that internationally including being chief U.S. negotiator and then promoter of the Kyoto Accords.  He also loyally stood by Clinton through the Monica Lewinski scandal.

It was always clear that Gore was the anointed successor to Clinton.  In 2000 he easily swept aside a challenge from New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley and sailed to the nomination after winning every primary.  His Vice Presidential choice was Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, the first Jew on the national ticket of a major party, an ardent supporter of Israel, and a bridge to more conservative business and finance oriented Democrats.   

He faced the Governor of Texas George W. Bush, the feckless and lazy son of the former president.  The younger Bush had a hard time convincing red meat conservatives that he was not a secret liberal one-worlder like his father but eventually won over the religious right as a born again believer.  He wooed foreign policy hard liners by relying on former Wyoming Congressman and his father’s Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney as his top advisor.  When he had the nomination sewed up he appointed Cheney to lead a search for a running mate.  Cheney reported back that after looking under every rock in America the very most excellent and only choice was….Dick Cheney!   But first Cheney had to scramble to move back to Wyoming from Texas where he was a registered voter while serving as the CEO of the oil industry conglomerate Halliburton to comply with the Constitutional prohibition on the President and Vice President coming from the same state.

                            Dick Cheney, the Darth Vader of American politics. 

It was a notoriously hard fought election and polled dead even in Electoral College projections down to the wire.  On a long election night it all came down to slow reporting Florida where numerous problems and irregularities were reported.  Early in the morning the networks and wire services called Florida for Gore, only to walk that back.  Next, Bush was reported to have a narrow lead.  Problems with mysterious hanging chads on the ballot punch cards were reported in heavily Democratic areas.  There were days and weeks of drama before the Supreme Court stopped an ongoing Florida recount and effectively anointed Bush president.     Bush lost the popular vote to Gore but took the Electoral College 271 to 266.

Far from being cautious due to the narrow and questionable circumstances of his election, from day one Bush behaved like a President with an enormous popular mandate.  He was all public swagger.  He relied heavily on Cheney with whom he conferred daily and to whom he left many of the details of running the government while he reserved himself for “the big picture” and worked 4 hour days with afternoon naps.   Cheney viewed himself as a kind of Grand Vizier to an indolent Sultan.  After 9/11 Cheney, the hero of the neo-con movement, boldly pushed for and attack on Iraq and helped manufacture evidence of and hysteria over weapons of mass destruction.

Cheney’s seeming domination over the President continued well into the second term until Bush began to assert himself and ignored some of the Vice President’s advice.  Their relationship began to cool and became more strained when Cheney didn’t think the President was being aggressive enough in the ongoing war.  As President of the Senate, he even signed on to a lawsuit against the Department of Justice over gun regulation in the District of Columbia.  Still, he retained influence on the President to the end.

His reputation as the Darth Vader of American politics however, made it politically impossible for him to seek the Presidency himself.  Even his attempts to influence the 2008 Republican selection process against Arizona Senator John McCain were unsuccessful.  He spent much of his time after leaving office being a go-to voice for discredited aggressive neo-con policies and a reflexive critic of the Obama administration.

Tomorrow—Bringing the Vice Presidency up to date.