President Bush left town last week, trailing his reckless disregard for the law. He was off to Somalia, Saudi Arabia and Moscow, having pardoned a gaggle of pals and retainers for their involvement, alleged and proved, in the Iran-contra fiasco.
Bush’s Christmas Eve whitewash of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, the odious Elliot Abrams, a former assistant secretary of state, and four others brought a tear to the eye of those with a shared weakness for the White House-sponsored foreign policy escapades that were a feature of the Reagan-Bush years.
With a stroke of his pen, Bush swept away six years of investigative work, one felony conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, arguing that the actions of independent counsel Lawrence Walsh constituted “the criminalization of policy differences.”
Weinberger and company, however, were not charged with policy differences. They were accused of (or pleaded guilty to) lying to Congress-and, by extension, to the American people.
These days, with Congress in the foulest of odors, that argument generally rates a horselaugh from commentators and analysts who believe that foreign policy is best left to all the president’s men.
Happily, however, it appears the American public isn’t buying Bush’s logic or his lame attempt to cast the beneficiaries of his largesse as patriots.
A Gallup Poll for CNN last week showed that 54 percent of those asked disapproved of the president’s action. Only 27 percent of the respondents backed the pardons, while 19 percent had no opinion.
Nearly half of those surveyed last Monday, 49 percent, said the pardons were granted so that Bush could protect himself from legal difficulties or embarrassment over his own role in Iran-contra.
Giving Bush the best of it, you don’t have to believe that self-interest was a presidential motive to be appalled by this arrogant last act. His father-knows-best arguments are smug and shortsighted, and the rationalizations offered by his defenders-Cap Weinberger is a good guy, Iran-contra is old news-are pure sophistry.
The last time Washington heard the argument that a federal prosecution was too costly and protracted, for example, it was being made by admirers of former Washington Mayor Marion Barry, who after considerable time and expense, was run to ground on drug charges by two local U.S attorneys.
What the Iran-contra scandal and the subsequent cover-up were all about is simple and straightforward:
The illegal sale of arms to the terrorist state of Iran and the subsequent payoff to the Nicaraguan contras-also illegal-were actions carried out in the White House basement by zealots such as Oliver North and ideological rug merchants such as middleman Richard Secord, a retired Air Force general who brokered the arms-for-no-hostages deal.
This secret activity was aided and abetted by the likes of Abrams, one of many Reagan political appointees who purported to know what was best for Congress and the nation.
In the face of all that, Bush decided that the ruling class rules. Sworn to do otherwise, he chose to preserve and protect the Constitution until he got uncomfortable-or until the news media got bored with the story.
Lying to Congress, undermining the Constitution, governing without public accountability-in the gospel according to Bush, these are seen as “policy differences,” nettlesome matters to be set aside as the moving vans and Bill Clinton approach the city limits.
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Bush’s last act ought to ring down the curtain on another Washington fantasy that gained much currency in the Reagan-Bush era, the notion that the Congress is somehow the preeminent branch of government.
Over the last 12 years, we’ve been swamped by tin-eared conservative analyses of “the imperial Congress,” a point of view successfully exploited by Reagan and Bush.
For 12 years, the supposedly omnipotent Congress was useful as a place to assign blame for the economy, for the deficit, for crime and drugs and naughty pictures in art galleries, for all the missteps and outrages of the Reagan-Bush years.
The pardoning of the Iran-contra crowd, mostly for the crime of lying to Congress, provides an exclamation point for two administrations that sought to diminish the legislative branch and expand presidential warmaking powers.
Sadly, there was a time-right after his inaugural address nearly four years ago-when Bush sounded different.
In a speech to government employees in the first weeks of his presidency, he enjoined them to heed the spirit and the letter of the law and to take seriously the ethics requirements laid out for the executive branch.
Last Wednesday, with the straightest of faces, Bush told reporters, “Nobody is above the law.”