5.29.25

Our Constitution has held up well since 1789, but the president’s Pardoning Power is proving to be a mistake. Its obvious weakness from the beginning was the potential for corruption. A president might surreptitiously sell pardons to the highest bidder, and who could stop him? Bill Clinton, for example, was accused of such in his pardon of Marc Rich, pardoned for his tax evasion indictment after his ex-wife made contributions to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Foundation.

That kind of questionable behavior has been shrugged off over our history because it involved individuals operating with venal motives. Unsavory it might be, but it didn’t seem to endanger the Republic. That changed with Donald Trump’s across-the-board pardons of those who attacked the US Capitol in 2020 with the intention of overturning an election. It is now obviously possible for a president to absolve his followers of any crime, including insurrection and murder, in pursuing their cause. One may assume that this possibility is unique to Trump, but who says? We need to amend the constitution to eliminate this power, before it is used to pursue absolute rule.