America: Presidents, pardons and politics

The American political system is rather interesting, often amusing. Congressmen are elected for two years, senators for six years and Presidents and Vice Presidents for four years in a first term and another four years in a second term. The Supreme Court has nine justices, all of whom are appointed for life. Only if anyone among them resigns will a replacement be found for her or him. Besides, appointments to the Supreme Court are made by the President, usually on a partisan basis, depending on whether the individual in the Oval Office is a Democrat or Republican.

By that measure, the court now has six justices with a Republican bias, with the remaining three regarded as pro-Democrat. All appointments to the Supreme Court must be validated by the Senate. In other words, all nominees will need to be confirmed by the Senate before they can qualify as justices of the Supreme Court. Similar criteria are applied to the members of the cabinet appointed by the President. All cabinet nominees will be vetted and cleared by the Senate before they can take charge of their departments. Note, though, that if any cabinet member is dismissed by the President, the Senate does not and cannot ask why the dismissal has taken place.

In the United States (US), the Vice President has hardly any defined powers save only those granted him or her by the President. There have been Vice Presidents who have grumbled about the emptiness associated with the job, with one holder of the office complaining bitterly that it is not even worth a bucket of warm spit. But some Vice Presidents have been there who, once they succeeded to the presidency, went around asserting the authority they could not while in the shadow of the preceding President.

Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and George HW Bush are a few recent instances. Some Vice Presidents, aiming to succeed their Presidents, found themselves stymied by the reputations of the latter and in the end were unable to convince voters to elect them to the White House. Hubert Humphrey and Kamala Harris come to mind.

American democracy, the practice of it, will likely confound some people in other countries. Imagine a President who is guilty of manifest crimes and moves have been made to impeach him. If he is impeached, he will be drummed out of office. But if before that moment arrives he decides to resign, he might be tempted to pardon himself before leaving office. President Richard Nixon, who was forced by the Watergate scandal to resign in August 1974, could well have exercised the option of pardoning himself and so remain beyond justice. He chose not to take that road but resigned through handing over power to Vice President Gerald Ford.

Even as a fairly good number of Americans expected the law to deal with Nixon over his criminal acts, President Ford, terming what he called the end of a long nightmare and the beginning of a healing process, pardoned Nixon. He was roundly condemned for the act. Nixon lived, a free individual, for the remaining twenty years till his death in 1994.

One now has criticism heaped on President Joe Biden over the full pardon he has granted his son Hunter over the latter's conviction in some cases related to his past activities. Biden's move is a reversal of his earlier statements that as President he would not pardon his son, who would have been sentenced in a few days.

The President's change of mind has quickly made it obvious that it was the father in him rather than the leader of his country which assumed importance. Perhaps he had doubts about the fate of his son now that Donald Trump prepares to take charge of the White House come January. Perhaps Trump would not pardon Hunter Biden, naturally given his antipathy toward the Biden family.

The President-elect has called the President's decision a miscarriage of justice. But Trump conveniently ignored the fact that at the end of his first term as President, he exercised his powers to pardon a good number of people loyal to him and yet convicted of criminality and so had them go free. Steve Bannon, Elliott Broidy and Albert Pirro Jr were among those Trump granted pardon to in his final days in office in January 2021.

One must now go back in time twenty years ago, when President Bill Clinton, about to be succeeded by George W. Bush, pardoned the businessman Mark Rich in his final day in office. Much criticism was piled on Clinton for his move owing to the unsavoury reputation of Rich in the business arena. Clinton did not walk back from his decision. Mark Rich, despite the pardon, remained away from the United States till his death.

Politics in America has its flaws and yet there are the elements of it which impress people around the world. A President prepares to leave office while a new one readies himself for the job. The process of transition from an outgoing administration to an incoming one demonstrates democracy working at a charming level. Officials of the two administrations meet and smoothly work out the modalities through which the transfer of power can be ensured, leaving no gaps in the continuity of government.

The outgoing President and the President-elect meet for tea on inauguration day in the White House (Trump's refusal to maintain the tradition in 2021 was an aberration) before both of them ride to the Capitol together for the formal transfer of power. At noon, the new President is sworn into office by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and immediately his predecessor becomes a former President. In his inaugural speech, the new President begins by expressing his appreciation of the individual he is replacing in the White House, his words noted for the magnanimity they come steeped in. It is a happy day for all Americans.

The system matters. So does the message which is carried by every election in the United States. It is politics. It has its shortcomings, but it also underscores the power of the people, their inviolable right to elect to office the men and women they think will shape their destiny in the years ahead, until it is election time once more.

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