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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| The Libby Pardon Shows Once Again that Trump Is a Stand-Up Guy |
| 2018-04-16 |
| Scooter Libby, VP Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was thrown to the jaws of the Washington Swamp by the George W. Bush administration for allegedly lying to federal investigators about the unmasking of Valerie Plame. As Arthur Herman wrote in Commentary, an overzealous special prosecutor framed Libby, a dedicated public servant (and a friend of this writer). Now President Donald J. Trump has given him a long-overdue pardon--something that President George W. Bush refused to do, despite Cheney's heartfelt pleas. ...Why didn't Bush pardon Libby? Joseph Bottum said it back in 2007: "The case was a political trial from the beginning--and the opponents lined up in a properly political way. One side wanted to use Scooter Libby as a step ladder to reach up and pull down someone higher. The other side wanted to make sure that the case ended with Libby." W. washed his hands and turned his back on Libby because he feared that a pardon might make him look complicit in some way. Bush was at no legal risk, to be sure. He just worried about the optics. The psychiatric term for such behavior according to DSM-IV is "chickenshit." Donald J. Trump doesn't care about the optics. He does whatever he thinks best, and he doesn't care who tells him not to (unless, of course, it is Defense Secretary Mattis telling him about the limitations and risks to military action). To the Never-Trumpers who think that our president is a lout and a ruffian who cares nothing for decent standards of behavior, I say: What you call "decent standards of behavior" have become so perverse, so cowardly, so hypocritical and so self-serving that only an outsider, a "lout," a "ruffian" with contempt for your standards will have the courage to do the right thing. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |