BRAVE NEW WORLD NOTES
 |
Oh, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in ’t!
|
July 31, 2016
Unless there truly is a wise and merciful God, the citizens of the United States will wake up November 9th having elected either Mr Trump (left), or Mrs Clinton (second from left) to be the next President of the United States of America. Whomever is elected is likely to be crippled from the beginning by allegations of past crimes, not all of which can be dismissed as only partisan attacks. American politics will continue as the blood sport it became during the Robert Bork hearings in 1987. Our enemies will prosper; our friends will loose faith, and domestic tranquility will to erode.
But something that can be done. When Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace in 1974, the new president, Gerald Ford, pardoned him for any real or hypothetical federal crimes. With a stroke of the pen, he put "our national nightmare" behind us.
I propose that, whoever wins on November 8th, President Obama pardon him or her for any real of hypothetical federal crimes up to November 9th. With a stroke of his pen he can put the whole issue of Trump's and/or Hillary's corruption, criminal negligence, perjury, domestic violence, etc., behind us.
Remember the Bill Clinton presidency. Throughout his terms his opponents fought, ultimately successfully, for him to answer charges about sexual harassment of government employees while Governor of the State of Arkansas. Ultimately forced to answer in court, he lied. That lie led to appointment of a special prosecutor and, eventually, to an Impeachment trial in the Senate.
Do we want to let political opponents destroy either a Hillary Clinton presidency of a Donald Trump presidency using similar tactics? To oversimplify, if we elect a known crook to the presidency, should political opponents be able to use the courts to emasculate him/her? I don't think so.
I wrote the pardon, below, for Mrs. Clinton, because she is almost certainly going to be the winner. But, with a few words changed, it would work for Donald Trump as well. (The text is largely plagiarized from Gerald Ford's Nixon Pardon.)
