"Bush is popular among Cubans in Florida (winning 80 percent of the Cuban vote in 2002), and popular among non-Cuban Hispanics (56 percent in 2002, equaling the 56 percent he won statewide). As a longtime supporter of Israel,[28] Bush also maintains a significant connection to Florida's Jewish voters. He was endorsed in his two winning Governor races by a national Jewish publication, and won 44 percent of the state's Jewish vote in the 2002 Governor's race.[29] Many black voters support his focus on public education and parental choice in education, and a number of Black Republican clubs have risen in Florida.[30] In his re-election in 2002, Bush surprised critics by winning[31] the white female vote in the swing-voting battleground of Central Florida's I-4 corridor. Most recently, he has reached out extensively to Florida's Haitian community."

Constitutional Scholar; Jonathan Turley

Historically, presidents have issued pardons to undo unjust or overlong sentences, or as an expression of mercy.

Until recent decades, it was the norm for presidents to issue hundreds of individual commutations and pardons each year.

But the president can also grant a preemptive "blanket pardon" before charges are even filed for any crime or injustice.

"The classic pardon is for an identifiable individual. Here, {with a blanket pardon} you are talking about potentially thousands of people involved in illegal activities," explained Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington Law School.

A pardon of this variety, Turley said, "would allow a president to engage in massive illegality {during his presidency} and then generally pardon the world for any involvement in the unlawful activity."

Previous blanket pardons have occurred most frequently after insurrections or wars. In founding father, Alexander Hamilton's words, "to restore the tranquility of the commonwealth."

President Andrew Johnson had pardoned the soldiers of the Confederacy and President Jimmy Carter issued a broad amnesty for Vietnam War-era draft dodgers. These amnesties permitted large numbers of troops to return to a normal life.

However, "preemptive pardons" have "less justification" in individual cases as the criminal justice system is deprived of its responsibility to investigate criminal wrongdoing. The victims are also denied the sense of closure that only criminal prosecutions can bring. And the general public loses the opportunity to examine the evidence before it.

And some presidential pardons have frequently been controversial.

Carter's Vietnam pardon, issued on his first day in the White House, reopened old wounds while it healed others. Ronald Reagan pardoned the FBI agents convicted for conducting illegal break-ins in the investigation of the radical Weather Underground.

Most famously, President Gerald Ford probably lost his 1976 presidential election because of his preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon, two years earlier.

BUSH PARDONS?

The growing talk in Washington today is that President Bush may be considering an unprecedented "blanket pardon" for people involved in his administration, and specifically in Bush´s brutal interrogation policies.

As we speak, advisors to President-Elect Obama are pressing ahead with possible plans for a "nonpartisan commission to investigate alleged abuses under Bush".

The Obama plan, would emphasize fact-finding investigation over prosecution. It is gaining currency in Washington and the plan would not rule out future prosecutions, but it would delay a decision on that matter until all essential facts can be unearthed.

Between the time necessary for the investigative process and the daunting array of policy problems that Obama will face upon taking office, any decision on prosecutions probably would not come until a second Obama presidential term, should there be one.

The proposed commission, similar to a previous Democratic proposal, would examine a broad scope of activities, including various possible illegal actions, but with a focus on detainee detention, torture and extraordinary "rendition". (The practice of snatching suspected terrorists off the street and whisking them off to a third country for abusive interrogations.)

The commission might also pry into the claims by the White House, widely rejected by experienced interrogators, that "abusive interrogations are an effective and necessary intelligence tool". Other areas of wrong-doing by the Bush Administration would also be considered, but detainee torture and the interrogation issues would be the first priority.

A common view among those involved with the talks is that any early effort to prosecute Bush administration officials would likely devolve quickly into ugly and fruitless partisan warfare.

Another view is that even if Obama decided he had the appetite for it, prosecutions in this arena are problematic at best. A series of memos from the Bush Justice Department had approved the harsh interrogation tactics and Congress had changed the War Crimes Act in 2006, making prosecutions of individuals involved in interrogations more difficult.


On the other hand, a commission empowered by Congress would have the authority to compel witnesses to testify and even to grant immunity in exchange for information. Should a particularly ugly picture emerge, the option of prosecutions would still theoretically be on the table for later consideration.

"People have called for criminal investigations," one person familiar with the talks stated as the plans got under way. Another person participating in the talks confirmed that some people felt strongly that the commission would just amount to a "pile of bullxxxt" and that "Bush officials should be immediately prosecuted to the full extent of the law".

A POSSIBLE BUSH RESPONSE?

Further complicating the Obama team's planning is uncertainty about what President Bush might do.

On the one hand, a blanket pardon for anyone involved in the interrogations could be viewed by the public as a tacit admission of colossal guilt. This, after years of Bush´s public denial, which would do nothing to help the president´s already tarnished legacy.

Yet, "if" the current administration fears an investigation will follow Bush out the door in January, they may not want to leave his aides and officials exposed to potentially revealing criminal proceedings. Bush might seek to frame a blanket pardon as a preemptive strike against partisan retribution.

WHAT DO THE SCHOLARS SAY?

Constitutional scholars say a pardon of this kind would be an unprecedented move. The prospective pardon of not just individuals but entire categories of people, perhaps numbering in the thousands, for carrying out the president's orders which the White House has specifically argued all along were legal.

As with Professor Turley, those scholars agree however, that "Article II of the Constitution" also gives Bush much latitude: "The president can do with the pardoning power whatever he wants," explained University of Wisconsin Law School professor Stanley Kutler. "It is complete and plenary unto itself."

A blanket pardon from Bush could cover, for example, anyone who participated in, had knowledge of, or received information about Bush's programs during the so-called war on terror. Not only are there potentially too many people to name without risking missing somebody, some of the names are presumably classified.

There are, in fact, some constitutional scholars who believe a pardon might actually facilitate more complete participation in a fact-finding commission, by removing the threat of looming liability. "Holding people accountable is certainly nice, but in terms of healing the country and moving forward, so is actually getting a clear picture of what happened and letting the public make an informed decision," said Kermit Roosevelt at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. "If we had a pardon followed by something like a truth and reconciliation commission, that might not be such a bad outcome." (Roosevelt also represents a detainee held at Guantánamo.)

The politics of a blanket pardon could so blemish Bush's legacy that some doubt he would go so far. "A pardon is an admission of guilt," noted Donald Kettl, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Bush has argued for years that his programs were perfectly legal. With a pardon, Kettl said, Bush is essentially saying, "Gee, maybe we did do something wrong."

As with Presidents Johnson and Carter, it is not entirely unprecedented for a past president to grant a blanket pardon based on a category of behavior. Even the first US President, George Washington, pardoned all of the participants in the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion.

But past blanket pardons were designed to foster reconciliation, handed out to categories of individuals who acted on their own conscience, rather than the president's own allegedly illegal orders. "This would be a different deal completely," explained Kettl. "It would be anticipating that people thought the official policy of the administration was wrong."