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On the campaign trail, voters are confronting a public conversation that’s never happened before: Republican presidential hopefuls are weighing in on whether they’d pardon Donald Trump after the 2024 elections. Some have endorsed the idea, while others have left the door open to the possibility.
But it’s not just White House aspirants engaged in the conversation. National Review’s Rich Lowry, a prominent conservative voice, wrote a piece for Politico last week, arguing that a pardon for Trump — in the event that the former president is convicted — would help “drain poison” from our political system.
Two other conservative commentators, Marc Thiessen and Danielle Pletka, made a similar pitch in The Washington Post.
In his 2020 victory speech, Joe Biden declared that “to everything there is a season — a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.” If he wants to deliver on his promise to heal the country, he could do so with one action: Pardon Donald Trump.
Pletka and Thiessen added that with a pardon for his predecessor, “Biden would be a true statesman. Sparing the country the ordeal of a trial would go a long way toward repairing the nation’s frayed political fabric.”
To be sure, this is a conversation with many dimensions. We could explore the dubious idea that our politics would benefit from less accountability for criminal wrongdoing. We could review Biden’s pre-election vows not to pardon Trump. We could explain that the former president is already facing charges in New York, with more charges likely in Georgia, and that even if the Democrat were inclined to rescue his predecessor, Biden lacks the authority to issue pardons for state crimes.
But in the Post opinion piece, the line that stood out for me was the idea that Biden has the power to spare the country “the ordeal of a trial.” This, of course, was a common refrain roughly a half-century ago: As Richard Nixon faced the very real possibility of a criminal trial, Gerald Ford, his Republican successor in the White House, pardoned the former president and said the move was ultimately intended to help the country, not Nixon.
But there’s something else that would spare the country “the ordeal of a trial”: a guilty plea.
In fact, the focus on Biden seems altogether misplaced. Trump took classified documents; Trump refused to give them back; and Trump was indicted for his alleged crimes. None of this has anything to do with the incumbent president.
It’s not unreasonable to think the Republican’s criminal proceedings — any of them, really — would generate political turmoil. But why put the pressure on Biden to curtail the process when it’s within Trump’s power to accept responsibility for his apparent actions?
If he did, it would open the door to a very different kind of conversation about a possible pardon.