The Missing Libby Pardon

I remain perplexed as to why George Bush, so concerned about his legacy that he folded on the US auto maker bailout, ignored the repercussions of not pardoning Lewis Libby.

I won't recite all the details of the flawed pursuit of injustice by US special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Suffice to say that the Democrat knew all along who "leaked," if you could ever call it that, Valerie Plame's CIA employment- it was a Colin Powell lieutenant at State.

Still, Fitzgerald pretended he didn't know, and proceeded to bully and browbeat anyone he chose in the alleged pursuit of the leaker.

Lewis Libby defended his President's war effort, and paid an unfair price by being made a political scapegoat, albeit via the courts.

Why didn't the President pardon him before leaving town yesterday? I'm not sure we'll ever know. It's seems so odd to me that a President who so clearly felt empathy with the families of many war casualties couldn't seem to find the depth of compassion for his own administration's staff, when unfairly hounded by opposition and the media.

The entire Plame affair was a joke. Plame's husband attempted to mislead the administration. Plame herself was already known to be a CIA employee well before Novack's column.

In the end, many journalistic reputations were tarnished. And the case against Libby boiled down to a difference of memories about some by then distant conversation between two people.

I'm just amazed that President Bush did not fully pardon Libby. It seemed like such an obvious case in which one of his team took an undeserved fall for acts which were, at the time, clearly in Bush's interests, and not at all illegal.

This missed opportunity for a pardon is, as the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Henninger wrote last week, a dangerous signal for future potential Washington aides, their spouses and families. It clearly shows how a single, tangential act by one person can bring them ruin, even though the act wasn't illegal or material.