THE POWER OF PRESIDENTIAL PARDONS

The executive power to pardon, dating as it does from the powers of kings, is among the most interesting in our governmental system.

The Framers of our Constitution placed it there, alone and majestic, subject to virtually no check save that of the ballot box, the limits of reasoned judgment and the chief executive's own conscience.

Given the political consequences that can flow from its exercise, pardons are frequently expected in the waning days of an administration, not infrequently at Christmastime, when the president or state governor will no longer face the voters.

Pardons can be granted in advance of trial and even in advance of any charges being brought.

Like all powers, this one has been used for good and ill.

Some 25 years ago, there was a governor of Tennessee who was prosecuted and sent to prison for literally selling pardons as the hours wound down on his ignominious administration.

Some pardons have come at great cost to the president who granted them.

In this category is the Nixon pardon granted by former President Gerald Ford in September 1974. This grant of clemency undoubtedly worsened an already disastrous political environment for Ford's party that fall, contributing to the catastrophic GOP election losses two months later.

Many historians also believe it also cost Ford a full, four-year term in the White House, which he sought and narrowly lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Many also believe it will be seen in history as the right thing to do, in order to close the books on a dark period and move on.

Now come the Clinton pardons, and the first round looks pretty good.

One went to former House Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, who served some time for running afoul of the laws governing Congress and the handling of campaign money.

Another went to former Missouri House Speaker Bob Griffin, the longtime statehouse power who did most of a four-year sentence for taking money from lobbyists. Griffin saw his life ruined and his wife, who battled cancer during his absence, rendered incapacitated by a devastating stroke with no one to care for her.

Such acts of clemency, evoked by the milk of human kindness, and used only after the miscreant has in fact served some time, strike us as proper.

Then there is the question of further pardons that might be issued by this president for such as his Whitewater friend Susan McDougal and disgraced former Justice official Webster Hubbell. Whether these belong in a different category than those above we will leave for our readers to decide, but there will always be those who see them as part of the continuing, and largely successful, Clinton coverup-and-hush-money operation that has so damaged our country.

In still another category is the possibility of a pardon for this president, should he be indicted after leaving office for his repeated and brazen acts of perjury and obstruction of justice during the Monica Lewinsky debacle.

We wouldn't be opposed to such a pardon by incoming president Bush, on the grounds that it can almost never be a good thing to see a president convicted of a crime and jailed following his term.

Still, there will be many among us who, while supporting clemency for this president, would like to see this done only after a trial. This is, after all, the defense offered by nearly every Democratic senator, representative and friendly media maven during the impeachment saga.

It would be the right thing to do.