Unfortunately it is also used by all presidents to pardon their buddies.
I may have missed it: did the Obama Administration pardon a single friend or relative of the Obamas'? Or a single person connected to the administration?
I believe that Obama tried to ensure that the pardon process was beyond reproach. (Some people may disagree with who was pardoned, but the process did not appear to be corrupt in any way.)
Obama ensured that there was a process set up that filtered the pardon requests, so that no hint of political- or personal-favors could intrude, no possible quid-pro-quo, etc.
Yes, Clinton's pardoning of his brother-in-law was pretty bad. Trump's pardoning of his entire slate of co-conspirators and personal associates looks worse, to me personally.
Aren’t pardons generally given post-conviction? How can it be a tool to protect against an incoming administration if the victim has been convicted under the current one?
Unless you mean that in the future, when the outgoing’s party is back in power they can issue pardons. That doesn’t seem to be consistent with the trend that many pardons are issued on a President’s last day in office (and not his first).
It's not an endorsement of corruption, rather an acknowledgement that the price of comity includes some corruption. This seems like an anti-fragile mechanism to me: in exchange for the inevitable but relatively minor injustice of corrupt pardons, we can pre-empt behavior that could lead to all-out political war that destroys the entire system.
I agree, but that's the boolean. There's probably a reasonable float or int description that allows a more nuanced comparison of exactly how much any president did this.
That's not why it exists. Pardon power exists so the President has a way to declare peace on behalf of the government with an individual. It has nothing to do with transfer of power. It's to ensure that the President has an out to call off the wolves of the rest of the government and put a matter behind us.
> Unfortunately it is also used by all presidents to pardon their buddies.
Which is still less corrupt than pardoning your cocaine trafficking, drunk driving brother: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Clinton_Jr.#Conviction_a...
(An amusing detail from the newspaper reports was that Bill Clinton had authorised the sting operation that resulted in his brother's arrest during his tenure as Govenor of Arkansas). (Ref: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/23/us/clinton-pardons-brothe... )