Clever Writing from Jacob Sullum Points to President Obama’s often Evident Lack of Soul — Demonstrating that Good Insight, Combined with Concise Writing, Can Pointedly Show Us How Things Really Are

20 August 2013

President Obama lacks moral fiber

This ethical character flaw appears to have caught Jacob Sullum’s eye — Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine:

[Attorney General Eric] Holder called upon Congress to reform mandatory minimum sentences and outlined steps the Justice Department will take in the meantime to avoid imposing "draconian" penalties on nonviolent, low-level drug offenders.

He said his boss, President Barack Obama, shares his concern about mass incarceration and harsh sentences.

[Yet —]

So far Obama, who has not otherwise been shy about pushing executive power to the limit (and beyond), has granted [only] 39 pardons . . . .

That is an amazingly stingy clemency record for a supposedly enlightened and progressive man who before he was elected repeatedly described our justice system as excessively punitive.

In fact, according to numbers compiled by P.S. Ruckman Jr . . . only three of Obama’s predecessors made less use of the clemency power (taking into account pardons as well as commutations) during their first terms:

George Washington, who probably did not have many petitions to address during the first few years of the nation’s existence;

William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia a month after taking office;

and James Garfield, who was shot four months into his presidency and died that September.

In other words, the only presidents with less impressive records for rectifying past wrongs were those, who either (a) had virtually no one to pardon or (b) fell over dead immediately after taking office.

Why is President Obama like this? — Political self-interest and a vacuum where his soul should be

If you want to understand why President Obama does what he does, always look to the direction in which political fallout will blow.

In the case of granting clemency in criminal matters, the President knows full well that — being both black and an accused liberal — that his pardoning of criminals on a more generous scale would merely encourage rightwing opponents’ characteristic cries for draconian punishments — especially when those fall predominantly on black people.

In the President’s view, he cannot be soft on crime, any more than he can in the nation’s alleged defense. His solution in both cases is to ignore contextual morality and run successfully with the ball of narcissistic political self-interest.

The moral? — Not a man to admire, in an ethical or leadership sense

Jacob Sullum’s mention of George Washington puts the President Obama’s lack of moral backbone into perspective. Washington walked away from chances to become America’s quasi-king. Commander in Chief Obama has done the reverse.

Narcissists with power are dangerous to rest of us.

Just ask the people rotting at Guantánamo or casually and collaterally eliminated by drone strikes. Not to mention the thousands upon thousands wrongly or excessively incarcerated in America’s prison system.

Rather than rectify wrongs, in the many ways that that a president can, President Obama perpetuates and magnifies them. As a matter of policy.

PeteFree.com

Clever Writing from Jacob Sullum Points to President Obama’s often Evident Lack of Soul — Demonstrating that Good Insight, Combined with Concise Writing, Can Pointedly Show Us How Things Really Are