it's now been one month since inauguration day, & you still can't flip past cnn without seeing chris matthews flip out about "the latest" clinton scandal (which happened over a month ago now, & has virtually no relevance to the world anymore because he's no longer in office). in contrast, if you want to see discussion about what gw bush (who is currently acting president) is doing, you might have to flip over to cspan.

the scandal in question, of course, is clinton's pardon of marc rich, accused of mail fraud & tax evasion in 1983, now supposedly "living in the lap of alliterative luxury" in switzerland. clinton says that among many other reasons, he chose to pardon rich at the specific request of many important israeli officials, in light of rich's many charitable contributions. critics say that it's all dirty tricks, that rich's ex-wife bought his pardon using contributions to the democratic national committee & more. i say "what's the difference? so what?"

from the backlash you'd think clinton had pardoned tim mcveigh or ted kaczynski. but no, rich isn't a convicted mass murderer; at worst he's a self-absorbed white-collar criminal, & at best he's a misunderstood, persecuted philanthropist. either way, what does it matter? the presidential pardon is a long-established tradition, an extra perk of the presidency that gives a president a little leeway to grant mercy on convicted criminals who've paid their dues. so what if clinton's decision to pardon this guy was a little iffy? it's done now, clinton's out of office, & there's not much anyone can do about it except throw a pointless fit. it's not the first pardon of questionable ethics. what are they going to do, revoke the presidential pardon power?

republicans have hounded clinton with a dare i say personal vendetta since the day he was first elected back in '92. in fact it was probably around this time (a month after inauguration) back in '93 when we first started seeing all those "impeach clinton" bumper stickers... back when he hadn't had enough time to even do anything impeachworthy yet! so every accounting book error, miniscandal, & pseudoscandal ever since has made the front page, but none of them ever stuck for long. so they hired an "independent counsel" & gave him the job of poring through the president's garbage & finding anything, anything at all, that would serve as ammunition.

eventually they practically forced clinton into lying about marital infidelity. they used that to impeach him, despite the fact that they knew even then that the majority of the american people did not want clinton removed from office. even that didn't get them anywhere. finally, now that clinton has left office, it's like they're all thinking "this is our last chance to ruin clinton's life!" not only that, but by drawing so much attention back to clinton, they're keeping all new-prez bush's flubs out of the spotlight.

never mind that bush has already gone against his promises of "unifying" & "bipartisanship" by proposing a large tax cut which targets the top 1%, or by appointing a religious fanatic like john ashcroft as attorney general (anyone who can accept without reservation the idea that ashcroft, who has made his career with his strong moral stands against abortion etc, can easily enforce laws that he strongly disagrees with is seriously deluded. even my devout catholic pro-life mother knows that's a conflict of interests. if his moral code is half as strong as he says, there's no way he can in good conscience act against his strongest beliefs day in day out. that's asking him to be the ultimate hypocrite). never mind that bush is already pushing us toward war with his ideas about an anti-ballistic missile shield (which nearly every other country in the world is dead against) or his recent bombing of iraq (whose citizens have been starved & diseased for a decade now, after bush's father's failed war 10 years ago). never mind that media recounts of the vote in florida indicate that had the official recounts continued & not been halted by an obviously-biased supreme court, gore would be president now. it's not important what our current president is doing, the republicans seem to be saying: let's focus instead on this guy who's past his peak & who can never again have a direct influence on national policy.

contrast this against what was one of the most-controversial pardons ever, ford's pardon of nixon. there was an impeachment there too, one based not on petty "who slept with whom" accusations but on legitimate misuse of presidential power. nixon actually would've been removed from office, too, but he took the smart road out & resigned before that could happen. ford's first act as president was to issue a pardon. was that more wholesome than the marc rich pardon? or was it just a case of wealthy boys looking after their buddies? i think we all know the answer. nixon's crimes had just happened, & were in no doubt, yet he was immediately absolved of guilt. marc rich's alleged crimes (& there is confusion over whether he really did anything wrong or not) happened more than 18 years ago. nixon had done nothing to indicate that he had changed or deserved mercy (aside from biting the bullet & resigning); marc rich has given millions of dollars to israeli & other somewhat charitable causes.

clinton was far from a perfect president. we can all admit that. but he's not the president anymore. republicans had 8 years to cause him all kinds of grief, & they did so at every opportunity. so let's call it a rest now, eh? we will never know for sure why clinton decided to pardon marc rich, so why waste taxpayer dollars on yet another clinton investigation? we have a new president who is at least as controversial & widely-hated (in fact, according to reports, bush's inauguration had the most protesters since nixon), one who is resting in relative security, his decisions & mistakes being ignored because of a conveniently-timed witchhunt against his predecessor. is it all, as i suspect, a sham to make bush look better by focusing on clinton's mistakes? we'll probably never know that either. so let's just get over it. the time for clinton scandals is past. now is the time for bush scandals.