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Presidents Don't Prosecute Their Predecessors
Real Clear Politics
by David Shribman
5/3/2016
Excerpt:
When Thomas Jefferson succeeded John Adams, a contest that put America on such a different footing that it is remembered today as the Revolution of 1800, he did not seek to put members of the Adams administration on trial. When Warren G. Harding followed Woodrow Wilson in the White House in 1921, he did not put Edith Galt Wilson on trial for usurping the office of the presidency after Wilson's stroke. When Bill Clinton ended a dozen years of Republican rule in 1993, he did not try to prosecute Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush for deceiving the Congress over the Iran-Contra affair.
In the span of 220 years there have been 43 changes of presidents, and always this rule, never written but never broken, has prevailed: Presidents let their predecessors be judged by the merciless jury of history, not by the temporal verdicts of courts.
Commentators and historians often apply a facile shorthand to describe the fundamental principle (and surpassing greatness) of the American political system: Here the transfer of power from one party to another, or from one president to another, is accomplished by ballots, not bullets. That shorthand has an unspoken corollary: Here presidents and parties do not criminalize the policies of their predecessors.
That is why the nascent effort to investigate and perhaps prosecute members of the Bush administration is a dramatic departure from American tradition. It may be true that the Bush administration supported anti-terrorism policies that were deplorable, immoral -- and ultimately ineffective. But is the writing of legal briefs on highly controversial, contestable and, even now, unresolved questions of law criminal?
..................................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ast_96313.html
Real Clear Politics
by David Shribman
5/3/2016
Excerpt:
When Thomas Jefferson succeeded John Adams, a contest that put America on such a different footing that it is remembered today as the Revolution of 1800, he did not seek to put members of the Adams administration on trial. When Warren G. Harding followed Woodrow Wilson in the White House in 1921, he did not put Edith Galt Wilson on trial for usurping the office of the presidency after Wilson's stroke. When Bill Clinton ended a dozen years of Republican rule in 1993, he did not try to prosecute Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush for deceiving the Congress over the Iran-Contra affair.
In the span of 220 years there have been 43 changes of presidents, and always this rule, never written but never broken, has prevailed: Presidents let their predecessors be judged by the merciless jury of history, not by the temporal verdicts of courts.
Commentators and historians often apply a facile shorthand to describe the fundamental principle (and surpassing greatness) of the American political system: Here the transfer of power from one party to another, or from one president to another, is accomplished by ballots, not bullets. That shorthand has an unspoken corollary: Here presidents and parties do not criminalize the policies of their predecessors.
That is why the nascent effort to investigate and perhaps prosecute members of the Bush administration is a dramatic departure from American tradition. It may be true that the Bush administration supported anti-terrorism policies that were deplorable, immoral -- and ultimately ineffective. But is the writing of legal briefs on highly controversial, contestable and, even now, unresolved questions of law criminal?
..................................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ast_96313.html