I am still not up to writing long posts, but after reading Allen Hunt's article on TH I have to comment. In his haste to exonerate Huckabee, for whatever reason, Mr. Hunt wrote a post that not only exonerates Huckabee, but could also be used to exonerate Dukakis, or to justify any liberal social program, including each and every soft-on-crime proposition ever offered, as well as the foreign policies of Obama, and, well, anything at all.

You see, he is arguing that Huckabee might have made a mistake, but a chief executive has to take a risk on redemption, and so mistakes will happen. And he got it right more often than wrong (as far as we know), so let's just forget those four bodies, ok?

Think about this proposition a bit. Then let us say "Well, we need to have faith in other countries. Maybe Iran IS just looking for a cheap source of energy. Let's not do anything rash, take a chance on trust, and, well if Israel ends up a smoking hole in the ground, or Washington DC, well accidents will happen."

Do you see why this may be a bad approach?

I have never been a huge fan of pardons. Most often they are used to replace the deliberation of the jury with the will of the mob in high profile cases, or to pay off political cronies when a chief executive is on the way out. Other times they are used to excuse crimes committed by those whose political bias executives share, and, in a few rare cases, to address cases the executive sees as miscarriages of justice, rightly or wrongly. But, as you can see from that list, the vast majority are nothing I would choose to call valid, and, in those few cases where the executive tries to second guess the courts, I have to question, given our system, heavily weighted toward defense, with countless appeals, whether or not a busy chief executive, reading testimony without the advantage of witnessing the actual trial, is in a position to really make a better decision than the jury, the judges, and the appellate courts.

Not that I suggest the executive should be deprived of this power. As I wrote in "Making the President Irrelevant", the executive always has the ability not to enforce the law, and that includes the judgment of courts. It is yet another way the power of the state is checked, allowing one branch to refuse to enact the will of another. But, if we accept that the executive can choose not to execute, then we also are obligated to evaluate how that choice was used. And, in this case, it seems Huckabee allowed some sort of "compassion" to overcome common sense. And if we are going to hold Willie Horton against Dukakis, and all the harms of revolving door policies against those who enacted them, then we need to hold this against Huckabee.

Only by holding executive accountable for bad decisions, both to enforce the law and to choose to not enforce, only then will they do their best to behave responsibly. Doing anything less would be to allow them to act without consequence, and the outcome of that should be obvious to anyone.

POSTSCRIPT

Mr. Allen argues that just criticizing Huckabee will make end all pardons. That has to be the most hyperbolic statement I have read in some time. First, pardons are too politically useful for something simple like criticism to end them. But even ignoring that, does anyone think all pardons will end because Huckabee was criticized for freeing a man later turned quadruple murderer? That is akin to saying jailing reckless drivers for vehicular homicide will cause no one to drive. Huckabee made a mistake, and mistakes have consequences. Even if he made it honestly, he still must pay the price.

I thought conservatives were agreed that eliminating consequences is what got us into many of our present messes? So why is TH running this idiotic column arguing that making Huckabee pay the price for his bad decision is wrong, and we should let him off because his heart was in the right place?

POSTSCRIPT II

For that matter, I challenge anyone to argue if it were Kerry, or Gray Davis, rather than Huckabee, that Mr. Allen would be making the same argument. The same way Huckabee was forgiven big spending, and forgiven expansive government, even forgiven what appeared to be simple abuse of the powers of his office, Huckabee seems to be getting a pass on this. I can't tell why, not knowing Mr. Allen's bias. Some, usually libertarian types, forgive him everything, even a strongly authoritarian "social conservative" agenda, because they just love the FairTax. And on the other end of the spectrum, social conservatives love him because he has implied, though not stated, he is willing to use state power to bully the immoral. And so, Huckabee gets a pass on many, many wrongs. It was troubling in 2007/2008 and it is troubling now. Though it is nice to see the Huckabee boosters on the defensive in 2010, as it bodes ill for Huckabee's chances in 2012. Without him in the race, the FairTax zealots may recover their senses and pick a more traditional libertarian-conservative candidate.

(I have a suspicion a handful of Huckabee boosters will be less than happy with me for writing this. On the other hand, it may make the Ron Paul fanciers forgive me my criticisms of their candidate last week, as they seem to dislike Huckabee as much as I do.)