Oh cool. Sounds great. ...Remind me what happened last time we did that?

(Snark aside, I *did* read the article and I have some thoughts.) https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/1352806798030499841

Rauch actually brings up the Nixon pardon and says that history vindicated Ford's decision. That's... a generous reading considering how much the last four years have caused a reassessment of that fateful decision, and how it led to a chain of impunity (Iran-Contra, etc.)

Rauch makes the same argument Ford did about Nixon, that in the interest of the nation, Biden should pardon Trump. That prosecuting a president is a line that shouldn't be crossed, that it could open a Pandora's Box and irreparably politicise the judicial process.

From Ford's 1974 address on the Nixon pardon: "ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarised in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged..."

People bitterly protested this as, to use a legal term, bullshit. And they were right to do so. But we have the benefit of hindsight that they lacked. We've seen what the blessing of a pardon does, what it permits, what it signals. That the president *is* above the law.

But Rauch's argument is odder still because he says that a federal prosecution would *hinder* inquiries and other investigations, including at the state level, all of which he *endorses.* Don't those investigations run all the same spiritual risks as a criminal trial?

But beyond that, these pragmatics aside, a pardon grants the *impression* of impunity, whatever its practical limitations. And that impression is, itself, devastating and corrosive to all the institutions Rauch wants to preserve.

I will grant that Rauch is right to note the risks of Trump turning a criminal trial into a hyper-politicised partisan circus. But Trump forces these kinds of confrontations, none of which is ameliorated by backing down. To concede to him only grants permission to his imitators.

There are no good options here. But we know from our history that Nixon's pardon swept a lot of evil under the rug, and that it created a damning precedent of Executive Branch impunity that has expanded dangerously, that *gave us* Trump in the first place.

To pardon him is to offer the most vain of prayers that it will, somehow, not happen again.

Instead, we need accountability.