The Marc Rich Pardon was a payoff – but to whom?
Everybody's talking about the Marc Rich pardon, but in all the newsprint (and bandwidth) devoted to this story the spin is that this is just the crowning example of Clinton's utter depravity: it's all supposed to be about money. But is it? Did the President of these United States, in his final hours in the White House, really pardon one of the top ten on Interpol's list of most wanted criminals – and set himself up for a storm of protest and opprobrium – all for a measly $450,000 contribution to his presidential library?
THE SHORT END
This is a question that seems to answer itself. Even if you add in the $1 million-plus given by Marc's ex-wife, Denise Rich, to the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Rodham Clinton's successful campaign for a Senate seat, it seems obvious that, in this supposed deal, the usually crafty Clinton somehow got the short end of the stick. Our ex-President is facing a veritable storm of criticism, some of the harshest coming from members of his own party, and even his biggest defenders are taken aback: they always knew that he was reckless and vulgar, but the sheer scale of this latest example of Bill Clinton's moral turpitude has disgusted even them. They didn't mind when the Lincoln bedroom was being rented out like a Motel 6, but selling presidential pardons to the highest bidder? It didn't go over very well, to say the least: why, even Joe Conason, who took Sidney Blumenthal's place as Clinton's journalistic champion when the latter went on the White House payroll, hung his head in reflected shame at the actions of the man he has so consistently defended:
"The Rich pardon will never reflect well on the former president. Exercising an extraordinary power that ought to be reserved for the repentant and rehabilitated, he rushed to a bad judgment that benefited a very bad man. Yet the true motives behind that decision may be far less damning than whatever Clinton's most demented detractors want us to believe."
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