By Brian Carnell

Monday, January 22, 2001

When the list of people Bill Clinton pardoned on his last day in office was made public, a number of prominent names were not present including Leonard Peltier. Peltier was convicted in the shooting deaths of two FBI agents; his supporters maintain he never received a fair trial.

The list did include some interesting names which highlight the basic operating principle of Clinton's years as president -- above all, cowardice and hypocrisy. For the last eight years the Clinton administration pursued the Drug War with a zeal that threatened to make the Reagan administration look like it was soft on drugs. Prosecutions, convictions, and rhetoric soared.

But in his last days in office the president has the gall to turn around and pardon his own brother along with a few token folks who had egregiously long sentences even by drug war standards, as if this weak response will somehow lessen the judgment history will lodge for his role in furthering the drug war.

At least in the drug war, Clinton's legacy will be lasting even among Democrats. The confirmation hearings for John Ashcroft as Attorney General are as interesting for what they didn't focus on. Democrats were quick to pounce on Ashcroft's statements to The Southern Partisan and his anti-abortion views, but Ashcroft's extremist views on the drug war were glossed over.

Among other things, Ashcroft was the prime mover of a Senate bill that would have made it illegal to post instructions on the Internet describing how to produce methamphetamine. That bill passed the Senate, but got shot down in the House of Representatives. If Ashcroft is confirmed, as it looks like he will be, the Bush administration will in all likelihood surpass even Clinton in its anti-drug zeal.

Clinton could have helped change that culture, but he was always obsessed with momentary political shifts, which almost certainly explains the failure to pardon Peltier. The lack of Peltier pardon might be interesting if there were even a slim possibility that it was made on the merits (or lack thereof) of the case. Realistically, though, as with the handful of drug pardons he handed out, the decision whether to pardon Peltier was probably made based on political considerations about Clinton's legacy rather than whether or not Peltier received a fair trial.

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