| The previous day I had announced that I would not travel to North Korea to close the agreement banning its production of long-range missiles, saying I was confident the next administration would consummate the deal based on the good work that had been doneI hated to give up on ending the North Korean missile programWe had stopped their plutonium and missile testing programs, and had refused to deal with them on other issues without involving South Korea, setting the stage for Kim Dae Jungs sunshine policyKims brave outreach offered more hope for reconciliation than at any time since the end of the Korean War, and he had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for itMadeleine Albright had made a trip to North Korea and was convinced that if I went, we could make the missile agreementAlthough I wanted to take the next step, I simply couldnt risk being halfway around the world when we were so close to peace in the Middle East, especially after Arafat had assured me that he was eager for an agreement and had implored me not to go
Besides the Middle East and the budget, a surprising number of other things had happened in the last thirty daysI marked the seventh anniversary of the Brady bill with the announcement that it had now prevented 611,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers from buying handguns; observed World AIDS Day at Howard University with representatives from twenty-four African countries, saying that we had cut the death rate by more than 70 percent in the United States and now had to do much more in Africa and other places where the disease was raging; unveiled the design of my presidential library, a long, chanel quilted cheap handbag narrow glass-and-steel bridge to the twenty-first century jutting out above the Arkansas River; announced an effort to increase immunizations among inner-city children, whose vaccination rates remained far below the national average; signed my last veto, of a bankruptcy reform bill that was much harsher to lower-income debtors than to wealthy ones; issued strong regulations to protect the privacy of medical records; hailed Indias decision to maintain its cease-fire in Kashmir and Pakistans upcoming withdrawal of troops along the Line of Control; and announced new regulations to reduce unhealthy diesel fuel emissions from trucks and busesTogether with the year-old emissions standards on cars and SUVs, the new rules ensured that by the end of the decade, new vehicles would be up to 95 percent cleaner than those now on the road, preventing many thousands of cases of respiratory illness and premature death
Three days before Christmas, I granted executive clemency or commutations of sentences to sixty-two peopleI hadnt given many pardons in my first term and was anxious to deal with the backlogPresident Carter had granted 566 clemencies in four yearsPresident Ford had granted 409 in two and a half yearsPresident Reagans total was 406 in his eight yearsPresident Bush had granted only 77, and they included the controversial pardons of the Iran-Contra figures, and the release of Orlando Bosch, an anti-Castro Cuban the FBI believed to be guilty of multiple murders
My philosophy on pardons and commutations of sentences, developed while I was attorney general and governor of Arkansas, was conservative when it came to shortening dolce and gabbana sentences and liberal in granting pardons for nonviolent offenses once people had served their sentences and spent a reasonable amount of time afterward as law-abiding citizens, if for no other reason than to give them their voting rights backThere was a pardon office in the Justice Department that reviewed applications and made recommendationsI had been receiving them for eight years and had learned two things: the people over at Justice took too long to review the applications, and they recommended denial in almost all the cases
I understood how it had happenedIn Washington everything was political and almost every pardon was potentially controversialIf you were a civil servant, the only surefire way to stay out of trouble was to say noThe Justice Departments pardon office knew that they couldnt get heat for delaying cases or for recommending denials; a constitutional function vested in the President was slowly being transferred into the bowels of the Justice Department
For the last several months, we had been pushing Justice hard to send us more files, and they were doing betterOf the fifty-nine people I pardoned and the three whose sentences I commuted, most were people whod made a mistake, served their time, and become good citizensI also issued pardons in the so-called girlfriend casesThey involved women who had been arrested because their husbands or boyfriends had committed an offense, usually drug-relatedThe women were threatened with long sentences, even if they hadnt themselves been directly involved in the crime, unless they provided testimony against their menThose who refused or didnt know enough to be tiffany |
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