The idea of a president’s pardoning himself eluded the delusion and ambition of even Richard Nixon. Bill Clinton forswore it on the edge of possible impeachment. Self-exculpation offends not only the United States Constitution but also the Magna Carta.
Almost exactly eight hundred years before Donald J. Trump decided to stand for the American presidency, the English monarch, King John I, signed a document which installed into English law and then into Anglo American jurisprudence such principles as due process and trial by jury of one’s peers. Most importantly of all, the Magna Carta established the supreme concept that THE SOVEREIGN LEADER OF A STATE IS NOT ABOVE THE LAW. I’m not a lawyer or a scholar of any sort, but anyone who clawed his or her way through the endless pages of freshman English History knows that. It is inherent in our concepts of democracy.
The Magna Carta’s principles were among the most important of our founding fathers’ building blocks for our nation’s Constitution. They fully understood that its insistence on a sovereign leader’s not being above the law was imperative to any successful democracy. And that has been the case over the past eight centuries. Anything less, in fact, becomes dictatorship. The Devine Right of Kings was brought up short on the fields of Runnymede. Our country’s most recent electoral college conducted itself as the rules demanded and a nation complied. The Magna Carta has loomed large in the sustained democracy and rule of law which underlay that peaceful transition. We expect our president, as well, to accept and comply with the essential and historic rules of democracy which can be neither repealed nor replaced.
When presidential candidate Trump issued his “shoot someone in Times Square” boast, we thought it a metaphoric braggadocio of his hold on the affection of his followers. And it has seemed an accurate measurement. But his recent meditations on self-pardon now show it to have been, as well, his interpretation of the powers he proposed to assume, his conviction that a supreme leader could not be convicted. President Donald Trump the first, please meet King John the first.
In the sublime bliss of his ignoring history and precedent, our president has conjured forgiving himself of any crime which that pesky fake-news Special Counsel may or may not determine. It must be particularly irritating to Mr. Trump that President Ford felt he could pardon President Nixon only for those crimes Nixon may have committed while in office. What kind of puny absolute absolution is that?