Pitching Presidential Pardons to the Constitutional Convention 

This Constitutional Convention is getting so… bleh. We need to take some risks. We have a pretty solid draft of Section I of Article II: term lengths for the presidency, the oath of office, the broad strokes. But now that we’re moving onto Section II of this bad boy, let’s loosen up a little! Everyone get up and dance for 30 seconds to get the creative juices flowing! Pitch your wildest ideas for what else you think should go in this sucker. No wrong answers! I’ll start. I was thinking—and stay with me here—the president should get to pardon anyone of a federal criminal conviction.

 

Anyone, yeah. No matter what crime, yup. As long as it’s federal, exactly. No limits on the number of pardons either. Nothing like “he gets only one per year,” “he can pardon five people at the end of his term,” or “he cannot pardon as many people as possible because that would be absurd.” He can pardon whoever he wants, whenever he wants. Wouldn’t that be kinda cool?

 

I know this whole time we’ve been pushing “checks and balances,” but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say there shouldn’t be any checks on this presidential power. It’s definitely risky, don’t get me wrong. Just don’t ever, ever elect someone who you think might be tempted to abuse the unlimited power of pardoning any federal conviction they want.

 

Also, I say pardons can be presumptive, allowing a president to issue them before the person is even charged with the crime. Maybe—and this could be going a little too far—the president can pardon himself. Those could be cool added layers, you know? Actually, let’s not address presumptive or self-pardons at all. We’ll leave pardons super vague and up to future generations to figure out. Give them some gray areas to mess around with to stay busy. Besides, if they’re not into the pardon thing, they can easily change the Constitution themselves.

 

I jotted a few alternatives down as well: the president can take any cool candles he wants without paying, the president can make everyone stop talking if he needs to get up to go to the bathroom so he doesn’t miss anything, and, wait—I can’t read my handwriting for that last one. But I think unchecked federal pardon power is better than any of those.

 

I can tell Madison’s already on board with this—look at his face! My man loves a good curveball. So let me know what the rest of you guys think. And, totally unrelated, my cousin got arrested the other day for some total bullshit, so if the first president could swing a pardon for him, that’d be great.