No excuse for Slick Willie's sleazy pardons

They couldn't nail him over a dodgy land deal in Arkansas. They couldn't nail him for his dalliances with an intern in the Oval Office. Now, at last, the enemies of Bill Clinton have him over a barrel with a bona fide scandal everyone can agree on.

They couldn't nail him over a dodgy land deal in Arkansas. They couldn't nail him for his dalliances with an intern in the Oval Office. Now, at last, the enemies of Bill Clinton have him over a barrel with a bona fide scandal everyone can agree on.

The only trouble is, he is no longer in office. Slick Willie has eluded them again. Or has he? The growing scandal over Mr Clinton's last-minute choice of executive pardons goes far beyond his wayward libido or those financial dealings long predating his presidency. Rather, it goes straight to the heart of the responsibilities of public office, illustrating exactly what is wrong with American politics: the unholy alliance of money and political influence, and its egregious effects on public policy and social justice.

Mr Clinton did not merely choose to exercise his pardon prerogative on an insalubrious cast of characters. He did not merely circumvent the usual channels for clemency applications - as he did in a startling 47 of the 176 pardons and sentence commutations he granted. What really stinks is the way, at least in the most controversial cases, clemency came about as a result of collusion between the Clintons, their family members, aides with direct personal interests in the cases, and campaign contributors whose financial largesse smacked of impropriety, if not the outright purchase of political favours.

Marc Rich, the billionaire tax fugitive and indicted commodities fraudster whose case was the first to unleash the hounds of scandal, enjoyed the legal representation of a former White House counsel to Mr Clinton, Jack Quinn, who in turn pressed his case with the president. Mr Rich's ex-wife Denise, another supporter, sank more than $1.5m into Democratic Party causes, including the Clinton presidential library and Hillary Clinton's New York Senate race.

Last week, it emerged that Mrs Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, had been involved in two other successful pardon applications, one for a convicted Los Angeles cocaine trafficker and the other for a Florida wonder-remedy guru. Mr Rodham, who is a lawyer but has no previous experience of clemency requests, received $400,000 for his pains - money he has since been pressured into returning.

The rot does not stop there. Two Arkansas businessmen seeking pardons for tax offences were successfully referred to the White House by William Cunningham, a New York lawyer who acted as Hillary Clinton's campaign treasurer.

Hillary is also under fire for her husband's decision to release four Hasidic Jews from a suburban New York community called New Square who were sent to prison for embezzling $40m in government grants and subsidies. The First Lady was present at a meeting in the White House Map Room in December at which two representatives of New Square pressed the commutation case; although there has been no suggestion of money changing hands, critics have been quick to point out that Mrs Clinton won all but 12 of New Square's 1,400 votes in the November Senate election.

The Clintons' actions - and their ever more ragged insistence that they did nothing wrong - have left them with few defenders, even among those who most assiduously stuck by them during the travails of Whitewater and impeachment. James Carville, arguably Mr Clinton's defender of last resort, has been conspicuously silent. Jimmy Carter, the former president, has called his successor's behaviour "disgraceful". In the online magazine Salon, the one-time ardent Clinton supporter Joan Walsh even wondered if those right-wing conspirators hadn't been right all along.

The Republicans may regret that Mr Clinton is out of office and thus, to some degree, untouchable. (The presidential pardon power is absolute, and the chances of being able to prove criminal wrong-doing in court look dim at this point.) But the fall-out has been enormous, virtually strangling Hillary's Senate career at birth and leaving the Democratic Party in utter disarray at a time when they need to formulate opposition to the new president, George Bush, and his Republican cohorts in Congress.

It would be a mistake, however, to lay all the blame at the Clintons' door. The pardon prerogative, by its nature, is open to abuses - just think of George Bush Sr pardoning six defendants in the Iran-Contra scandal before they had a chance to testify about his role in the illegal arms racket. The corrupting influence of money, particularly in the current atmosphere of unfettered "soft" contributions to candidates, is something that affects everybody, not just presidents. One of Marc Rich's former lawyers pushing for his pardon is now Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff - a sure indication that money and influence cut across party lines.

The best possible outcome of the pardon fiasco would be for the Clintons to become sacrificial lambs in the cause of wholesale political finance reform. That may not happen, however, with a big-money president such as George Bush in the White House. Mr Bush has been remarkably easy on the Clintons so far, supposedly in the name of raising the tone in Washington and moving on. If the political establishment follows Mr Bush's lead - and its reliance on big-money contributions might yet cause it to - then the Clintons may get away scot-free. If money and power corrupt, your name doesn't have to be Clinton for temptation to beckon.