In an interview with Matt Lauer this past week (as part of a round of interviews promoting Decision Points, his book about his White House years) George W. Bush said that Vice President Dick Cheney was mad at him for refusing to pardon Scooter Libby. Cheney didn’t think that just commuting Libby’s sentence, which Bush did, was enough.
I”m a little sorry that it come up just now, since it inadvertently (on Bush’s part – not so sure about Lauer) gave free publicity to Fair Game - not the 1995 movie with Cindy Crawford and one of the Baldwins, but the new movie just out with the same name – the Naomi Watts/Sean Penn flick which can only be described as Hollywood’s latest Bush-bashing effort.
It did, however, bring me to the subject of pardons for the second day in a row.
On the Federal level, here is how the presidents stack up:
| President (Term of office) | Number of Pardons |
| George Washington (1789 to 1797) | 16 |
| John Adams (1797 to 1801) | 21 |
| Thomas Jefferson (1801 to 1809) | 119 |
| James Madison (1809 to 1817) | 196 |
| James Monroe (1817 to 1825) | 419 |
| John Quincy Adams (1825 to 1829) | 183 |
| Andrew Jackson (1829 to 1837) | 386 |
| Martin Van Buren (1837 to 1841) | 168 |
| William H. Harrison (1841) | 0 |
| John Tyler (1841 to 1845) | 209 |
| James K. Polk (1845 to 1849) | 268 |
| Zachary Taylor (1849 to 1850) | 38 |
| Millard Fillmore (1850 to 1853) | 170 |
| Franklin Pierce (1853 to 1857) | 142 |
| James Buchanan (1857 to 1861) | 150 |
| Abraham Lincoln (1861 to 1865) | 343 |
| Andrew Johnson (1865 to 1869) | 654 |
| Ulysses S. Grant (1869 to 1877) | 1,332 |
| Rutherford B. Hayes (1877 to 1881) | 893 |
| James Garfield (1881) | 0 |
| Chester Arthur (1881 to 1885) | 337 |
| Grover Cleveland (1885 to 1889, 1893 to 1897) | 1,107* |
| Benjamin Harrison (1889 to 1893) | 613 |
| William McKinley (1897 to 1901) | 918* |
| Theodore Roosevelt (1901 to 1909) | 918* |
| William H. Taft (1909 to 1913) | 758 |
| Woodrow Wilson (1913 to 1921) | 2480 |
| Warren Harding (1921 to 1923) | 800 |
| Calvin Coolidge (1923 to 1929) | 1545 |
| Herbert Hoover (1929 to 1933) | 1385 |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933 to 1945) | 3687 |
| Harry Truman (1945 to 1953) | 2044 |
| Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953 to 1961) | 1157 |
| John F. Kennedy (1961 to 1963) | 575 |
| Lyndon B. Johnson (1963 to 1969) | 1187 |
| Richard Nixon (1969 to 1974) | 926 |
| Gerald Ford (1974 to 1977) | 409 |
| Jimmy Carter (1977 to 1981) | 566 |
| Ronald Reagan (1981 to 1989) | 406 |
| George H.W. Bush (1989 to 1993) | 77 |
| Bill Clinton (1993 to 2001) | 456 |
| George W. Bush (2001 to 2009) | 176 |
[The asterisks in the number of pardons column indicate that the total is, for some reason, an estimate.]
The least pardons (none) were issued by Garfield and Harrison, both of whom died fairly soon after taking office. In less than a full term, Gerald Ford managed to pardon both Richard Nixon and Robert E. Lee.
It would appear that Franklin Roosevelt, with the most years in office to do it, gave the most pardons, but I’m not so sure - Jimmy Carter’s blanket pardon of all Viet Nam era draft dodgers is not included in the chart. I would bet that puts him over the top – makes him the Ma Ferguson of American Presidents.
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