I’ve never, strictly speaking, had a job in politics. So it’s possible that all my criticisms of Democrats with regards to their nearly perfect record of being completely unprepared for dealing with contingencies are unfair. Maybe the dog ate their homework before the Roberts and Alito hearings, causing the two nominees to be defined by their backers rather than their records. Maybe they all had food poisoning (from A&W hamburgers?) around the time that the President vetoed the Iraq supplemental, leading to the embarrassing disarray that saw them lose the initiative and eventually the battle. Hey, sh*t happens, right?

I wonder what their excuse will be when they fail to benefit politically from the President’s inevitable pardon of Scooter Libby. Libby was sentenced today to 30 months in prison and $250,000 in fines. And if you think that the President is going to allow that sentence to be carried out, you’re either suffering from irrational optimism, or you just haven’t been paying attention.

Since Bush is, and has been for some time, a lame duck, the Libby pardon won’t make a lot of difference to him. That the President’s power to pardon is nearly limitless makes political realities their only cost. And for Bush, who famously claimed to have excess political capital just days after winning the 2004 election by ~three percent, political realities clearly don’t apply to him. But there is a passel of morons trying to succeed him, not to mention the rogues gallery of Republicans in Congress facing reelection next year. If Scooter gets to keep his backdoor intact (nullus), then there must be a price.

Will Democrats get their adversaries on record supporting or opposing the pardon, or will they sit around and whine about it? I know which side I’m betting on.