Mike is Huckabee under fire for yet another clemency grant.  However, unlike his previous politically motivated attempt to pardon Wayne DuMond this one seems to have been motivated by a genuine attempt to do the humanitarian thing that will (and is already being) exploited by his political opponents.    I have mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, as Yglesias notes the commutation of the sentence (Huckabee did not send Clemons out of the jail house door) may have been justified at the time.  On the other hand as Joe Conason at Salon notes, Huckabee who disdains the separation of church and state may have let the professions of religion influence his commutations.  Just as when the conversion of death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker to Christianity brought calls for clemency from Pat Robertson, one wonders whether a conversion to another faith would have been as helpful to Clemons.

Even though Huckabee’s excessive public displays of religiosity and his refusal to acknowledge the utility of the wall between church and state are a turnoff to me and like Sarah Palin he is somewhat light in his grasp of policy,  he is in many ways an appealing politician.  He does not come off as mean spirited and has a affability and sense of humor that can draw people to him.  Whatever his motivations, in a culture where the way to fight crime is to incarcerate and forget about rehabilitation he was willing to stick his neck out on the belief that people can reform.  This time it had tragic results and he will pay the price at the hands of a political and media culture that prefers cardboard cutout politicians.  It is a pity that there is no room for him in the dog-eat-dog political world today.

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