Before he leaves office on January 20, 2017, President Obama should take two unpleasant, unfortunate but absolutely necessary steps. First, Obama should pardon his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because she's violated no laws yet nevertheless faces the likely prospect of indefinite investigation and possible prosecution. Then the 44th President should also pardon the 43rd, because George W. Bush admitted his crimes yet never faced any legal consequences at all. And the President should provide relief to Clinton and make an example of Bush for the very reason Republicans cited back in 2009: to prevent the "criminalization of politics."
Oh, and there's one other consideration. President-elect Trump has already promised that the United States will once again engage in committing war crimes, including waterboarding, killing terror suspects' families and "much worse."
Now, that's not all he promised. During their second debate, The Donald promised Secretary Clinton that under President Trump, "you'd be in jail." Referring to now-concluded the FBI investigation of Clinton's private email server, a probe which produced no charges, Trump promised:
"If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception. There has never been anything like it, and we're going to have a special prosecutor."
Now, most observers took Trump's pledge for what it is: a threat to America's democratic institutions. (For example, see here, here, here and here.) In the modern United States, the very notion of imprisoning political opponents had been beyond the pale. In fact, as Ari Melber pointed out, misuse of his executive power by "interfering with" the Federal Bureau of Investigation "was literally one of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon."
Throwing red meat to their rabid followers, Trump's allies have a different reading of history and the law. Running mate Mike Pence called the prosecution promise a highlight of the second face-off between his man and Hillary Clinton:
"I thought that was one of the better moments of the debate. I'm old enough to remember a day when a president of the United States erased 18½ minutes and they ran him out of town. She used high technology to erase 33,000 emails."
Even with election over, the Republicans' never-ending thirst for payback remains unquenched. Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who had brushed off Trump's October threat as a "quip," announced last Wednesday that we'll learn Clinton's fate at his hands "all in good time." House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) declared last week, "It would be totally remiss of us to dismiss [the email investigation] because she's not going to be president." Meanwhile, would-be Trump Secretary of State Rudy Giuliani argued, "you don't want to disrupt the nation with what might look like a vindictive prosecution, even though it might not be" before adding, "on the other hand, you want equal justice under the law." As for President-elect Donald Trump himself, he told CBS 60 Minutes on Sunday, "I'm going to think about it."
For his part, President Barack Obama shouldn't think about it for very long. He should pardon Hillary Clinton despite the fact that she hasn't asked for it, almost certainly doesn't want it and despite Obama's past insistence that clemency will only be given to those formally apply to the Office of the Pardon Attorney. President Obama should simply repeat the same words he offered in defense of not prosecuting the architects of the Bush administration's regime of detainee torture:
"We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."
Then Obama should do the same thing for President George W. Bush precisely because America must look back at the crimes Bush acknowledged, ones Donald Trump has boasted he will repeat.