Via Doug Berman, the Los Angeles Times offers an editorial on the nagging issue of President Obama’s failure to commute a single sentence, issue a single pardon, in his first two years in office.

Just as a president is entitled to pardon anyone convicted or accused of a crime, he is free to dismiss any petitions for clemency without offering an explanation. Indeed, he can choose never to issue any pardons or commutations of sentences at all. Still, it’s disappointing that President Obama so far hasn’t approved even one request for a pardon or other form of clemency.

It’s not that there is a shortage of claimants. Earlier this month, Obama formally denied 605 petitions for commutation of sentences and 71 pardon requests. It’s hard to believe that none of those was deserving of approval.

It’s not hard to believe.  It’s impossible to believe.  This doesn’t mean that McCain should have been elected, but that Obama has a different definition of audacity than I do.  It leaves one with the sad feeling that our only options are bad and worse.

The LA Times editorial goes on to suggest that Obama’s failure to exercise this presidential prerogative isn’t a reflection of his belief that not a single person in prison, not a single applicant, is worthy of his attention, but that the president fears being perceived as “soft on crime.”

Ideally, presidents would give great deference to the pardon attorney’s recommendations and take a liberal view of the clemency power, exercising it often and on the basis of clear standards. Their reluctance to do so likely reflects not the merits or demerits of particular petitions but the political liability of appearing soft on crime. That reality has led some advocates of more pardons to hope that Obama is waiting to announce grants of clemency until after next week’s election. If so, we hope his first exercise of his clemency power won’t be his last.

This may be correct, and if so, explains why his detractors aren’t nearly as crazy as some think.  If there’s any truth to the view that the man who won the presidency is so afraid of using his position to do what those who voted for him hoped he would do, then what purpose is served in electing him at all?  If the leader cowers in fear, then what?

No one voted for Barak Obama because they believed that he would be tough on crime.  No one voted for Barak Obama because he would out-Republican the Republicans when it came to righting the wrongs of the criminal justice system.  But even that doesn’t begin to satisfactorily explain his failure here, leaving him as the president who waited fourth longest (at the moment; this could change) to exercise this power.  Notably, two of the three who waited longer, though Obama is quickly catching up to them, are Clinton and the second Bush.

The LA Times hopes, as do those of us who believe that not everybody serving life plus cancer deserves it, that President Obama will have his epiphany after the midterm elections and pull out his pardon pen and start signing furiously.  But we do so for different reasons.  The Times appears to forgive Obama for putting politics above principle.  I just want him to do the right thing, even if those whose sentences should be commuted, or whose convictions should be pardoned, have had to sit in prison cells waiting quietly for him to put on his presidential man-pants. 

It’s not hard to understand the political point, nor its efficacy from a purely political position.  Sure, the President was busy waging a half-hearted health-care war and facing a congressional rebellion.  The last thing he needed, politically, was to offer more controversy to his “enemies” on a silver platter.

That, unfortunately, is the price of principled governance.  And principled governance takes audacity.

Or maybe President Obama thinks that everybody who has been convicted and sentenced belongs exactly where they are, and he hasn’t exercised his powers because he hasn’t found anyone worthy.  Maybe he doesn’t really care about the wrongfully convicted.  Up to now, there’s no evidence to the contrary.