Throughout the course of his presidency, Barack Obama has been heavily criticized for his use of executive action on immigration, climate change and other items of his policy agenda. He has also come under fire for his abuse of executive power vested in him by Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution -- the presidential pardon.
Last November, Sen. Ted Cruz published an op-ed in Politico titled “Obama Is Not a Monarch.” Cruz specifically called into question the president’s use of executive amnesty for immigrants, thinking it to be an over-extension of power. (Politico) In 2013, just a year earlier, The Boston Globe published a piece criticizing the president for not using his pardoning power enough, dubbing it, “One of his most effective tools.” (The Boston Globe)
Meanwhile, in the Office of Legal Counsel, the most talked about legal issue of this week is the presidential pardon as it relates to turkeys.
According to the White House, “Americans have been sending the President turkeys for the holidays since at least the 19th century.” (The White House Blog) Turkey Pardoning is rumored to have begun under Lincoln at the request of his son Tad, but the tradition only became official under President George H.W. Bush. On November 14, 1989, Bush pardoned one truly grateful turkey and, since then, the president has pardoned a turkey every year. (CNN.com)
Slate reports: “The Office of Legal Counsel has released a 4,000-page memorandum setting forth the constitutional and statutory justifications for this controversial executive action, rooted largely in the authority granted to him under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Eighth Amendment and also the Perdue Family Farms Charter.” (Slate.com)
The Washington Post plays the buzzkill as well, calling the turkey pardon, “An absurd Thanksgiving ritual.” Despite the variety of “frivolous public events” the Office of the President holds each year, The Washington Post argues, “The turkey pardon stands out as being especially dumb and worth abolishing,” for a few key reasons.
They argue it’s “not a real tradition” because of its somewhat shaky foundation. Presidents pardoning turkeys has, more than once, proved to be a tactic to draw reporters’ attention away from the indiscretions of the office and those who have held it at the time. Fair. But that doesn’t make it any less of a tradition, and if reporters are so swept up by the journalistic winds of presidential turkey pardons that they ignore presidential “indiscretions,” either they not very significant indiscretions, or journalists aren’t very good at their jobs.
They also argue, “The pardoned turkeys aren't that much better off — because the life of a turkey is misery and pain.” Once again - very true. But that is inevitable. We all die, fact of life, especially when we are farm-raised fowl meant for human consumption. The birds, that have been bred for our consumption before they were marked for excellence and shipped off to our nation’s capital, were not bred to live long healthy lives. They were destined for your Thanksgiving table long before they were fated for the Rose Garden.
In this way, their body mass is often too much for their joints to handle. It’s not a natural state of being for a turkey to sustain life at the weight we would like to eat them. Therefore their life expectancy is grim. But this isn’t some big conspiracy to trick the american public into believing these turkeys ride off into the sunset and bathe in the fountain of eternal youth. In fact, I highly doubt the american people expect much of the federal government in regards to the longevity and quality of life of our pardoned turkeys. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on the inner thoughts of the common American turkey, but I would argue even the turkeys themselves are quite content with extending their death-sentence, and living an extra couple months on the Mount Vernon Estate, coming to a slightly more natural and less graphic end. That’s what the pardon is about after all, the potential of a better future, even if it’s a turkey pardon.
The life of any turkey is likely to be miserable and painful anyway. If the presidential pardon means they expire by Easter instead of Thanksgiving, well good for them.
The article goes on to claim “The White House wants us to believe these turkeys are living out a life of leisure on the farm and bopping along to their favorite Lady Gaga tracks […] it's not clear why we need an elaborate White House ceremony designed to obscure where that food actually comes from.”
Quite frankly, in line with my thoughts on the Starbucks cup “controversy,” of all of the government “cover-ups” (both speculated and verified), I think one regarding where turkeys come or go should be the least of our worries.
(Instead, I highly recommend reading the recently declassified documents on the 1953 Iranian Coup -- they’re fascinating and far more important.)
Turkeys have a conservation status label of “Least Concern,” due to an increasing population. And 12 million Syrians (half of whom are children) have fled their homes due to conflict in their country (World Vision). Let’s be thankful this holiday season that we are living in a country, while riddled with problems and atrocities of our own, where we have both the freedom of speech and the physical and emotional security to put this anywhere near our list of outrage and concern.
The president acknowledges these criticisms and addressed them in his remarks during the 2014 pardon:
“The Washington Post recently questioned the wisdom of the whole turkey pardon tradition. ‘Typically on the day before Thanksgiving,’ the story went, ‘the man who makes decisions about wars, virus outbreaks, terrorist cells and other dire matters of state, chooses to pardon a single turkey … plus an alternate.’Tell me about it. It is a little puzzling that I do this every year. (Laughter.) But I will say that I enjoy it because with all the tough stuff that swirls around in this office, it's nice once in awhile just to say: Happy Thanksgiving. And this is a great excuse to do it.” (The White House Press Office)
You can argue whether that’s genuine. And you can make a fuss about that seemingly neutral, innocuous statement if you must. But we don’t have to.
As Magnus Fiskesjö explains in his article titles, “The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, the Death of Teddy’s Bear, and the Sovereign Exception of Guantánamo,” the presidential turkey pardon is an ode to something much bigger. “Masquerading as a joke, it is really a symbolic pardoning act which, through public performance, establishes and manifests the sovereign’s position at the helm of the state by highlighting, as an attribute of this position, his power to control matters of life and death.” Fiskesjö also goes so far as to make a statement on “the etymological coincidence of the words ‘executive’ and ‘execution.’” (Fiskesjo)
Although these are some pretty big jumps to make, Mr. Fiskesjo and I can agree on one thing: the tradition is a symbol of something bigger than itself. The presidential turkey pardon is the less-polarizing, G-rated version of a power granted to our commander-in-chief by the document our nation holds most dear.
“The Constitution devotes just a few words in Article II to the president’s right to grant pardons, and no rationale is provided. But the writings of Alexander Hamilton provide a hint as to what the framers had in mind when they decided the president should be able to personally overturn individual sentences and override the law of the land on a case-by-case basis. [...] Presidents used the pardon power routinely for much of American history, often to commute prison sentences, and sometimes to restore citizenship rights to former convicts who were already free. In a paper published in 2010 in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Love explains that pardons sometimes served to differentiate between crimes that the law treated as identical: For instance, before there was such a thing as first- and second-degree murder, presidents would review individual murder cases, and commute the sentences of those individuals who had not premeditated their crimes.” (The Boston Globe)
Some people see this tradition as a mockery of the actual power given to the president by Article II. But I prefer to see it this way: if the leader of the free world is making his decision to exercise an aspect of his executive power based on the social commentary that surrounds a new tradition concerning the fate of fowl -- this country has reached new lows and we should be looking at exercising some other articles of the Constitution to remedy that.
Is the presidential turkey pardon our nation’s most meaningful tradition? No. But it is a tribute, a light-hearted, mildly satiric, annual reminder and celebration of a piece of our country’s history that we do consider a national treasure -- the United States Constitution.