Looking back not always a good thing

The Obama White House is focused on the present and the future, but on some parts of Capitol Hill, Democrats are fixated by the past.

A particular concern is whether to pursue misdeeds of the previous administration and, perhaps, take action aimed at some top George W. Bush advisers.

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the virulent anti-Bush chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and his Senate counterpart, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, have talked about creating a “truth commission” to probe and report on some of the Bush administration’s most egregious abuses, especially in the national security area.

In general, this seems like a bad idea. The nation has too many pressing problems to pay more attention to the past than the present, especially in a way that ensures an acrimonious, partisan proceeding.

President Gerald Ford set a wise precedent a generation ago when he pardoned Richard Nixon to spare the country continuing recriminations over Watergate.

A far better course would be for the Obama administration and its congressional allies to publicize and reverse such Bush policies as condoning torture and flouting international standards.

The January report by the House panel fits that pattern, as does last week’s Justice Department decision to release Bush administration memos justifying its decisions to expand government power to conduct warrantless searches and acquiesce in torture while combating terrorism.

The disclosures served a valuable purpose by exposing what many critics believe to have been extreme and constitutionally questionable actions. Obama also has reversed a passel of Bush policies.

That said, there should be one clear exception to a policy of limiting future government action to exposure and reversal of past abuses: the way the Bush team politicized the Department of Justice and sought to manipulate its procedures for partisan purposes.

Particularly troublesome examples include the 2006 prosecution that landed former Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama in jail and the 2007 ouster of nine U.S. attorneys who resisted administration pressure to step up probes of alleged election fraud in key states.

The House Judiciary Committee has long pursued those matters, and its campaign bore fruit last week with the agreements for former Bush officials Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to testify “under penalty of perjury.” They will be questioned about their possible roles in testimony conducted in private but later made public.

Grand jury probe

And they remain on the agenda of a federal grand jury conducting an investigation launched last year by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the former federal judge Bush installed after Alberto Gonzales’ controversial tenure.

Mukasey assigned Nora Dannehy, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut who helped prosecute the state’s Republican governor, to determine whether prosecutable offenses occurred after an internal department probe concluded at least three prosecutors were fired because of political pressure.

As part of the investigation, The Washington Post reported last month that former Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico had been subpoenaed to testify. A principal issue is whether U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico was fired because of pressure from Domenici and other Republicans for refusing to prosecute New Mexico Democrats before the 2006 congressional election.

One key question is the extent of White House involvement and, in particular, the roles of Rove and Miers, the Dallas lawyer who served as counsel during that period. Also at stake, according to some Web sites, is whether Gonzales could face charges.

This is the right way to pursue these matters, with a serious investigation of serious issues by a professional prosecutor in a way that should minimize the inevitable politics.

In the meantime, it would be best for those involved in setting public policy to concentrate on preventing future abuses, rather than engaging in inevitably self-defeating recriminations over the past.

X Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.