Even Nixon granted proportionally more commutations than Obama has so far

Obama has granted less communications than his predecessors.

(Image credit: Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)

published 31 March 2016

President Obama on Wednesday shortened the sentences of another 61 drug offenders, bringing his total commutation tally to 248, which is more than the previous six presidents combined.

But Obama's numbers look less impressive when considered proportionally. Thanks to a recent spike in commutation requests, Obama lags behind former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and even Richard Nixon if commutations are counted as a proportion of clemency petitions. Carter granted 2.8 percent of commutation requests, Ford 4 percent, and Nixon 6.7 percent. To date, Obama has assented to just 1.3 percent of some 20,000 commutation requests submitted during his tenure.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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