Lord Acton’s maxim about absolute power corrupting absolutely is helpful in judging presidential pardons amid a slew granted by President Trump. The chief executive’s clemency power is nearly absolute; “vast and unreviewable” is how three legal scholars described it in the Washington Post in November. And the way presidents exercise it allows us to see what actuates them, sometimes revealing genuine thoughtfulness about mercy and the national interest, but as often exposing areas of moral degradation.

Trump’s least justifiable — perhaps least pardonable — pardon was that of Paul Manafort, who’d been convicted of egregious tax fraud and sentenced to more than seven years in prison. His was a serious crime, and it was largely unexpiated. So, although the Wall Street Journal was right when it opined that people who hate political pardons should show an equal distaste for political prosecutions, Trump’s clemency to Manafort nevertheless highlighted two areas of his own turpitude — narcissistic expectation of unswerving loyalty even in defiance of the law and an indulgence of rapacious peculation.