MEMO TO BUSH: THINK AMNESTY

Obviously, George W. Bush will have to "reach out" (as the current
postelection cliche has it) if he wants actually to govern the country. The
conventional Washington wisdom on how to do it -- by appointing this or
that Democrat to the cabinet -- is wrong. President Clinton tried the same
ploy by making Republican William Cohen his secretary of defense, and look
how well that dampened the partisan fires.

No. Bush needs to do something that goes beyond the Beltway, something bold
that will show that he intends to be a compassionate conciliator. Something
like an amnesty for the small-time drug users and dealers now clogging the
federal prison system.

I got the idea while talking to Mark Mauer of the Washington-based
Sentencing Project. "Half the people doing federal time for drugs are
low-level men and women who pose no threat to anybody. Why not let them
out?"

There are roughly 70,000 federal inmates doing time for drugs. Justice
Department statistics from the mid-1990s show that between 36% and 55% are
low-level offenders. Cull those who have prior convictions for serious
crimes, and you get maybe 20,000. "Conservatively, a third could be
released with no adverse consequences," said Mauer.

It sounded logical, but The Sentencing Project is a bleeding-heart
operation. I wanted to hear the objections of the law-and-order side. So I
called Prof. Morgan Reynolds, the director of the Criminal Justice Center
for the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas.

To my amazement, Reynolds agreed with Mauer.

"The war on drugs has been a total failure," he told me. "I think the
government should declare victory and withdraw. The federal system leads
the way, which is why I'm tempted to say that releasing low-level drug
criminals from federal prison would be a step in the right direction. The
users and possessors have been replaced by now anyway; it's hard to argue
that a lot of social damage would spring from this."

"You were supposed to be a hard-liner on this," I said.

Reynolds suggested that I try the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Its
Web site listed Prof. Randy Barnett as an expert on drug matters. Barnett
teaches law at Boston University, and he's a former Cook County (Ill.)
prosecutor, but he turned out to be enthusiastic about the amnesty idea.

"I'd support it because it's a step toward a just outcome, which is not
putting such people in the penitentiary in the first place," he said.

"These guys aren't model citizens," I said. "Releasing them might lead to
more crime."

"Yes, but I can't say how much. I doubt they would be a serious threat to
society," Barnett responded. "And you have to weigh any possible crimes
they might commit against the good of reuniting fathers and mothers with
their children."

Determined to find a real law-and-order hawk, I called the Family Research
Council, the Alamo of Christian Republican institutions. Col. Robert
Maginnis, the council's vice president, began our conversation by
denouncing illegal drugs and those who use or sell them. But the notion of
a presidential amnesty intrigued him.

"Actually, I'd support it with some caveats," he said. "We'd have to take
it case by case, make sure we weren't releasing dangerous criminals, and
that those who left prison went on some sort of probation. But I'm not
opposed to planning it out. It's costing us an arm and a leg to keep people
in jail who could be out under some form of judicial control. So yes, I'd
endorse looking at alternatives to keeping them locked up in jail."

The small-time shleps under federal lock and key are not, by and large,
George W. Bush voters. That, of course, is the point.

Giving them another chance would send an unmistakable message to the
country -- especially to the neighborhoods most in need of civic healing --
that Bush, a man who has battled his own demons, wants to be President of
all the people.