Predicting Bush Pardons: By the Numbers

A reporter for a National newspaper recently asked me if I thought there was reason to think that President Bush would 1) be granting pardons and commutations this month and/or that 2) he would end his administration with a relative flurry of clemency activity. I answered the reporter's question with the following data in mind: here are data on clemency throughout the Bush administration by month (chart here). Here are the same data spread across both of the President's terms (chart here). I think the data speak rather clearly to both questions.