Michael Gerson has my sympathy in expressing sympathy for the exercise of clemency. We don’t want governors so afraid that one of the people they have pardoned (or given commutations) will commit a crime that they never give any. But for Gerson’s defense of Huckabee’s record to work, we would have to have confidence in the process by which he made clemency decisions. The fact that as governor Huckabee brushed off questions about that process — as Jeff Jacoby notes in his anti-clemency column — undercuts that confidence.