Some ill-chosen Christmas presents get put aside and forgotten. Others will be returned to the shops. Only a few are swiftly snatched back by those who have given them.

On Tuesday, in a traditional act of seasonal clemency, President Bush announced that he was wiping the slate clean for 19 convicted criminals. On Christmas Eve, 24 hours later, he took the remarkable step of reversing one such pardon.

His sudden change of heart over Isaac Toussie, a New York property developer, who was given a five-month prison sentence for fraud in 2003, appears to have been prompted by belatedly seeing the price tag.

A White House spokesman said that Mr Bush had not known about donations totalling almost $40,000 (£27,000) to Republican causes this year by Toussie’s father, Robert. Nor was the President aware of “other aspects” of the case, including allegations that Toussie had conned hundreds of inexperienced home-buyers into taking out expensive mortgages on badly built properties in poor neighbourhoods.

Among them was Maxine Wilson, who bought a $146,000 home from Toussie but found that it had backed-up toilets, a flooded basement and cracked foundations. She told The New York Daily News on Tuesday: “The politically connected get what they want, and little people like us are just left to sink or swim. Thanks to the President for the worst Christmas gift you could have ever given us.”

At a time when Mr Bush is seeking to restore some lustre to his tarnished reputation – and as the US economy lurches through a crisis largely caused by a burst housing bubble – pardoning Toussie appears to have been a present the President could not afford.

He is well aware of the furore that greeted Bill Clinton’s decision, during his final hours in office eight years ago, to offer similar clemency to Marc Rich. The billionaire financier had his convictions for fraud erased after his wife donated more than $1 million to the Democratic Party and to the former President’s library. Mr Clinton denied that his decision had been linked to such beneficence.

Mr Bush is doing his best to show America that he is filled with remorse as he prepares to leave the White House next month with record-low ratings, an economy in turmoil and unfinished wars abroad. A poll released last week by the Pew Research Centre found that only 11 per cent of people think he will be remembered as an outstanding or above-average President.

He has expressed regrets about the “intelligence failure in Iraq”, his lack of preparedness for 9/11, sounding like a warmonger on occasions, being unable to bring about immigration reform, change the partisan tone of Washington or do more to prevent the housing crash. As well as giving a series of valedictory interviews, he is pondering whether to deliver a farewell speech, saying: “If I give it, it’s going to be trying to leave behind some lessons learnt.”

This confessional phase for a man who showed little sign of self-doubt has even elicited sympathy from former opponents such as Joe Biden, the Vice-President-elect, who said last week: “I feel somewhat badly for him.

I think that President Bush – and unlike Vice-President Cheney – is upon reflection beginning to acknowledge some of the serious, if not mistakes, misjudgments that he made.”

Toussie’s extraordinary on-off pardon this week is thought by legal experts to be unprecedented. A terse statement issued on Christmas Eve said that blame was being attached to Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, who “believed that it was a meritorious application”.

Under Justice Department guidelines Toussie would not normally be regarded as eligible for a pardon until May 2009. Mr Bush is now asking the US pardons attorney, Ronald Rodgers, for a recommendation on the case.

Toussie’s lawyer, Bradford Berenson, said that his client looked forward to “an expeditious review of the application” and was “deeply grateful” that the President had – initially at least – decided it had “sufficient merit to be granted”.

No comment has yet been made by Toussie himself. He may be trying to work out exactly how to phrase his thank-you letter.

Crimes of the powerful

Jimmy Hoffa the head of the Teamsters labour union, had been serving a 15-year prison sentence for jury tampering and fraud when President Nixon pardoned him on December 23, 1971. Hoffa, who supported Nixon’s reelection bid in 1972, disappeared in 1975

President Nixon was in turn pardoned one year after the Watergate scandal by Gerald Ford, his successor, who announced his decision live on television in September 1974

Caspar Weinberger, the former US Defence Secretary, was charged with lying to the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair after he resigned in 1987. He was pardoned by President Bush Snr, a move that in effect halted the legal proceedings

Patty Hearst was convicted of bank robbery on March 20, 1976, soon after being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and apparently taking up her captors’ cause. She was imprisoned for almost two years before Jimmy Carter commuted her seven-year sentence, but a full pardon came only from Bill Clinton on the last day of his presidency. Source: www.time.com

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