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I have been reviewing questions containing "pardon" without the tag. I have completed the review with the exception of one question: What would be the political ramifications of a former US President being charged under state law?.

The question has the following tags: .

However,

  • a former president is not the president, thus removal of seems warranted,
  • the question was not specifically about Donald Trump as indicated in a comment, thus removal of seems warranted,
  • the question is not about law, but rather about being charged with a under , thus replacement of seems warranted.

Donald Trump is still the leader of Republican Party, RNC chair says, August 8, 2021

“When you see the amount of people that show up to the rallies for President Trump, and his $102 million fundraising haul, I think that voters in America, Republicans in America, would absolutely say the [former] president’s the most popular Republican and still leads the party,” said Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel on radio’s “The Cats Roundtable.”

If Donald Trump "leads the [Republican] party", then Trump is a political leader and the question could be understood as asking about the "political ramifications" of a state charging a political leader with a crime.

The remaining issue then is there is no tag for former president, an important part of the question. My thought is to substitute , but I would prefer consensus before making the edit.

Note there are 49 questions containing "former president" (only 7 containing "former president" in the title) and many of those are tagged .

Suggestions?

2 Answers 2

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  • I think the tag is warranted in this case, as we are talking about the office of the US President and its ramification for the individual. "A former president is not the president, so the tag does not apply" seems rather nitpicky to me. And definitely doesn't seem a more useful tag to me. Not only is it so vague that it is barely useful, it would not even apply here, because a former president is also a former political leader. So if being out of office would disqualify for one, then it would also disqualify from the other. Should we create the tag maybe? No, too specific to be useful. is just fine for questions about former presidents.
  • The tag is indeed pointless here. The question is about former presidents in general and not about Trump in particular. There are lots of former presidents, and some of them might also have committed crimes. The "political ramifications" would be mostly the same, no matter which former president we are talking about.
  • is mostly about the processes which lead to laws being created. Questions about specific laws and how they are to be interpreted usually belong on law stack exchange, unless they are laws which explicitly and specifically apply to political processes and the people involved in them. I guess this tag kinda applies here? I don't feel very strong in either direction.
  • The tag is mostly used for questions about policies and how they influence crime. They are not about individual cases but rather treat crime as a sociological phenomenon in general. Now we could of course consider "former presidents" as a distinct demographic and could look the crime rate among that demographic and how policy could affect it, but that seems a bit over-specific, in my opinion.
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  • I have edited the question to add my justification for the [political-leaders] tag. It seems to me that as long as a former government official has followers and influence within a political party, they are a political leader. For Democrats, Carter and Bill Clinton are not, Hillary Clinton may still be, Obama yes. The [political-leaders] tag may then be used to distinguish between political questions about former and current government officials or to questions about leaders not related to their government position or office.
    – Rick Smith
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 17:48
  • @RickSmith To be fair Trump is only a political leader because he was president while your other examples have/had a presence outside of that office.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 18:16
  • I mostly agree, except I like the donald-trump tag since he's currently the main person the Q applies to. If someone was following the Trump tag, I think they'd want to see that Q.
    – Owen Reynolds
    Commented Feb 3, 2022 at 18:08
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In this case I think the president tag is fine as it is dealing with issues that result from someone being president. I don't feel that we need to add a former president tag at this time because the use for it would be so low.

In the end the question seems to be asking if the fact that Trump is a former president going to impact potential criminal charges and punishments. What quickly pops to my mind is if he is convicted and sentenced to jail time how is that handled as he is unlikely to be put in the general population.

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  • The title asks about "political ramifications" which seems to exclude how jail time is handled.
    – Rick Smith
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 17:31
  • @RickSmith I would argue that is also a critical part of it as well. There would most certainly be political ramifications if a former president is thrown in jail. Sure it may be common in some parts of the world for former leaders to get jailed over their actions but not in the US.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jan 18, 2022 at 18:14

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