You think right, Commutation does not remove the taint of conviction and leaves them open to civil sanctions as well as criminal sanctions. You also left out that as convicted felons they will not automatically get their right to vote restored.
This decision is not unlike many of the Bush Decisions, calculated to almost do the right thing while giving the left a victory.
Sadly, he lacked the foresight to use a crisis to consolidate power. He was given so many chances and squandered them all.
We old timers here were so disgusted with "the bent one" that we were ready to be snookered into believing that a man who always wore a suit in the oval office, didn't cheat on his wife, and told us he was a conservative was a man of principle. We were wrong.
History will judge him as an arrogant pretender who wiped out the GOP and gave us BO. What a legacy, George !