Not that I'm praising him, he's been terrible wrt surveilance and transparency.
What if he thought it was good to avoid too long of a sentence? One possible interpretation is that he wanted punishment because it was against the law and as a deterrence, but didn't want to be too harsh. Sentencing isn't within his control, but commuting a sentence is.
> If commuting someone sends a message, the delay sends a message too.
Sure, everything sends a message, but not every message is intentional. It's undisputable that these actions send messages, but impossible to know for sure what the reasoning was and what messages were intentional and what were byproducts. The traditional time for a president to commute and pardon is at the end of their presidency, so reading a purposeful message into the delay may or may not be useful.
I mean, the crime, conviction, sentencing, and multiple suicide attempts all happened while Obama had the power to commute the sentence. If there was a principle at play here, if Obama thought it was a moral good to have this person avoid a prison sentence, I'm having a hard time imagining what the roadblock was. Was it that the massive leak and subsequent prosecution didn't get enough media coverage, so he was unaware of the situation? No, that doesn't sound right, it was widely known at every stage in the process.
If commuting someone sends a message, the delay sends a message too. Perhaps he's just trying to do the right thing when the consequences won't hurt him. Perhaps it's all for show. But I think it's fair to conclusively rule out the theory about this decision being made in order to maximize the welfare of Manning. Something else was in the calculus here.