Jeffrey Toobin discusses The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy

In this episode of Re-Examination, Murray Coffey and Andrew Longstreth sit down with journalist and historian Jeffrey Toobin to discuss one of the most consequential moments in American political history—Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon. In his new book, The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy, Toobin argues Ford’s act—however well-intended—was a political miscalculation that deepened distrust in government.

"A bad pardon for an honorable reason is still a bad pardon, and that is what Ford's pardon of Nixon was." – Jeffrey Toobin

Presidential pardons have always been an extraordinary power, derived from the royal prerogatives of kings and inserted into the U.S. Constitution with little oversight or restriction. But no pardon has shaped modern American politics more than Ford’s absolution of Nixon. 

With presidential pardons once again at the center of national debate, Toobin connects historical precedent to Trump’s pardons of January 6 rioters and Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden. He discusses why he thinks of presidential pardons as "x-rays" into the souls of presidents. 

And then there is Evel Knievel.

Ford announced the Nixon pardon on September 8, 1974, the same day that Daredevil Evel Knievel attempted—and failed—to jump Idaho’s Snake River Canyon in a rocket-powered Skycycle. The two events may seem unrelated, but Toobin sees Knievel’s jump as a perfect metaphor for the times: grand gestures, high-risk maneuvers, and the political realities of failing to stick the landing.

"Like Knievel soaring over the canyon, Ford thought he could clear the Watergate scandal in one leap. But history shows that neither of them stuck the landing." – Jeffrey Toobin

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