Of his 26 presidential pardons, President Bidens most recent pardon of his son Hunter Biden is the most controversial by far, as the president had said before he would not pardon his son.Kentucky has its own experience with controversial pardons, like the ones at the end of former governor Matt Bevins final term. University of Kentucky Department of Political Science professor Dr. Stephen Voss says these type of pardons are more likely at the end of an executives term.Because pardons can be unpopular, usually what we see is chief executives wait on them until theyre lame ducks, until theyre already out of office, said Dr. Voss. Then they issue a whole slew of both perhaps regular garden variety pardons, but also the more controversial ones.Voss added that pardons, in general, are viewed as unpopular.It can be unpopular because it has a taint of corruption, or it can be unpopular just because the person to whom the executive is granting leniency is disliked, or some other reason they got thrown in jail in the first place, or convicted in the first place, Voss explained.President Bidens 26 pardons are far below the presidential pardon average, but there is still time for that number to go up before Biden gets out of office.Presidents and governors dont like to issue pardons when theyre still having to run for office or otherwise need public support, said Voss, because its not uncommon for some level of public backlash to follow a pardon.In the conversation with Dr. Voss, he pointed to a few examples where presidential pardons ended up hurting a politicians career. Voss pointed to Gerald Fords pardon of Richard Nixon as an example.Some people think maybe President Ford lost his reelection effort against Jimmy Carter because of the cover he gave to President Richard Nixon, Voss added.While pardons can affect the career of a politician, it has less of a chance of affecting the perspective of the entire political party.Because executives usually use or abuse the pardon power when theyre already on the way out, when theyre lame ducks, it usually takes awhile after that before the public would get any opportunity to punish the presidents party, Voss said. Its unlikely that unpopular use of the pardon power has much by way of political repercussions.While pardons usually happen during the lame duck period, this Biden pardon might make way for the incoming Trump administration to make their own controversial pardons.President Trump already hinted that he might do something for the January 6 insurrectionists, said Voss. Having a highly unpopular pardon issued by President Biden gives Trump cover to issue his own controversial pardons under the shadow of the Biden pardon.I think the real long-term cost of Biden looking out for his son is it just fuels the publics distrust of politicians and political institutions, Voss stated.The pardon problem presents a unique teaching opportunity for Dr. Voss in his spring government classes.The funny thing is you can go years teaching an intro to American Government and never have to talk about something like the pardon power or the impeachment clauses, and then all of a sudden some political event happens and all of the students want to know about this thing that you havent had to think about for many years, Voss said.