Hunter Biden’s misconduct and the extent to which it has tainted his father’s reputation is measurable. As of October, a majority of Americans told pollsters they believed the president was involved in his son’s business dealings with foreign entities despite Joe Biden’s denials. Those voters are unlikely to wall off in their minds the tax-fraud charges against Hunter Biden as some distinct enterprise of which his father had no knowledge. If Joe Biden lied before, they would reason, he’s probably lying now. Were Biden to pardon Hunter for his misdeed, it’s likely those voters would regard the president’s pardon as an act of complicity. He might as well have pardoned himself. …

But not pardoning Hunter entails its own political risks. Though it would surely be torture for Biden to have to preside as head of the executive branch over his own son’s prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment, it’s not clear that voters would look on the president’s inaction with sympathy. Joe Biden retailed himself in 2020 as a soft-glowing orb of pure empathy — the virtual personification of paternalistic compassion. Would voters feel Joe Biden’s pain, too? Or would they see his lethargy as callous indifference to his son’s ordeal, which is motivated only by the president’s effort to salvage his own political career?

[Joe’s ambition will never be subjugated to anything else. If it could be, he wouldn’t have run for president at all. It’s a sure bet that Hunter gets a pardon in late November 2024, regardless of the election. If Biden wins, he won’t have to stand before voters again anyway. And if he loses, what will a pardon cost him? Biden wouldn’t try again in 2028. — Ed]