Welcome to Talking Fed's one-on-one, deep dive discussions with national figures about the most fascinating and consequential issues defining our culture and shaping our lives.

I'm your host, Harry Littman. We're here in the desert with

Jeff Tubin, author of 10, Count of 10 books, if you include, as we must, the book that's just come out

today, The Pardon, the Politics of Presidential Mercy. Jeff, great to be here.

Harry, good to see you in these wonderful environment here in the California desert.

There you have it. Okay, so we've been focusing, a lot of people have on the, on pardons as they've

come across with the Biden pardons and of course the Trump,

January 6th pardons.

Your book focuses a fair bit on the Ford pardon of Nixon.

I think as the sort of national folklore has come down on that part.

And it was Ford in a statesman-like way,

ending our national nightmare,

putting Nixon and the whole Sturm and Drang

of the previous couple years behind us,

and in that sense, wise and prudent.

My sense is you, in your new book, have a very different take on it.

I do.

Well, you know, the, you know, what's interesting about the Ford Pardon is that the conventional

wisdom about it has shifted almost 180 degrees.

When Ford did it on September 9th, 1974, just a month after he had taken up.

August 8th was resignation.

August 8th was the resignation speech.

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