Pardons only enable presidents to direct their goons to operate outside of the rule of law without repercussions.Having one individual with strong incentives to enable their team stay in power as much as possible retain the power is shocking.
Judges and juries are at least superficially removed from that sort of corrupt incentive system.
> Pardons only enable presidents to direct their goons to operate outside of the rule of law without repercussions.
It is clear that they don't only do that, as that has not been their principal (or even a common) use for most of the history of the pardon power.
It is equally clear, however, that they do allow that; the check on that, like on most discretionary Presidential powers, is the Congressional power of impeachment; obviously, that is not a meaningful constraint when the Congress and the President are aligned on abuses, but the entire point of having separately elected bodies is to make it less likely that things that the public would see as abuses are supported by both political branches simultaneously. (Obviously, the fact that one whole house of Congress and 1/3 of the other are elected at the same time as the President, and that the weighting of the electoral college for the President are a blend of the apportionment to the House and Senate makes those elections less independent than one might want, even before considering the way the electoral structure contributors to partisan duopoly, though.)