There is no denying that Aug. 25 night, in the midst of a horrible storm, was an awful time to try to bury the news of the pardon of former sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Never mind the ratings. Why compound a hideous natural disaster with a manmade one?
Surely, everyone points out, there must have been a better time for such an announcement.
Maybe it would have been better to pardon him in the middle of summer, at the hottest point — but no, that would only have reminded people of the conditions in Arpaio’s tent city, the infamous outdoor prison where people convicted of minor offenses had to sleep and endure the brutal heat.
Definitely a better time to pardon him would have been on a day after consultation with the Justice Department. But that is too much to ask. That would offer apparent respect for the process, and we cannot have that.
Maybe right after the verdict against Arpaio came down. What were we doing at the end of July, all those Scaramuccis ago? If you are not going to bother to consult the Justice Department or seek even the appearance of contrition, why even wait so long? Maybe a better time would have been when we appeared to be careening into a manmade crisis with North Korea — no, that is ongoing, actually.
Maybe on a Monday morning, between firing off volleys of tweets about the content of a morning show he was not watching, instead of on a Friday night.
Why bury it on a Friday? Why even act sheepish? The Trump administration has hardly been sheepish about these things before.
Wait for a clear day, maybe. Wait until the rain stops, and then announce your rampant disregard for the rule of law, coming into the sky like the opposite of a rainbow, a promise of worse things to come.
Or do it at 3 a.m., that time when the president proverbially receives the alarming call. Only this time it would be coming from inside the White House. No, never mind.
Wait for a day when the president has not done anything else wrong, so one pardon for a man who abused his position of power to humiliate and demean those under his control would be the only blot on the horizon. No, that might be too long a wait.
Wait for a manmade disaster, then. Maybe in the midst of the next bungled rollout of the travel ban.
Maybe sooner would have been better, then. Maybe during those heady weeks when the entire communications staff was being fired in rapid succession, in unthinkable ninth-degree-chess moves, to distract us from news of the Mooch, or to distract us from being distracted by the Mooch. (These fancy chess games always confuse me, but it is nice to go to sleep at night feeling that someone somewhere thinks there is a pattern to all this.)
Or wait until the fall, just theoretically to give the sheriff time to find remorse (unlikely as that seems, given his uninterrupted rumblings about running for Senate). Give him time to change his heart, instead of just planning an announcement about how he is hurt by insinuations that he might possibly be racist. Of course the man who currently holds the title of America’s Leading Racist is upset and thinks we have been deeply mistaken in judging him by everything he says and does. No, on second thought, better not to wait.
But at least in the fall people could hold hot beverages in their hands and hear leaves crunch underfoot as they receive word that a man who so baldly and repeatedly abused his power has been allowed to walk free as a signal to all the baser elements in the Trump base.
But who knows what else will be happening then.
Maybe it would have been better to wait and pardon him on April Fools’ Day. But that would give people hope that the disregard for the rule of law was just a joke. No, hope is the last thing we need.
The more I think about it, the more I think that the best time to pardon him would be not at all.