In a time of fear and uncertainty it is comforting to return to tradition. To seek reassurance in the familiar. To return to time-honored rituals and feel centered, despite the maelstrom.
On Tuesday, a divided nation will reunite to witness such a ritual — the presidential pardon of a turkey. Yes, the president — who has not attended a pandemic task force meeting for months, who has made no public appearances for weeks, who sends forth Rudy Giuliani to single-handedly attempt to overturn an election, who pouts and dissembles on social media — will emerge from the darkness to pardon a turkey.
For most presidents, the annual turkey pardon is a whimsical distraction, a prelude to the tranquility of Thanksgiving. For this president, who has no sense of whimsy, Tuesday’s pardon is more like a batting practice. Whichever lucky turkey escapes the oven on Tuesday will be only the first of many, many turkeys who will experience the beneficence of our outgoing president during the holiday season.
Despite his outrageous attempts to subvert democracy, Donald Trump’s days are numbered. One might say, to adhere to the theme, that his goose is cooked. A real autocrat, a true threat to the republic, would, could and should do better than to send a washed-up, desperate, third-rate political clown sweating dark rivulets of hair dye to lead the charge. Rudy Giuliani is batting 1-32 in litigation. A roomful of monkeys with Remington typewriters could produce more compelling briefs than those presented by the buffoon previously known as America’s Mayor.
As a side note, when Rudy was basking in every possible spotlight after 9/11, he may have been seen as America’s Mayor in Peoria, but we in New York City knew him to be a grandstanding, philandering, racist, mean-spirited fraud. In hindsight, it was an apt audition for his current role, absent the hair dye.
It is no accident that Trump’s brief emergence from the bunker will be to issue a pardon. He is honing his chops for the final act of his improbably incompetent and disastrous presidency. When his sloppy attempts at a coup are rebuffed, when the Electoral College does its constitutional duty, when even Lindsay Graham unhitches his star from the clown car — greasing the skids for the slide into historical infamy will be all that remains. Pardons for all!
He will pardon every unethical creep who aided and abetted his reign of error. He will preemptively pardon Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric (maybe, maybe not), Melania, Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway and all the other spineless sycophants who stood by or actively engaged in child-caging, obstruction of justice, ab-normalizing our system of government and engorging themselves at the public trough.
And then the coup de grace: He will pardon himself. It will mark the first time a president exercises the self-pardon. It may also be the first time Donald Trump utters the phrase, “Pardon me.”
Perhaps my cheerful optimism is misplaced. Serious analysts describe a path, improbable as it may be, for Trump to successfully overturn the election. The sequence of events required are beyond improbable, each step exponentially more difficult than the preceding one. When considering the long odds it is good to remember that Donald Trump couldn’t even run a successful casino, where the odds were stacked high in his favor.
No, I’m not worried that Donald Trump will win this sinister game. The man who promised that we would get sick of all this winning has never won anything in his life. His businesses fail, his marriages fail, and his presidency is the biggest failure in American history.
On Jan. 20, this tawdry circus will fold up the tents and leave town. President Joe Biden will be left with the mess. Heaven only knows how deep the damage goes. I believe that part of the resistance to transition is to give time for destruction of records and pouring as much sand as possible in the gears of government. Like many defeated despots, Trump will leave land mines behind.
But what worries me most is that so many Americans fell for the con. It is as though millions of people lined up at a ring toss and believed every hollow promise of the barker.
Beware.
Next time the ringmaster may be much, much more competent.
Steve Nelson lives in Boulder, Colo., and Sharon. He can be reached at stevehutnelson@gmail.com.