On a Friday night with a disastrous hurricane bearing down on Texas, North Korean missiles exploding and a full dump of news that would otherwise give CNN a day apiece of outrage, President Donald Trump issued his first pardon to a man awaiting sentence for contempt for his refusal to abide by an order requiring him to stop violating the Constitution.
In hard terms, the pardon won’t have an impact on the real world. The man is out of power, at least for now, and it’s not as if the man, at 85 years of age, will go out on the streets again to viciously harm people. The purposes of prosecution and incarceration will not suffer terribly by this pardon. But this was the rarest of cases where the symbolism, sending a message, mattered far more than the actual fact of imprisonment. Not that the image of him in a pink tent wouldn’t be cherished by a great many people.
Joe Arpaio was pardoned.
Well before Crazy Joe decided he would gather together posses to round up everyone with a Spanish-sounding name, darkish skin or an accent, and happily hold them until they proved to Crazy Joe’s satisfaction that they were a good enough American to be allowed to walk free in his Maricopa County, he was venal. Yet, he enjoyed 24 years, five terms, as sheriff. The people of Maricopa County re-elected the “toughest sheriff in America” over and over. And he ran his little fiefdom as he wanted, with their blessing, to do the job they wanted him to do.
While the impulse is to wander through the litany of bad things, unlawful things, unconstitutional things, venal things, that Crazy Joe has done over the years, there is little to be gained now. He’s been pardoned. There will be plenty of academics and passionate lawyers proffering wild theories about how this can be stopped, reversed, overcome, but it won’t be. Don’t waste time and angst on it. It will not happen. And it should not happen, even when the naked exercise of power for political purposes makes you hate it.
Rather, there are two things that warrant attention. First is why otherwise perfectly nice people would elect, and re-elect, over and over, this venal person. As @Bmaz once explained to me, Crazy Joe was brought in as a reform candidate for sheriff because his predecessor was a bad dude. People never seem to truly appreciate that the alternative to bad isn’t necessarily good, or even better. It can always get worse. The people of Maricopa wanted change and they got it. They got Arpaio.
But after it became clear that Arpaio lacked any sense of limits to his authoritarianism, they still kept him in power. His constituents adored him for it. Not all, obviously, but enough that he owned the County. He could do as he pleased, and what he pleased was to subjugate those he deemed unworthy for the benefit of his kind of citizens. Whether it was pink underwear or “illegals,” he was in complete control. And the people were good with this.
Forget what it tells you about Crazy Joe. Consider what it tells you about the people of Maricopa County.
As for why Trump pardoned him, there are a great many theories, from Arpaio’s being a fellow traveler in the birther scam to sending a message to Paul Manafort that he’s got the pardon power and he’s not afraid to use it, so keep your mouth shut. The why can’t be answered, at least not yet, and the strength of your belief adds nothing. Projecting your deepest feelings onto Trump doesn’t make them Trump’s.
A more useful lesson came from Jack Goldsmith:
But it shows, again, how much our constitutional structure assumes a minimally conscientious, responsible, ethical POTUS, which we lack.
Whether due to ignorance, malevolence or naked political pandering, there are assumed boundaries of propriety that are invested in the office of the presidency. They’ve been tested before, more often than we want to admit. But this isn’t a matter of left or right, as the sides line up to praise or condemn the pardon itself, or any other act of this president. This is a matter of putting the extraordinary power of the office in the hands of a person with neither the understanding nor integrity to adhere to any appearance of what is proper and principled.
No one seems particularly inclined to feel constrained by our national traditions and beliefs these days and, granted, they haven’t served us very well in recent memory. But without them on all sides, we are left with a societal and governmental structure that knows no boundaries. Our form of government, and our enjoyment of society, demands limits. If everyone can flex their muscles, do whatever they want to do without any constraint, this is what we get.
The pardon of Crazy Joe Arpaio is an outrage, but like the people of Maricopa County re-electing him, it’s an outrage we knew, or should have known, would come. When we no longer have a shared sense of the boundaries within which our government should function, anything goes. It goes for one side. It goes for the other. It goes.
Our constitutional structure will not work in the hands of people for whom principle and integrity are obstacles to circumvent. It gives us a pardon of Joe Arpaio. It will give us the undoing of what binds a nation together, even if that means we won’t get our wildest wishes granted. In what insane, terrible world would a President of the United States pardon someone as venal as Crazy Joe? Ours. We can learn from this or make it worse. Remember, the opposite of bad isn’t necessarily good. It can always get worse.
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” People never seem to truly appreciate that the alternative to bad isn’t necessarily good, or even better.”
Yep- and the moment America votes in Mz Clinton instead, it would be-
” a matter of putting the extraordinary power of the office in the hands of a person with neither the understanding nor integrity to adhere to any appearance of what is proper and principled.”
Anyone who WANTS power should never be allowed near it! He may not be any good, but never kid yourself anyone else would be better.
Nature has a weird way of balancing things out, whether in the middle or at the fringes. It also has a weird way of punishing us for our intransigence hubris. I can’t remember a time when people were so smug, so absolute, in their belief that they are the righteous and the other side deplorable. We will suffer greatly for this. All of us.
But it’s OK, as long as the bastards on the other side suffer more!
A rising tide lifts all boats. A falling tide? Well…
I did not know that they had tides in Nebraska.
It’s a metaphor. We have metaphors in Nebraska. Really small ones, sure, but still.
I was in Omaha once, and the grocery stores there had Tide. When you lifted a box of Tide into your cart, it was a rising Tide, but if you dropped a box, that was a falling Tide. I like to rotate the boxes on the shelf to check all sides for leaks or tears before I pick a box (that is known as “the turning of the Tides”).
According to Paul Begala, the Arpaio pardon is a signal to those being investigated by Mueller that if they hang tough and don’t incriminate President Trump, he will pardon them if they are convicted of any offenses.
That’s one of many theories (note the Manafort reference in the post, which covered that), but they’re all just theories to amuse and delight the various audiences.
I wish I could see the face of the writer of an article on a so called real news site last week, who said that Trump couldn’t pardon Arpaio because of DoJ rules on pardons that would prevent such an action. That was my big laugh for the day.
The woke lawprofs are spinning as hard as they can. As if it will change anything.
“Our constitutional structure will not work in the hands of people for whom principle and integrity are obstacles to circumvent”
Wonderfully quotable, consider that gem filed away.
As much as Scott hates “tummy rubs”, I’ve got to agree that this really is a gem.
Hey Scott, did anyone ever tell you you’re a great blogger and really quotable?
I can’t even.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that stupid men approve of it.
Nice twist.
Either this or Scott’s statement above are going to become my new email sig line.
In my time I’ve seen presidential pardons for partisan gain, political horsetrading, personal gifts, and as outright quid pro quo for bribes.
In the present case it seems at least plausible that the president felt the pardon to be a remedy for a miscarriage of justice. Nothing near as bad as the pardon shenanigans of the last few administrations.
Value judgments are fine, but they’re just value judgments. Mileage varies.
I’m with you, Boffin.
Meanwhile, the Dems and the Progressives and the MSM have shown us what real contempt looks like.
We learned this lesson toward the end of President Obama’s first term, when the House, including 17 Democrats, found Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. It was the first contempt finding against a sitting cabinet member in history and a shocking judgment in respect of the individual who should have been our nation’s top law enforcement officer. Yet he had behaved contemptuously of Congress’s order to produce documents in respect of the “fast and furious” gun-running operation.
Of course, Obama refused to act on Mr. Holder’s contempt, refused to cause him to comply with the subpoena, refused even to criticize him. What a contrast to Mr. Arpaio, whom the Obama administration pursued relentlessly and who was finally convicted by a sitting judge acting alone who had blocked the defendant’s right to a jury trial knowing he likely would have been acquitted. Yet there has never been so much as a scintilla of contrition from Mr. Holder or any member of the administration over Mr. Holder’s contempt.
General Holder’s contempt has shorn the Dems and the Progressives and the MSM of standing to get up on their high horse in respect of Sheriff Arpaio.
These are the talking points in Arpaio’s favor. The Holder issue is irrelevant on any level. One thing has nothing to do with the other. As for the conviction itself, it was legally proper and deserved in spades (and, unfortunately, should have been for far more serious offenses, with a potential sentence of a couple a lifetimes and a jury, which would most assuredly have convicted him). But if you want to offer the fantasy, knock yourself out. Only a fool buys it.