Gov. Asa Hutchinson told reporters Thursday that he wasn't going to try to "get inside Donald Trump's mind."
Perhaps he should crawl on in. There seems to be plenty of airy room.
That's the point, actually.
Hutchinson was seeking to distance himself from the latest outrage from the mouth of his party's presidential nominee. But he also was trying not to criticize this man he had dared to call "the right leader for our time," and who probably will carry Arkansas by double digits no matter what he says or does.
Hutchinson said he personally saw no actual threat in Trump's declaration Tuesday at a rally in North Carolina. What Trump said was that, if Hillary Clinton got to make judicial nominations, then gun-rights advocates would be out of luck unless maybe there was something "Second Amendment people" could do.
Asa is right, of course, that Trump wasn't making an actual physical threat against Clinton or a judge nominee. Nor was he actually intending to encourage anyone listening to carry out violence.
He was simply being awful, as usual.
He was ad-libbing--again--in search of the momentary mob ingratiation he seems to covet, and which inevitably reveals him as spectacularly unthinking, irresponsible and reckless.
These moments ought to convey to any discerning listener that Trump lacks the vital filter to regulate his words in the very way a president sometimes must--always must.
In this specific case, it's entirely possible that some crazed listener could be inspired to a violent act by Trump's absence of judgment, restraint and decency.
That dire possibility aside, a person seeking the presidency needs to signal to voters, and to the world, an ability to perform the office he seeks. That should entail an aptitude for communicating without setting off an international incident.
A president must have unuttered thoughts. All leaders must have unuttered thoughts.
It's actually best for all of humanity to have unuttered thoughts.
There seems to be a contagion around Trump.
His once-credible chief defender, Rudy Giuliani, went on national television to say those people at that rally in North Carolina would have gone wild if they'd actually believed Trump was seeking to encourage harm against Clinton or judges. I guess he was saying Trump supporters would be aroused if they really thought Trump was asking them to get busy with some assassinating.
A couple of days later, the Trump of the pulpit--our old friend Mike Huckabee--introduced Trump at a rally in Florida by saying he was a lot more afraid of Hillary Clinton as president than a mosquito bite in South Florida.
At best, he was joking about birth defects. At worst, he was ... well, the same.
And here I thought Huckabee was sensitive to the unborn.
Some Trump defenders have invoked a statement Hillary Clinton herself made in 2008. It's not really a defense, but a counter-accusation, which is all that is available to them.
Defending her decision to stay in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination that year though she appeared to have lost to Barack Obama, Clinton mentioned in an interview that Bobby Kennedy got assassinated late--in June--in the nominating process of 1968.
Same sin as Trump, some say.
Typically, what Clinton said was bad, but not as bad.
That, actually, ought to be Clinton's campaign slogan. Not as bad.
She committed tastelessness and dumbness, like Trump, but did so in an interview, not to a crowd--or mob, as Giuliani describes. Unlike Trump, she did not inadvertently leave an impression to supporters that violent action could be taken against Obama by persons of an opposing political view.
We grade on the Trump Curve in 2016. A failing grade is nigh unto impossible on the Trump Curve.
I'm in touch, on social media and otherwise, with Trump supporters who get encouraged every time a new email controversy arises for Clinton and when the latest news of Russian tampering in our election suggests other email shoes could drop.
What they are saying, sometimes explicitly, is that their only hope is that Clinton keeps steadily descending until she reaches the world-record nadir established by their bizarre nominee.
So that's the race. How low can she go?
Can she go so low as disparaging prisoners of war, mocking a disadvantaged reporter, insulting parents of a slain war hero and suggesting a woman reporter asked hostile questions because of menstruation?
There may not be enough time to go that low.
There may not exist sufficient human possibility.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 08/14/2016