People say they're tired of hearing about the lectern. Fine. The issue is whether they're tired of their governor, and, if not, why not.
The broader question is whether it's even possible for a politician spawned from Donald Trump and operating in a Trump-infected jurisdiction to behave offensively enough--to insult enough voters arrogantly enough--to suffer significant political setback.
Sarah Sanders seems to think not or care not.
It might be that she learned well from the foot of her White House master that megalomaniacal contempt works. It might be that P.T. Barnum was wrong when he said there was a sucker born every minute. That birth rate may be higher.
This column is not about the lectern or the lectern audit. It's about the Sarah audit.
Those are the same audit. The audit's forensic findings are less important than the audit's portrait of our governor, which was both broadened and made more vivid.
Last week this audit detailed a slipshod and suspicious trail of money and documents in her procurement, through an odd detour to old Trump White House pals, of an unneeded and uncommonly expensive and purely self-extolling item. The audit said the procurement process contained a half-dozen or more potential violations of state law.
Sanders said in defiance of plain fact that the audit--this very one that cited potential law violations in her office's actions--proved she'd done nothing wrong.
She also called the audit "deeply flawed," presumably not because it had somehow cleared her in her imagined or contrived view.
She said she had cooperated fully with the audit, which the audit plainly said she had not done, considering that she had declined to be interviewed for it.
And then there was the spectacle by which her office put on social media a hip-hop send-up in Jay-Z style to poke fun at this audit presuming to find fault with her.
Her lectern--the one many are understandably weary of, and which I'll try not to invoke again--appeared flashily in this video. It proclaimed itself "Po," for podium, which it isn't, and said, "Allow me to re-introduce myself," after which someone, anyone--auditor, journalist, royal subject?--was dared to try to come take it.
As someone at class said last week: She forgot to say, "From my cold, dead hands."
I saw that video on X, formerly Twitter, and assumed it was someone's spoof of Sanders' arrogance and contempt for any challenge to her. But it turned out her level of arrogance and contempt is its own spoof.
This outlandish sophomoric trash-talk was really your governor.
When a legislator challenged her aides the next day on the tone of the video considering the seriousness of accountable stewardship of taxpayer money, the aides said it was "tongue-in-cheek" and offered in a fun-filled spirit of moving on.
Alas, I haven't fully moved on just yet. I've forgotten about the thing I wasn't going to mention again. And I really wouldn't care at this point to see anyone file criminal charges over that thing.
But I'm lingering on the more relevant audit of the governor's soul. I'm wondering if more people are joining me in seeing into it.
The real question is whether, in Trumpian provinces like ours with Trumpian regional overlords like ours, the idea of what constitutes a pretty picture has changed. Are arrogance, contempt and disdain now attractive features? Is a sneer the new smile?
Bill Clinton once revived his youthfully interrupted political career by making a mass apology for his errors. But is apology now seen as political weakness?
You know the old saying, "Never let them see you sweat." The new one may be, "Never have a second thought."
With six decades of my life lived pre-Trump, I can't get past the notion that the right thing for Sanders to have done about this audit was say, "This matter under audit was one of our inexperience getting blended with a most-unattractive arrogance. We thank the auditors, legislators and critics for the hard lesson, which is that we need to build our experience and shed our arrogance as we strive to serve Arkansas ever better."
Failing that, we must assume either that introspection and humility are losers anymore or that Sanders and her staff members aren't at all what they think they are--which is smarter than everyone else.
In the pre-Trump world, behaving in politics as if one was smarter than everyone else was itself proof that one wasn't--because that's not smart.
Post-Trump? All bets are off. Sanders' re-election slogan in 2026 might be an extended middle finger. And it might work.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett feed on X, formerly Twitter.
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