Asa Hutchinson was never going to be the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, much less the country's 47th president.
In another era, before Donald Trump became the mass that swallowed the Republican Party, the former governor of Arkansas would have been, at least, a serious factor in the race.
His experience — as a Reagan-appointed federal prosecutor, a former member of the House of Representatives and a senior member of George W. Bush's administration — was the kind of box-ticking promotion that checked the resumes of many successful presidential contenders. Hutchinson even served as congressional prosecutor in President Clinton's impeachment trial, burnishing his bona fides as a partisan combatant.
What's striking isn't the predictable failure of Hutchinson's campaign, which ended Wednesday after he finished light years behind Trump in the Iowa caucuses. Rather, it was the Democratic National Committee's response.
“This news comes as a shock to those of us who could have sworn he had already retired,” DNC press secretary Sarafina Chitika said in a statement filled with sarcasm and condescension.
Even more surprising was the response that followed the petty takedown.
A presidential apology.
“The president knows [Hutchinson] “He is a man of principle who cares about the country and has a strong record of public service,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. Chief of Staff Jeff Zients called the former governor “to convey this to him and apologized for the statement that did not represent the president's views,” Jean-Pierre said.
Other Democrats also weighed in.
“It's disrespectful, petty, unnecessary and disgusting,” said Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, who is waging an insurgent campaign to wrest the Democratic nomination from Biden.
Hutchinson welcomed the presidential apology. “It meant a lot to me,” he told CNN.
It was also a rare moment of grace in today's political environment, filled with sludge and sewage. You don't have to love your opposition. But you don't have to be an idiot either.
What distinguished Hutchinson in his much-overlooked campaign was his willingness to loudly and repeatedly denounce the threat Trump poses to the country and its 247-year experiment with representative democracy. Hutchinson showed the value of his convictions by making his case even before hostile audiences.
“While some will ignore the former president's destructive behavior,” he said to boos and jeers at a conservative conference in Florida, “I assure you that we ignore it at our own peril.”
Notably, in a debate in August, Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were the only two of eight Republicans who said they would not support Trump's return to the White House if he is convicted of criminal charges. (Christie, Trump's other main antagonist in the Republican field, dropped out of the race less than a week before the caucuses.)
That radical notion – that our next president should have no criminal record – made Hutchinson a pariah in today's Republican Party, which appears to have traded its traditional reverence for law and order for a looser moral relativism. (Sure, destroying the Constitution isn't optimal, but at least interest rates were lower when Trump was in office!)
Hutchinson “is a guy … with all kinds of qualifications” who “ran a completely honorable campaign,” said Norman Ornstein, a scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute who has spent decades observing presidential politics. “But the most important point here is that in this sect, there is no way that someone who attacks the sect leader can prevail.”
At least, Ornstein suggested, basic decency justified a more cordial response to Hutchinson's inevitable exit from the race: “Why kick a guy when he's down?”
But he believes Democrats also missed a political opportunity and instead should have said: “'Thank you, Asa Hutchinson, for being honest and standing up to a narcissistic sociopath, an autocrat, an insurrectionist and a sex offender.'”
Unsurprisingly, there have been calls for Chitika to be fired from the Democratic National Committee. But that seems excessively harsh. Washington is filled with an army of young, enthusiastic and ambitious employees who possess more arrogance and attitude than good sense. Many grow up and come out of it.
Better to treat the occasion as one of those teachable moments and appreciate the presidential act of cross-party kindness for how rare it is.
“You fight hard, but at the end of the day you want to make sure you treat each other with respect,” said Hutchinson, who suggested Biden's spontaneous apology reflected “the good parts of American politics.”
Those good parts exist. You just have to squint really hard these days to see them.
