Did you watch it? The annual ceremony where the President of the United States, in front of credentialed press and a small forest of microphones, places his hand on a 45-pound bird and grants it a pardon? I did. I always do. It is, as far as I can tell, the only act of executive clemency this administration has performed all year that did not require a wire transfer or a son-in-law.
We were at Eliza’s on Wednesday — the soft-launch of Thanksgiving, she calls it, because Eliza has had a soft-launch for everything since 2019. The lamb was on the counter, which is its own column. Around the table: my sister-in-law Judy, who has worked at the National Archives long enough to remember when documents got there in boxes instead of garbage bags; a lobbyist whose firm represents the kind of clients that require him to describe himself as “bipartisan”; and a man Eliza introduced as “Daniel, who works in policy,” which is what Eliza calls anyone whose business card she can’t quite locate.
Daniel-who-works-in-policy brought up the turkeys first. He said it warmly. He said it the way people in this town say warm things about civic rituals — the way you talk about a parade you didn’t attend but believed in on principle. Two turkeys, both pardoned. One backup, in case the principal turkey developed stage fright. There is a backup turkey. There has always been a backup turkey. We have a more orderly continuity plan for poultry than for the Office of Government Ethics.
I asked, because I am always just asking, whether anyone at the table could name a single human being the President had pardoned this month. The bipartisan lobbyist examined his cufflink. Judy looked at her plate. Eliza said, “Margaret, please.” Daniel, sensing professional risk, suggested we open the second bottle.
The pardon list, of course, is not empty. It is, in its way, more populated than ever. It is just that the names on it tend to be of a certain type — donors, defendants, the loyal middle management of a long-running grievance. The turkeys, by contrast, were chosen for their plumage and their temperament. I am not sure what this says about our standards, but I have noticed that the turkeys are vetted more carefully.
Judy, who does not enjoy being asked questions about her job, mentioned in passing that an unusually large number of records requests had crossed her desk this fall. She said it the way she says everything at parties — flatly, into her wine. Then she said the records were, quote, “where they need to be,” and changed the subject to the rolls. I don’t know what the records are doing. Neither, I suspect, does Judy. That’s the new arrangement.
The bipartisan lobbyist eventually offered that the turkey pardon was, historically, a bipartisan tradition. He said this as if it settled something. As if the fact that we have, for forty years, agreed to spare a single bird is evidence that the country still works. Two turkeys, saved, from the very fate to which we will, in approximately twenty-four hours, deliver eighty million of their colleagues. The lobbyist did not see the contradiction, because if you could see contradictions, you couldn’t do his job.
Daniel-who-works-in-policy left first. He always does. The bipartisan lobbyist stayed for dessert and told a story about a senator I will not name and a fundraiser I will not describe. Eliza laughed in the place where she always laughs. Judy went home to whatever she is not telling us about the records.
I drove back across the bridge thinking about the two turkeys, and the backup turkey, and the careful planning that goes into making sure the photo op produces a pardonable bird. We are very good at the photo op. We have had decades of practice. We are less good, lately, at the part where the clemency means anything — the part where mercy is extended to people whose names we don’t already know from a fundraiser.
Eliza is doing the bird tomorrow. The lamb is Saturday. The bipartisan lobbyist will be back; he always is. Judy will sit in her usual chair and not answer the question I am going to ask her about the records, and I will not press, because pressing is rude, and we have all agreed that rudeness is the worst thing a person can be at this table. Worse than incurious. Worse than complicit.
We pardoned two turkeys this week. We called it a tradition. We asked for the recipe.