By Bob Groeneveld
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My deadline every week is Monday morning, or more practically, Sunday night.
But you don’t get to read what I’ve written until it appears in the paper or online on Friday.
That’s more than four days.
And for a political junkie like me, four days, is a long, long time.
A lot can happen in those days between writing and reading.
Like, maybe, some time during those days between the writing and the reading it could be discovered that the leader of, say, the Conservative Party of Canada is not just a Canadian but also an American. What if it turned out that Canada’s Liberal Party leader – currently the prime minister – used to dress up as a kid? Or that the Green Party leader used plastic straws? Or that the top dude of the NDP wasn’t white? Or that the leader of the People’s Party once said something decent about someone?
Okay, we all knew all of those things before I sat down to write this on Sunday… except that thing about the People’s guy, who has yet to provide proof.
The point is, there is so much shocking information coming out so quickly about all these people, that there could be a game-changer – or several game-changers – between now, when I’m writing this, and… now, when you’re reading this.
These days, four days in politics is a long, long time.
Consider the plight of the poor folks who are trying to understand the rapidly changing political world around them.
As I sit down to write on Sunday night what you are reading no sooner than Friday, their president is facing impeachment based on a telephone call to his Ukrainian counterpart and the detailed accusations of a knowledgeable whistleblower.
Between Sunday and Friday last week, he denied having blackmailed the Ukrainian president to dig up non-existent dirt to help defeat one of his political rivals,then he said that if he had asked for that help there would have been nothing wrong with the request, and then he admitted having extorted the Ukraine but said it was not only okay, it was actually his job.
And then he extended the request – along with the implied extortion – to several other countries, including some that are decidedly not friendly to the Unite States.
Meanwhile, he openly suggested that the whistleblower should be tied to a post and shot. Or hung. Or whatever else they used to do to spies in the good old days.
If I have been writing about Trump a week ago last Sunday, I would have had none of that in the column you read last Friday.
So at that rate, as I write this on Sunday night, by the time you read this, he could be completely exonerated… or impeached and hauled off to jail. Or he could have defected to Russia or gone partying with Kim Jong Un.
Or an alien police cruiser may have arrived with a squad of Vulcans led by Luke Skywalker to arrest him for extortion and fraud connected to charges laid on three different planets.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if Trump had to file for asylum with the United Nations because he feared political persecution if he was taken back to his home world of Kepler-186f?
But because of my deadline, you wouldn’t read about it here.