He
Won’t Concede, but He’ll Pack His Bags
All
evidence suggests that the president would run from the responsibility of
overseeing the violent fracture of America.
OCTOBER 15, 2020
Staff writer at The Atlantic
The day
after the 2016 election, I ran into a journalist who’d covered Donald Trump in
the 1980s and once knew the man well. “Trump will be a one-term
president—maximum,” he said, with what seemed unwarranted confidence, given the
previous day’s result. The presidency is a burden, he said, and Trump is
“incredibly lazy” and unsuited to physically and cognitively demanding work. If
you are president, hard decisions are thrust in your face, and you cannot
simply not make them, or authorize a vice president to
make them for you. Expect Trump to concoct a reason to resign, he said, or to
decline to run for a second term.
The journalist predicted a mercifully brief presidency of indolence. Instead, four years later, Trump is still president, and not looking indolent at all. Indolent presidents do not deliver balcony orations that inspire concern that his affection for fascism is more than aesthetic. The most unfascist act one could undertake is to resign, or indeed to give up power for any reason at all, other than at gunpoint or while swinging at the end of a rope. Not only has Trump not resigned—he has signaled that he’s willing to plunge America into chaos in an effort to remain in the White House.
So in the
competition between those who predicted a presidency of indolence and those who
predicted a presidency of creeping fascism, the latter appear to be ahead by
several touchdowns. And yet I think the first group might have a strong final
quarter—even though the journalist was wrong about pretty much everything. When
we consider how the postelection interregnum will go, we should remember
that Trump had a vision of the presidency that began with extreme laziness, and
that the end of his presidency could go roughly the same way.
I often
think of a story first reported by Robert Draper of The
New York Times Magazine, and since confirmed by Ohio Governor John Kasich, one
of Trump’s centrist opponents for the Republican nomination in 2016. Kasich’s
adviser John Weaver says Trump asked Kasich to be his running mate and, in the
event of a Trump victory, to be “in charge of domestic and foreign policy.”
What, Kasich’s team asked, would Trump be in charge of? The answer, delivered
seriously: “Making America great again.” This is not the offer of a man
fanatically devoted to the collection of power. It is the offer of a man too
lazy to reach for the remote. (Trump denied that this exchange took place.)
Trump
thought that the country is like many large organizations: capable of running
itself, with the president a public figurehead, no more necessary to the United
States’ daily operation than the guy who plays Ronald McDonald is to the
McDonald’s corporation. The deep state—a permanent bureaucracy that runs things
in its own interests, irrespective of who is president—was not his villain. It
was his fantasy. Holding campaign rallies, even after the campaign ended in
victory, was the equivalent of showing up in Ronald McDonald makeup (complete
with unnaturally dyed hair), the job that he always wanted, and hoped he still
had.
That
would explain the ridiculous absentee governing, especially in Trump’s first
year. It turns out you can refuse to make hard decisions, and
that is exactly what Trump did. The result is an executive branch swiss-cheesed with vacant positions, run in
practice by appointees with wildly diverse levels of competence who botch
things while preserving the president’s ability to watch copious amounts of
cable news.
The end of the indolent
presidency could indeed have been triumphant resignation. Picture this: After a
year in office, the country is still running; the long national nightmare of
having a crypto-Kenyan Muslim president is over. Trump addresses Congress to
announce that, having made America great again, he will retire to Trump Tower,
like Cincinnatus to his farm on the right bank
of the Tiber, and leave the republic in the capable hands of President Mike
Pence. Trump then enjoys a gilded post-presidency—with opportunities for profit
that would make the Clinton family blush.
To those
who imagine Trump as Mussolini, this scenario will sound crazy.
But what
stopped it from happening was not that Trump found his inner duce. The first
intervention was reality: The president who sleeps away a year in office does
not awake to find his ship on course for safe harbor. He finds it run aground
and ripped apart, leaking its contents all over the country like the Exxon
Valdez. The second was impeachment, the Russia investigation, and other
accusations of criminality against Trump and his associates. Being much poorer
than he claimed to be, then hiring cut-rate criminals to run his affairs, made
honorable departure from office ahead of schedule—and without permanent
taint—impossible.
Now, as
is true for many politicians before him, staying in office
is the surest way to evade investigation, prosecution, and conviction. That
fact informs my colleague Barton Gellman’s cover story in the latest Atlantic,
which asks what will happen if Trump loses the election, then refuses—as he
promises he will—to concede. I agree with Gellman’s premise that Trump will not
under any circumstances concede, if conceding means acknowledging that he was
beaten in a fair fight. But I see some leeway where Gellman does not, because
just as there was an indolent way into the presidency, there is an indolent way
out. What if Trump does not concede—and he continues not to concede, even as he
packs his suitcases, swipes some White House–branded complimentary toiletries,
and walks onto the South Lawn and into Marine One and waves farewell to the
presidency?
I think
this scenario is in fact the most likely one, if Trump loses the election. And
it may even be his preferred scenario, better than an outright
victory (which would require another four years of onerous employment), better
than showing up on Inauguration Day and having to duel Joe Biden for the right
to be sworn in. As for the prospect of civil war: Trump is a coward, and all
evidence suggests that he would run from the responsibility, even more
burdensome than normal service as president, of overseeing the violent fracture
of America. A civil war sounds like a lot of work. The easiest path is also the
most lucrative. Get on Marine One, protesting all the way, and spend the rest
of your days fleecing the 40 percent of Americans who still think you are the
Messiah, and who will watch you on cable news, spend their money on whatever
hypoallergenic pillow you endorse, and come to see you whenever you visit their
town.
The law would still be a
problem: Leave the presidency, and immediately federal prosecutors will be
falling over one another to nail to their wall the great orange pelt of an
ex-president. One way out would be to self-pardon before leaving office, a
constitutionally dubious maneuver that just might work. Another would be to
resign in favor of Mike Pence, who, during a very brief caretaker presidency,
would offer a Gerald Ford–like absolution, for the good of the nation.
A self-
or Pence-pardon would cover only federal crimes, and would leave Manhattan
District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.—may God speed his work—free to indict Trump
for state crimes. Even without a pardon, Trump would enjoy a politically
favorable position if the indictments were to come. Politicians who lose
reelection or get impeached are indicted all the time. Ones who a substantial
minority of voters think were robbed of reelection, and are now being
persecuted by the wrongdoers, are much harder to convict cleanly. Could Trump
convince one juror that President Biden is out to get him? Maybe he could. It
would certainly be easier to do so if he left in a self-pitying, blustery way.
That
seems to be what Trump is preparing now: insurance against a loss, so he can
skate past criminal charges and live out the playboy post-presidency he has
longed for since taking office. That would offend my sense of justice, not to
mention my sense of taste. (It is not a coincidence that Trump would retire to
a residence outfitted to resemble the most decadent
phase of the Roman empire, rather than to a humble farm in the Quinctian
Meadows.) But as someone who believes in only imperfect justice in this world—and
who has long since given up on the triumph of good taste—I hope he gets what he
wants, and soon.
