Years back, when Marion Barry was under fire, Jesse Jackson made noisescabout becoming the new mayor of DC.
Barry’s response was priceless, and very relevant: “A mayor has to run the city. Jesse don’t wanna run anything but his mouth.”
That’s Trump. He doesn’t want to sit through long budget meetings or work on deficit reduction. He doesn’t want to study policy papers from Foggy Bottom. He doesn’t want to do any of the work of a President- he just wants the adulation and ego stroking that comes with the job.
Better than Trump, but not as good as Kasich, which, again, isn’t as good as I’d feel about Hillary Clinton; but, again, and I can’t stress this enough, better than Trump.
One would think that the prospect of having a president wanting to farm out all of his authority before even getting the job would give Trump voters some reason to step back and say whoa. But Trump voters, being Trump voters, will just see this whole episode as the evil machinations of Hillary.
Trump can barely let Pence talk at his own introduction. Do we really think he’s capable of being truly uninvolved? He wouldn’t be informed or consistent, but he’d always feel entitled to jump in at a whim and overrule whatever was going on, and he’d do it regularly. He wouldn’t *defer *to Pence.
But this assumes that Trump won’t try to meddle with any of the VP’s efforts. It also assumes that Trump won’t be running his mouth on Twitter every five minutes. He doesn’t want to do the work - but on the other hand, he doesn’t doubt for a minute that he can manage everything just by the strength of his gut-checks.
And of course, it assumes that the office of VP has some actual power and influence. Can you imagine everyone jumping to the oars if Joe Biden started throwing his weight around? Of course not - because Biden has no weight to throw.
Basically Trump wants to be head of state, not head of government. Ideally he would like to be king or possibly emperor, but unfortunately for him we aren’t a constitutional monarchy.
What you say is true, of course – but I’m weighing it against the alternative, where Trump doesn’t delegate as much as possible to his VP before meddling whenever the mood strikes him; an alternative where Trump is the go-to guy who delegates as little as possible away in the first place.
Would I rather he delegates away the whole enchilada, and then doesn’t meddle? Sure! But if I can’t have that, I’d rather he delegates and meddles; and, if I can’t have that, then, yes, fine, scrape the bottom of the barrel with a hands-on presidency.
I’m just saying, if we have to have some Trump, let’s hope for less – and, yeah, “none” is technically my favorite “less”, but I still despise “more”.
I actually think this is the real solution to the Trump issue. The US can create a figure-head position of ceremonial head of state which Trump can have for Eight years. Meanwhile others can do the real running the government stuff. Hey it works elsewhere, so why not?
What happens 100 days in, Pence running both foreign affairs and domestic policy does something that hugely embarrasses the new Trump administration? Is President Trump going to fire a duly elected VP? Chiefs of Staff and cabinet members can be fired, but firing an elected VP is a problem for a President who just wants to be chairman, whatever that means.
More frightening to me is that when bad things happen, the President has to put on his empathetic face and serve as the Griever-in-Chief. Can you imagine Donald Trump showing up at Newtown or Orlando or New Jersey or Louisiana after a hurricane? I can imagine no person in this country less suited to that specific job than Donald Trump.
Because to Trump, the calculus is simple. If you’re not winning, you’re a Loser. I don’t believe Donald Trump is capable of empathy. For those who believe, I don’t think he even has a soul. I wonder how people who so embrace the word of Christ can embrace a man so bereft of sympathy.
I dunno. “Hands-on” means he might eventually learn a few things about why some things are impossible or very unwise. “Meddling” means jumping in with dangerous edicts, refusing to listen to counter-arguments, and jumping back out.
Actually, he’d do it irregularly, which would be even worse.
Still, I don’t think he’s interested in being involved, he’s vaguely interested as being seen as being involved. He doesn’t like the spotlight on anybody else. So, I think Pence would be left on his own to do as he would in back rooms, in meetings, in day-to-day activities. So long as Pence could keep cameras away, he could do whatever he wants.
It’s impossible for POTUS to fire VPOTUS; either VPOTUS would need to voluntarily resign or get impeached by the House and removed from office by the Senate. It’s the exact same procedure as removing a President from office; the only difference is the Chief Justice wouldn’t be presiding over the trial.