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What If Trump Is All Too Eager to Give up Power?
New York MagazinePresident Trump has faced a lot of questions about whether he will commit to a peaceful transition of power and admit his defeat if he loses the upcoming presidential election. He has been reluctant to answer them — he doesn’t seem to like contemplating the fact that he could lose, and he’s eager to suggest that any loss would mean he was treated very unfairly — though he did finally allow a “Yes, I will, but I want it to be an honest election” in his town hall with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie on Thursday.
There has been less discussion, however, about a question that worries me more: What if Trump loses the election and is all too eager to give up power? Throughout his term, Trump has treated governance as a chore — not the reward for a successful presidential campaign but the necessary slog to get to the next one. So if and when Trump is a loser with no campaigns left to run, the pathetically defeated caretaker of a government that’s about to be handed over to Sleepy Joe Biden, what’s to stop him from ceasing even the most perfunctory performance of the duties of office and moving down to Mar-a-Lago in time for Thanksgiving? We live in complex times. A potential Biden administration would be picking up a coronavirus response with many complex parts. What if Trump’s participation in that transition process were so peaceful as to barely exist at all?
Of course, we had a presidential transition in the middle of an acute policy crisis not long ago: In 2008 and 2009, as George W. Bush handed power to Barack Obama, he also handed over the reins to a freewheeling policy response to an acute financial crisis. That transition started before the election, with John McCain’s “suspension” gambit that forced both himself and Obama back to Washington to negotiate rescue terms with the Bush administration and congressional leaders. Bush and Obama officials worked mostly collaboratively, despite their political differences, through the late stages of the campaign and into the transition. In fact, one sense you get from CNBC’s 2018 documentary Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis is that Bush’s team found McCain’s campaign antics around the financial rescue so exhausting they were relieved to end up working with Obama instead.
Jason Furman, a top economic adviser to the Obama campaign and an incoming economic official in the Obama administration, described a Bush team that was exemplary in its collaboration and openness as it sought to hand off the crisis response. But Furman isn’t sure that was the most important thing.
There has been less discussion, however, about a question that worries me more: What if Trump loses the election and is all too eager to give up power? Throughout his term, Trump has treated governance as a chore — not the reward for a successful presidential campaign but the necessary slog to get to the next one. So if and when Trump is a loser with no campaigns left to run, the pathetically defeated caretaker of a government that’s about to be handed over to Sleepy Joe Biden, what’s to stop him from ceasing even the most perfunctory performance of the duties of office and moving down to Mar-a-Lago in time for Thanksgiving? We live in complex times. A potential Biden administration would be picking up a coronavirus response with many complex parts. What if Trump’s participation in that transition process were so peaceful as to barely exist at all?
Of course, we had a presidential transition in the middle of an acute policy crisis not long ago: In 2008 and 2009, as George W. Bush handed power to Barack Obama, he also handed over the reins to a freewheeling policy response to an acute financial crisis. That transition started before the election, with John McCain’s “suspension” gambit that forced both himself and Obama back to Washington to negotiate rescue terms with the Bush administration and congressional leaders. Bush and Obama officials worked mostly collaboratively, despite their political differences, through the late stages of the campaign and into the transition. In fact, one sense you get from CNBC’s 2018 documentary Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis is that Bush’s team found McCain’s campaign antics around the financial rescue so exhausting they were relieved to end up working with Obama instead.
Jason Furman, a top economic adviser to the Obama campaign and an incoming economic official in the Obama administration, described a Bush team that was exemplary in its collaboration and openness as it sought to hand off the crisis response. But Furman isn’t sure that was the most important thing.
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