Being The Incumbent

Jonathan Bernstein says Donald is squandering some of the advantages of being the incumbent:

President Donald Trump announced he was having a press conference at the White House on Tuesday and instead gave a campaign rally that included scathing attacks on his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. Putting aside whether it was effective as electioneering — he got pretty lousy reviews, for what it’s worth — the unusual event raised some questions.

I’ll defend Trump on the ethics of using the Rose Garden for explicit campaigning. Yes, his recent predecessors have refrained from doing so, and it was certainly a norm violation. But while other presidents have tried to save their political rhetoric for campaign events and used more elevated language in official settings, the distinction is really one of style and not substance. The truth is that every presidential statement and appearance is planned at least partly with electoral politics in mind, and I don’t see much ethical distinction between attacking Biden by name and holding a Rose Garden event designed to implicitly emphasize the differences between the chief executive and the challenger.

That said, I’ll certainly question Trump’s political judgment in doing it. To begin with, he either knew or should’ve known that a lot of pundits sincerely think that campaigning is a separate and lesser activity than governing, and that the White House should be reserved for the latter. He also should’ve known that this goes double for negative campaigning. And he should’ve expected that the media would judge him or any other president harshly for clobbering an opponent from the Rose Garden.

But the larger picture is that this was yet another example of one of Trump’s core weaknesses: He is terrible at recognizing and exploiting the valuable assets that come with the job.

There’s a reason for the norm that Trump just violated. It was established by his predecessors because it was useful for them. It allows them to play two-on-one against the out-party candidate. There’s the president-while-campaigning, who deserves as much media time as the challenger gets — and then there’s the president-while-governing, who gets a whole additional ration of media time and is treated as someone everyone should listen to and respect, unlike those two candidates running for office.

That second persona — the president-while-governing — and all the inherent respect the political system gives to it, is a huge asset for an incumbent. By failing to act “presidentially,” Trump has squandered it repeatedly.

The continuing attack on Dr. Anthony Fauci by White House staff is yet another example. Trump is failing to take advantage of an asset — Fauci’s reputation — that has been available to every president since Ronald Reagan. It’s also an example of Trump’s failure to recognize the value of neutral expertise to the president, both in the executive branch and in the White House. Presidents shouldn’t always do what the experts say. But the ability to call on neutral expertise is an enormous asset for presidents who know how to use it, and Trump has squandered that one too. (This is the column in its entirety.)

And speaking of yesterday's press conference, Max Boot called it "batty." Read about that here.