With the installation of the 116th U.S. Congress, there have been a couple of changes to the line of succession to the presidency:
- VP: Mike Pence
- Speaker of the House: Nancy Pelosi
- President Pro Tempore of the Senate: Chuck Grassley
- Secretary of State: Mike Pompeo
- Secretary of the Treasury: Steve Mnuchin
No, not at the top. Donald is still in the White House, at least for now, and first-in-line VP Mike Pence is still doing his best to appear loyal in public while privately salivating over the possibility that Donald will in fact get booted out of office.
The changes are in the middle of the list. Former Speaker Paul Ryan is now out of government and Nancy Pelosi is once again 2nd in line as Speaker of the House. Former President Pro Tempore of the Senate Orrin Hatch has retired and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is now third in line. (What, exactly, is the President Pro Tempore of the Senate? It's a leadership position in the senate, traditionally held by the most senior senator in the majority party.) Fourth and fifth in line are unchanged since Mike Pompeo was confirmed as Secretary of State in April.
Note that our old friend Mitt Romney is, after 12 years in the wilderness and three attempts to become president, once again on the government payroll at the age of 71. He was elected to Hatch's Utah senate seat as expected, but he didn't slide into Hatch's place in the line of succession. Poor Mittens is 97th in seniority out of 100 senators. (Who does he outrank? Fellow newbies Mike Braun of Indiana, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida.)
photo credit: Washington Post
With the churn in the line of succession, not to mention the incompetent chaos of the Trump administration, I admit I've been thinking about Mike Pence recently. Confession: I don't like him and I don't want to see him as president. (Yes, anyone,
anyone, would be better than Donald, but in the case of Mike Pence, not by much.) Still, as we approach the halfway point of Donald's term, I think there's a good possibility he doesn't make it to January 20, 2021. What then? Pence accedes to the presidency. What happens next? I believe three things will be true:
1. Former president Donald Trump will be extremely unpopular. He's historically unpopular now but I'm not talking about now. I'm talking about six or nine or twelve months from now when all the bad stuff has come out about what a truly wretched, dishonest, treasonous, criminal degenerate pig Donald Trump really is. Richard Nixon was reviled when he left office and Donald will be too.
2. Many, many Republicans will try to rewrite history and pretend that they never had anything to do with Donald.
3. What newly-elevated President Pence will care most about is keeping his new job. In other words, he'll want to win reelection in 2020 and to do that, he'll need to separate himself from Donald. He may not say, in his first speech, that "Our long national nightmare is over," as Gerald Ford did when he assumed the presidency in 1974, but you know Pence will try very hard to make voters believe that the whole unmitigated disaster of the Trump presidency had nothing to do with him.
photo credit: Politico
That's not going to happen. Trust me when I tell you that the Democrats won't let anyone forget that Mike Pence sold his soul to the devil, as the saying goes, so that he would be in position to benefit if/when Donald flamed out. Unlike Gerald Ford, who was Nixon's second vice president, sworn into office in December, 1973, just eight months before Nixon's resignation and untainted by Watergate, Pence has been at Donald's side since the convention in July, 2016. There are many, many pictures of Pence standing sweetly next to Donald, starry-eyed with admiration (and yes, gratitude.) There are dozens of interviews and speeches in which VP Pence proclaims Donald's greatness. If Pence is the Republican nominee in 2020 you can expect to see those pictures and videos
everywhere during the campaign.
I know I've wandered into the weeds a bit in this post, but there's one more thing on my mind as I ponder Mike Pence's future. A month after Gerald Ford became president he issued an unconditional pardon of Richard Nixon. He did it partly out of compassion for Nixon and his family, partly because he believed that having to resign the presidency counted as a serious punishment, meaning that Nixon
didn't "get off scot-free," and partly so he (Ford) and the country could move on from Watergate.
Would Pence follow Ford's lead and pardon Donald, if he was in a position to do so? Ford's pardon of Nixon was volcanically unpopular and the conventional wisdom is that it played a significant part in Ford's loss to Jimmy Carter in 1976. I think it's accurate to say that Ford didn't anticipate how unpopular the Nixon pardon would be. (In his memoir, Ford wrote that he was surprised at how little compassion American voters felt for Richard Nixon after he resigned. I wonder how much compassion Americans would feel for Donald Trump.) President Ford had no historic precedent to look to for guidance but Pence would have one. Based on Ford's experience, my best guess right now is that even if Pence wanted to pardon Donald, he wouldn't do it before the 2020 election. Too risky.
In our "what if" scenario, Donald's best shot at a pardon would probably be a Pence loss in 2020. Soon-to-be former President Pence could issue the pardon on Inauguration Day, 2021, right before he walks out the door of the White House for the last time, which is when outgoing presidents traditionally issue pardons that are expected to be controversial or unpopular. Would he? Pence, who would be 61 at the time, presumably would be looking forward to enjoying the cushy life of a former president. (He could also, of course, be thinking about running again in 2024.) Would he be willing to risk his popularity, and possibly some of his future income from paid speeches and a memoir, by taking the heat for letting Donald off the hook? There's no way to know right now but I'd say it's not a given.
Enough speculating for now. The next two years are going to be fascinating, if not particularly enjoyable. Two years from today we'll be 10 days away from Inauguration Day. Will it be President Trump, preparing for a second term? President Pence, elected in his own right and starting his first full term? (Because Pence would have served less than half of Donald's term, he would be eligible to run again in 2024.) President Warren? President Inslee? President Biden? I'm going to be watching closely. Election day 2020 is only 662 days away.
Update on January 16: Someone is indulging in a little wishful thinking. Don't get too excited, this really is "fake news":
Naturally the real Washington Post is not happy:
Update #2 on January 21, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. VP Pence compares Donald to Dr. King:
And here's a picture of Mike adoring Donald, accompanying
a story at the Washington Post:
photo credit: Alex Brandon/AP
