Trump plans to saddle his veep with most of the duties of being president. Because why not?
Anyone looking to tune in to the Republican National Convention this week to hear from the man the GOP is seeking to send to Washington to run the country needs to adjust their DVRs, because that speech won’t be given by Republican presidential nominee and apocalyptic circus peanut Donald Trump on Thursday. Rather, it will be given by the party’s vice-presidential nominee, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, on Wednesday night.
So what gives? Well, it’s not entirely surprising. See, Trump has, throughout his campaign, made it clear that he believes that being president is a really easy job ― no sweat for him! But if you want to get a sense of just how easy Trump imagines the office to be, you should check out the Robert Draper’s account of how Trump came to select Pence as his running mate in The New York Times Magazine. It begins with Trump’s eldest son making a back-channel overture to Ohio governor John Kasich, offering him the chance to be Trump’s running mate:
One day this past May, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reached out to a senior adviser to Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who left the presidential race just a few weeks before. As a candidate, Kasich declared in March that Trump was “really not prepared to be president of the United States,” and the following month he took the highly unusual step of coordinating with his rival Senator Ted Cruz in an effort to deny Trump the nomination. But according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?
When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.
All Dick Cheney jokes aside, let’s remember that the real job of the vice president is actually something like, “being alive on the off-chance the president is not,” not “assuming the duties of the presidency in toto for the duration of the president’s term.” It sort of makes you wonder how Trump envisions the actual role of the country’s chief executive. It certainly made this senior adviser to John Kasich wonder, so he asked Trump’s son what Trump would be doing, if not managing foreign and domestic policy. The response, according to Draper, was: “Making America great again.”
And one wonders why Kasich refuses to endorse Donald Trump. Put yourself in Kasich’s shoes: As he did with the entire GOP field during the primary, Donald Trump never missed the opportunity to mercilessly mock the Ohio governor, referring to him as a loser, and then he turns around and asks him to, essentially, run the country on his behalf. Really, who would have guessed that Donald Trump, in seeking the presidency, wants to claim all of the trappings of the office and none of the responsibility?
At any rate, someone should maybe ask the Indiana governor what he thinks about all of this, given that if America fails to be “great again” after four years of a Trump presidency, it’ll be Pence who’s on the hook for that.
Poster Comment:
The Donald wants to follow Dubya's footsteps as the "Decider-In-Chief"
But the real question is, does Trump know how to dance with the natives when need be?
When the Captain is on the bridge, he never takes the helm (the steering wheel itself). He hardly ever takes the Conn - the position of the officer who tells the enlisted man at the helm how to steer. He generally does not take the Deck, the overall officer in command of the bridge team. He leaves the Officer of the Deck to do that.
He has a chair, the Captain's Chair, and nobody else sits in that. He CAN take the Deck, if he feels like it (example: "Joe, go take a leak and get a cup of coffee, I have the deck"), or more often, if the Officer of the Deck has really screwed up something and the Captain is pissed. Generally the Captain will take the Conn if there's a danger - and he doesn't announce "I have the Conn" - he's the Captain, any time he issues an order, it's an overriding order, because he's the Captain. Duh.
The only time the Captain I've ever seen a Captain actually take the helm has been an exceptionally good one who really just had an instinct for training seamen. After watching the head (of the ship) drift and meander through compass headings for awhile as a green helmsman fought the ship, trying to keep course against wind and wave action, I've seen "The Old Man of the Sea" go stand beside the young (now terrified) helmsman and say "You're fighting her. She's too strong to fight. What you have to do is meet her. See, like this. And then put his hand to the helm and gently move it a little bit, then a little bit back, and steady out the ocillations. And then stand there and show him how to do it. "Almost." "But like this."
Get the helmsman trained to "Meet her" instead of fight her, and the crew doesn't get seasick from jerking back and forth all night.
Now, granted, I've only seen one Captain that good, that supremely confident in his own role as Captain, who just genuinely liked to take the ship in his hands and caress it, and loved to train seamen to love some little part of shiphandling. That's rare, and it takes a certain feel for the sea, for the ships, for men. He was a Captain Kirk type, but with less arrogance. After the Vincennes shot down the jetliner, he was sent to be the replacement Captain to bring that ship back up to confidence and health.
Most Captains don't actually take the helm. It's too lowly and other men do that.
But the point is that the Captain does nothing other than what he decides he needs to be doing - somebody else is already doing it. He does nothing in particular, but he's responsible for everything, and everybody knows that, and so does he.
I've been on five ships under seven Captains. There are hatreds and petty politics on a ship. And the Executive Officer, the Number 2, often is the object of much hatred and derision. But I've never been able to hate any of the Captains. Some were hot-tempered, some were lenient, and that one was the Old Man of the Sea, John Paul Jones in the flesh. The office of Captain has a certain majesty to it - you simply have to respect it, and the respect for the office always extends to the man.
The President is the Captain of the Executive Branch. You cannot help but respect the office. The men in the officer are changed by the fact of the office. The Captain DOES nothing, but is responsible for everything. So he does what he decides needs doing, and he leaves it to those he appoints as his lieutenants to do the doing.
That is altogether right.
His lieutenants can exercise the discipline. The Captain can show the mercy and leniency, while ultimately judging the performance.
Pense is an governor, a chief executivem experienced. He will make a very good COO. There's no reason that the Vice President can't be COO. Washington excluded the VP from Executive cabinet because the VP was INTENDED to be the equivalent of the "Speaker of the Senate", but Jefferson established a different tradition.
"Chief of Staff" is not a Constitutional role. Vice President is. If Trump decides that the Vice President should be second in command, with the Chief of Staff reporting to him, that is good.
