Will Mike Pence Be the Real President?
Donald Trump, Executive Branch, Mike Pence, The Vice Presidency
Pence will run domestic & foreign policy, while Donald naps.
The New York Times supplies another of those leaks indicating that Trump doesn’t really intend to do the job of being president.
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.
Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?
“Making America great again†was the casual reply. …
Ultimately, Trump chose Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, not Kasich, to be his running mate.
Some years ago, I was Chief Operating Officer of a (much smaller than Trump’s) inherited New York real estate company. My principal, I expect, very much resembled Donald Trump in operating style. He did not care to be actively involved in the business every day. He had management (me) for that. He had every intention of retaining absolute power, but he was normally King Log. Only when questions of credit and compensation came up or when the requirements of the business made unwelcome demands upon him did he turn into King Stork. Most of the time, he simply didn’t want to know about it.
This kind of personally-convenient delegating of responsibility, while retaining ownership, final authority, and –in the end– taking credit for what other people do, is quite typical of the way a New York real estate mogul would run his empire.
One wonders how it will work when applied to running the US Executive Branch. Good luck to Mr. Pence. I can tell you that being the COO in such a regime has a lot of drawbacks.