Trump’s whining aside, presidency is likely to end with a whimper
Boston Globe feature writer Beth Teitell recently published an amusing thought experiment in which she asked experts how authorities should respond if President Donald Trump refuses to leave the White House after the Jan. 20 inauguration of Presidentelect Joe Biden.
She entertained the vision of “Trump and Rudy Giuliani holed up inside the White House on Inauguration Day, the president rage-tweeting at Fox News as helicopters hover and the Bidens shiver on the stoop …” but quickly added the disclaimer that even “a nation hooked on drama does not want to see a US president dragged out the front door, non-compliant-airline-passenger style, as Ivanka grasps his hands and Melania looks on.”
The response on the left to this disclaimer was a collective “Oh yeah?”
“Boston Globe, speak for yourself ” became a refrain on social media, as did the suggestion that there would be a huge audience for pay-per-view coverage of a recalcitrant Trump being hauled out of the West Wing like a balky toddler squirming in his mother’s grasp as he fights for more time in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese.
In a follow-up article the next day that quoted many of these responses, Teitell conceded, “It turns out many people do want to see him dragged out, ideally kicking and screaming.”
A commentary posted to Fox News sniffed, “The Democratic Party has long fancied itself as champions of tolerance and love but many who responded to the Globe …. don’t appear to practice what they preach.” A subhead added, “It turns out many on the left don’t want a peaceful transition of power.”
But what Fox and other indignant voices on the right seemed to miss was the premise of Teitell’s thought experiment —that Trump was staying in the White House in defiance of the results of the presidential election and the constitutional mandate that he cede his office to the winner. No one, Democrat or Republican, left or right, should show “tolerance and love” for such behavior, and a spectacular assertion of the rule of law in such a circumstance would bolster, not erode, the concept of peaceful transition of power.
Prying Trump’s tiny fingers off the Oval Office door jamb and frogmarching him into a waiting SUV will be necessary only if he violates the sacred American tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. And if he does, his degradation during the reassertion of national norms will be well earned.
In such a circumstance I’d certainly settle for a recreation of the dignified forcible eviction of Montgomery Ward & Co. chairman Sewell L. Avery, whom U.S. Army soldiers carried bodily but peacefully from the company’s Chicago headquarters in 1944 after the government took it over in a wartime effort to halt a strike.
I’d prefer to leave any punishment of Trump to the courts and the judgment of history, and to see a conventional handoff of power 47 days from Friday (and yes, I’m counting).
I don’t speak for all or even most of the left, but my fantasy is of Trump attending Biden’s inauguration ceremony, shaking his hand, wishing him and the country well, then, recreating his own transition four years ago, hopping into a helicopter with his wife as the new president and his wife wave a respectful farewell.
Dream on, I know.
Trump will never be a gracious loser and so will never provide his critics and opponents with the pleasure of seeing him offer even a symbolic concession to the reality of his defeat. But he’ll also never give us the pleasure of seeing him depart the White House for the last time in any way — particularly not yanked off the premises like a common trespasser in the clutches of Secret Service agents.
He knows such an ousting would be inevitable if he tried to take a stand. He knows it would thrill the libs, make him look weak and damage his prospects for some sort of comeback.
My guess is that some Sunday morning in early January, Trump will motorcade out to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for one of his frequent rounds of golf. From there he’ll slip away from the media and onto Air Force One for a trip down to his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Then he won’t come back. He’ll simply stay there for the remainder of his term, tweeting angrily and issuing rafts of quirky orders and federal pardons until Biden takes over. Melania will arrange for the moving van, and Trump’s staff will box up his papers.
A presidency preceded by a long, slow ride down an escalator will end with a quick, unannounced duck behind the curtains.
We won’t get no satisfaction.