A Presidential Resignation

Recent events in Washington DC, including but not limited to the revelation that Trump never had tapes of his conversation with Comey, have reminded me of how things played out in my president's office at a time when the board wanted to drain the university's so-called swamp by a change of leadership.

They had one huge problem in doing this, though. My boss was very successful and they did not want the responsibility of firing him directly. In other words, they wanted their hands to be clean. This meant that the president's decision to leave his position had to appear to be his own, and it also had to appear to be a victory.

The regents fired the first shot. Certain members of the president's staff, deemed to be personally loyal to him and therefore not likely to alert the press, were used as messengers. It started with suggestions that the staff hint that the president might be ready for a greater challenge. These messages rapidly became more pointed until the intent was clear: the staff were to convey the regent's pleasure and suggest that he president put a time line on it. In other words, if he hadn't started job hunting, the regents wanted to know when he planned on starting.

Once the fix was in. The process turned into a game of chess as both sides tried to strategize a face-saving strategy: the regents to appear above the fray, the president to be professionally intact. As one of the regents commented to me then, "Presidencies end when there are too many Indians circling the wagons shooting arrows in."

The thud of arrows must be echoing in Foggy Bottom.

We awoke this morning to a speculative piece in Politico that "multiple sources" had confirmed that President Trump is looking for a way to resign but is concerned that his presidency not look a failure.  This isn't the first time this rumor has surfaced, but earlier hints have come in more left-leaning outlets. This was different. At one time, Politico was considered a conservative leaning outlet, although of late is is seen more as a mixed bag of viewpoints. Still, it is considered a reliable source of gossip and insider information on the belt-way. The earlier hints could be dismissed as political or fake news, but this one, while it still had plausible deniability, was a little different. I felt the need to take it seriously.

Given this tightening of the noose, so to speak. I found myself trying to imagine what is probably going on in the White House as the staff (who, face it, probably planted the story) adjust to a new challenge: How to allow the president to leave office on a high note not least because of his popularity with his base. His approval ratings nationally might not be above 40% but his base is a considerably larger proportion of those voting republican.

Any competent staff has to take a deliberately long-term view of something like this:  the president must leave on a very high note to save the reputation of his presidency. A big win is desirable, but it has to be tied to something promised during the campaign. Health care and/or tax reform for example. The problem with those, of course, is that they require Congressional action. All he can really point to are executive actions such as backing out of the Paris accord.  For this reason, we can expect staffers to speak out on the record about how much these executive actions accomplished, while the president reinforces the message by tweeting about how much more he has accomplished than his predecessor.

The president will also feel an increasingly urgent need to pressure Congress to give him that one big win, regardless of what it is or what it does. By doing this, he will want his followers to feel a sense of loss but not betrayal. In this regard, we should expect his successor to start (if he has not already) hinting that the president's agenda will be in safe hands. Given this particular president, we should expect also that he will frame his departure as a fight for the right and good. He will want to present a noble picture of someone driven out by the uninformed and arrogant, and he will probably claim that his departure is to save "good people" from the constant harassment they have endured by supporting him.

In this, I wish him luck and hope he has the staff to pull it off. It will be interesting to watch.

But let me get back to my president. How did it work out for him? Quite well, actually, as I look back on it.

It was extremely helpful that he found another presidency very quickly that paid a good deal more salary. His staff made sure that his new university's  glowing announcements of his appointment were released to our local press. He helped himself by giving a gracious interview during which he stressed his many accomplishments but made sure the thank the regents for their support. Following this, letters of congratulation and best wishes poured in, and the regents gave him a handsome parting gift. The media came sniffing around, but the president's staff stood solidly by him. The graceful exit is possible to do, and it was done.

And the frosting on the cake:  the president explained his decision to leave as being about the need to be closer to his aging father and to see his grandchildren grow up, which everyone claimed to respect while not totally believing.

Of course, my president was a savvy, charming man who took advice from his staff. What President Trump decides to do will be a different matter. But my advice to him would be the same: bump it up a notch in class.