Thinking the Unthinkable

Similarly, many political analysts today seem to have buried their heads in the sand. The “unthinkable” used to be Donald Trump’s selection as the presidential nominee of the Republican party, a previously remote possibility now well within his reach. The prospect of his election as the 45th president of the United States was even more unimaginable. No longer: The Economist‘s Global Forecasting Service now classifies a Trump presidential victory as a “moderate” probability, with an impact comparable to jihadist terrorism destabilizing the global economy, according to the magazine’s risk intensity scale.

These bleak scenarios have given birth to a vast doomsday literature on the fate of the GOP and the nation. Featuring commentary by some of the best minds, this analysis has explored, then explored again, the deeper meaning of the Trump phenomenon, reaching an audience of the educated with an insatiable interest in the subject, its moral hazard, and its cultural implications. Yet for all of this intellectual activity, no one has asked the kind of question that Kahn had in mind: how to make it through the dropping of the “big one.” How should we ready ourselves to survive a Trump presidency? The assumption here is that the event will happen and the time for mulling, fretting, and moral agonizing over how to prevent it is over. The issue then becomes one for unemotional analysis. Is it possible to escape the worst outcome that so many have prognosticated and ensure that, in the end, the essentials of the American political system will remain intact with the nation’s basic interests protected?

There are, to be sure, understandable reasons why commentators have studiously avoided thinking about the unthinkable. This approach is alien to ordinary political analysis, which looks at current circumstances or those likely to occur. Strategic analysis, by contrast, proceeds under the logic of contingency planning, in which it is deemed worthwhile to study a major disaster that, though improbable, could theoretically take place. Such studies of hypotheticals may be compelling material for a convention of civil engineers or insurance actuaries, but they are hardly the stuff of which news stories are made. And today, while the mere mention of a Trump victory is sufficient to elicit reactions of horror, most calm down upon hearing the pollsters’ predictions of Republican oblivion if the billionaire heads the ticket.

In the case of the handful of political commentators for whom a strategic approach might hold some appeal, it seems that they are waiting until the GOP convention in July to see if Trump is nominated. That would be a serious error. One of the aims of a strategic approach is to examine, in advance of a hypothetical disaster, the points at which the most consequential steps can be taken to mitigate its ill effects. Some decisions key to improving the chances of surviving a Trump presidency are already at hand. The longer we wait, the more limited will be the options available and the more diminished the chances of success.

Strategic analysis for the feared political crisis has the advantage of simplicity. No elaborate game theoretical models or mathematical equations are required. All that is needed is the willingness to examine the possible uses of features of the existing political system, including elements that now lie dormant and would need to be reactivated. The starting point is with our political parties and the selection of the vice presidential candidate.

Just phrasing the issue in this way sounds jarring today, for everyone now conceives that the presumptive presidential nominee picks the vice presidential nominee. Ratification by the party convention is a mere formality. And indeed such has been the practice for quite a while. The last time a party actively picked a candidate for vice president was at the Democratic convention in 1956, when presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson decided to enliven proceedings by leaving the selection of his running mate to the assembled delegates. In a close contest that boiled down to a decision between the young senator John F. Kennedy and Senator Estes Kefauver, the party coalesced around Kefauver on the second ballot.

The decision had also been out of Stevenson’s hands in 1952, the last year either party’s convention witnessed multiple rounds of voting for the presidential nominee. After choosing Stevenson on the third ballot, the convention then moved on its own to select Senator John Sparkman, whom Stevenson praised afterwards for “strengthening me and our party immeasurably.” Before this period, it was understood that the political party had some say in this matter, and thankfully so in 1944, when a few party leaders working behind the scenes—call them “the establishment”—urged Harry Truman on the convention to replace the incumbent Vice President Henry Wallace. Truman was chosen on the second ballot.

The Republican convention in Cleveland could well turn out to have more than one ballot for the presidency, which opens up the possibility of reactivating the party’s power to select the vice presidential nominee. And even if Donald Trump is able to force his way on the convention on the first ballot, it is clear already that he will not fully control the majority of the delegates for other matters. Party officials should accordingly seize the opportunity now to make clear that the convention reserves the prerogative to select the vice presidential candidate. This would not preclude politicking. If the choice of the presidential nominee is not certain on the first ballot, Trump might seek to use the offer of the vice presidency as a bargaining chip to achieve a majority. Trump has already stated, if he is to be believed, that he will not pick an outsider but “a political person .  .  . [who] can help [him] with legislation, getting it through, and all that.” Yet no matter what the candidates have in mind, party leaders should stake the claim in principle to the party’s authority over the second place on the ticket. Assuming a Trump nomination, he might then have to consult with the party or perhaps accede altogether to the convention’s choice.

The exercise of this power by the party is a key component in thinking about how to survive the unthinkable. A party choice modifies the excessive view of the presidential nomination as a pure and simple coronation and begins to teach the lesson that the power of a leader in America’s political system is subject to robust checks. As a businessman who has been used to running his own show, and as a candidate who has been able to take possession of the Republican party as if it is a choice kind of rental property, Donald Trump would experience the limits of his power. After all, it is finally the party, not the presidential nominee, that certifies the names that go on state ballots.

A more important aspect of survivability pertains to securing a better vice presidential nominee. Think of it. Trump might find the range of choices of those willing to run with him, at his request, highly limited. A prominent politician with ambitions for the future might well calculate that accepting an invitation to run as the Donald’s choice, in an election in which defeat may seem likely, would be a sure career-ender. The field of vice presidential candidates is likely to increase for Republicans if the selection is made by the convention, as this method would help immunize the candidate from subsequent reprisal. To be sure, the two nominees would have to reach a meeting of the minds, with the vice presidential candidate naturally acceding in substantial measure to the presidential candidate. Still, it would make a difference if the vice presidential candidate were in some measure his or her own person, in possession of an independent party mandate. And as vice president this person, though restricted by Trump’s personal agenda, could if need be establish some distance from the president and perhaps exercise a certain amount of leverage. The office, as FDR’s first vice president, John Nance Garner, once put it, might not be “worth a bucket of warm piss,” but at least it would be in some degree the party’s bucket.

It is at this point in hypothetical thinking that survivability analysis runs into a potential conflict with real-life concerns. Any step taken that makes a Trump campaign look more attractive arguably also undermines the Stop Trump movements. Herman Kahn faced a similar problem when some of his critics accused him of undermining deterrence by certain of his suggestions, like erecting bomb shelters, that might serve to make nuclear war less unthinkable.

The only response is to consider a kind of cost-benefit calculation: how much Trump’s electability is enhanced by a more credible vice presidential candidate (the amount seems minuscule), weighed against how much this step might add to the prospect of a more survivable Trump presidency (a more considerable amount). Any rational investor sees the merits of hedging. In all likelihood, many commentators’ arguments on this point stem from a moralizing spirit that gives them a clear conscience, rather than from a political judgment about what is best for the country. To continue railing against an outcome that they have been conspicuously unable to influence, simply to signal their impeccable virtue, has begun to reach a point of diminishing returns.

The next item in a strategic analysis of survival is the place of policy advisers and potential candidates for the cabinet. Already, choices have to be made. Should good and qualified persons, despite serious reservations about the suitability of Trump for the presidency, make themselves available if asked? The risk of doing so, besides the danger of becoming tainted by association, is that it might once again add a measure of credibility to a campaign. The advantage is the chance that Trump, as both candidate and president, will receive competent advice and perhaps prove willing to accept some part of it. As for a cabinet, what would clearly be best for the country are appointees of substance, who might have opposed Trump but have not burned every bridge with him and who if asked to serve would do so with a certain degree of independence and with a willingness to depart if the president did not deal with their counsel responsibly. By this reasoning, even ardent supporters of a Stop Trump movement should see the wisdom of maintaining a potential group of quality cabinet appointees from whom Trump might pick. These people should be shielded, rather than shunned.

On a larger scale, the objective is to encourage the selection of advisers and cabinet appointees who are not—as has so often been the case recently—merely “president’s men” or sycophants trying to make a career. As a person with so few allies within the party establishment, Trump will need to reach out beyond the limited circle of persons with whom he is now acquainted. The risk for him, though a benefit to the country, would be the uncomfortable independence of certain individuals, as well as the greater influence that a group of levelheaded cabinet members might possess. Imagine the potential leverage that might be exercised from a fear of a mass resignation. Of course, a return to the kind of power exercised by cabinets in an earlier era is beyond the realm of possibility. But some steps in that direction would offer a better chance of avoiding a disaster. Recall Lincoln’s cabinet, which was well-stocked with men whose formidable presence acted as counterweights to Honest Abe’s power. His “team of rivals”—the checks and balances principle in human form—included William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates, his three Republican opponents: “I had looked the party over,” Lincoln observed, “and concluded that these were the very strongest men. .  .  . I had no right to deprive the country of their services.”

Even more fundamentally than this, a Trump presidency could initiate a dramatic shift in the institutional balance of power between the executive and Congress. The legislature’s chronic weakness in recent years has rested in part on the growth of partisan polarization, which incentivizes the president’s co-partisans in Congress not just to acquiesce to, but also encourage, acts of executive overreach. The Obama years offer rich testimony to this distortion of the Constitution. Trump would, by contrast, have the full buy-in of neither of the two main parties. Congress would then wield formidable power, presenting a vital check on any attempts by Trump to govern unencumbered. For all the recent discussion of the decline of Congress, the fact remains that the total formal power assigned to the legislature under the Constitution is insurmountable. With a veto-proof majority, it cannot be stopped. On some matters, at least, parts of the Republican party could ally with Democrats, and Paul Ryan could end up at the very center of policy-making on some issues.

Though Trump still has little backing from Republicans in Congress—just eight representatives and one sitting senator at the last count—he will of course attract further support if nominated and still more if elected. A significant part of the GOP might adopt a wait-and-see approach, assessing how Trump performs and lending support on a case-by-case basis. That would still represent a shift from anything we have seen in recent times. The power of Congress would suddenly look very different. It could even open the way to a more constitutional relationship between president and Congress, rather than one distorted by parties.

Trump, meanwhile, might fear finding himself playing the role of a latter-day Andrew Johnson, a president without a firm basis of support in a political party. As this analogy suggests, looming over a Trump presidency is the possibility of impeachment, Congress’s own nuclear option. It is the mere fact that such a weapon could be used, not that it would, that alters the dynamic so profoundly. Here we see why the contingency planning of the kind Kahn advocated must begin sooner rather than later. With a vice president ready and able to assume presidential duties, a safe transition would become altogether less unthinkable. A credible vice president could turn out to be the nation’s, not the president’s, trump card.

James W. Ceaser is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Oliver Ward is a graduate student at the University of Virginia.