Leader of the opposition

Writing memoirs, traveling the world giving high-paid speeches, establishing a presidential library, settling into retirement as an elder statesman: These are the typical pursuits of a post-presidency in the early 21st century. They are safe, predictable, respectable — in a word, boring. Trump doesn’t do boring and respectable.

As he has been wont to remind us throughout his tenure, he’s not presidential; he’s “modern-day presidential.” Keep you in the public eye such activities might, but only in its corner. Trump aims to remain fixed firmly in its gaze.

For that, Trump has to do something that would keep him at the center of American politics in a way few of his predecessors have tried or even desired. Something beyond what he can achieve even with his Twitter account (which will remain a potent weapon, at least until Twitter boots him once he no longer enjoys presidential immunity). Something that could have a profound impact on the American political system. Something like making clear his intention to return to the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, as soon as he departs it on Jan. 20, 2021.

No defeated president has ever turned around and immediately declared himself a candidate for the next election. Yet multiple news reports have suggested Trump intends to do just that. He’s even considered skipping President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration and holding a simultaneous, made-for-television spectacle to launch his campaign. Trump himself hinted the rumors were true when he said at a White House holiday party for Republican Party officials that “I’ll see you in four years” if his efforts to overturn the election failed, which they did. Lately, however, he’s become hesitant to discuss his 2024 plans since doing so would be a tacit admission of defeat. When he does, he appears as interested in getting people to think he’ll run as he is in actually doing so.

Running again is something losing presidential nominees used to do fairly routinely. Several men have lost more than one election. But Trump’s move, should he make it, would be virtually unprecedented. Andrew Jackson was effectively running the moment the 1824 election was pulled from under him, but he wasn’t the incumbent when he lost. Grover Cleveland is the only man to win the office back, reclaiming it in 1892 after losing it in 1888. Turning to more recent history, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush in later years became respected, even beloved, personages. But in the aftermaths of their expulsions from the Oval Office, their parties, even the public, couldn’t be rid of them fast enough.

By reentering the race right away, Trump would remain the most important Republican in the country and one of the most important people in politics. But it would also transform him into something that has rarely, if ever, existed in American government: an identifiable, bona fide leader of the opposition. How successful Trump is in giving this unofficial role substance and wielding its power will likely determine whether he stays a major player in American politics.

One of the main goals of a leader of the opposition is to win the next election. Trump, whether he initiated a reelection bid on Jan. 20 or just teased one, would be like a prime minister who loses an election but stays on as party leader to win the next. This would effectively make the next four years a dress rehearsal for the 2024 rematch, commandeering the whole country into a new campaign that would begin just as the old one dies.

Unlike a prime minister, however, Trump, once out of the White House, would hold neither constitutional nor political office. He would, in the political sense, no longer be responsible, not to party nor to country. In parliamentary democracies, leader of the opposition is a formal role with defined duties and functions. In our system, Trump would be occupying an office that doesn’t exist.

In the United Kingdom, Sir Keir Starmer is leader of the Labour Party, but by virtue of that post, he is also leader of Her Majesty’s most loyal opposition. Sir Keir even receives a stipend as opposition leader in addition to his salary as a member of Parliament. Moreover, his principal deputies form the Shadow Cabinet, which exists as a counterpart and rival to the Cabinet of ministers running the various departments, as well as a preview for voters of the potential next government.

The United States may at times have the trappings of official opposition (e.g., the response to the State of the Union address), but unlike in Britain, the concept of the opposition lacks institutional recognition. The founding fathers were aware from history and their own experience of contemporary British politics of the persistence of faction. Many of them lived to see the growth of political parties in their new republic. But the Constitution they designed makes no provision for parties. The government it established, with its three equal branches and separation of powers, affords no place for a formal opposition leader since, unlike a parliamentary system, the legislative and executive functions are divided and their heads do not belong to the same body and aren’t elected at the same time or in the same way.

Others might be daunted by working outside the system in such a radical way, but outside the system often seems to be where Trump is most comfortable. With some justice, he might even be said to be in opposition to the system itself. How those still operating within it are affected is likely to determine the scale of Trump’s impact.

Where would this leave congressional GOP leaders, Mitch McConnell in the Senate and Kevin McCarthy in the House? They may end up negotiating with Trump’s Twitter account as much as they do with the new administration. Would Republicans in Congress take their cues from their caucus leaders or from Trump? If anyone can navigate these treacherous shoals, it’s McConnell; but even he would be tested.

Joe Biden says he’ll be able to break through the partisan division and work with Republicans. Whom, though, does he negotiate with — Trump or McConnell? Trump is sure to snipe at Biden (on Twitter or elsewhere). Would Biden feel compelled to respond regularly, which could consume his first term? Could Trump sabotage legislation from the outside, the way he could from the White House?

And what about officeholders? Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is one of the centrist Republicans whose name regularly appears in stories about GOP senators who might work with Biden. She is running for reelection in 2022. Her brand is strong, and she has a base of support outside the GOP. But she’d still need Republicans to win. Would she get enough if Trump makes good on his threat to campaign against her?

This being Trump, there’s no reason to think he’d limit his attention exclusively, or even primarily, to Biden. Trump’s repeated denunciations of Republican officials who have refused to carry out his schemes to reverse their states’ election results, such as Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, may be a preview of what’s in store for Republicans. Or would be, if we hadn’t already seen the same with Jeff Sessions, Mark Sanford, Mitt Romney, and others.

It’s not solely Republicans who find themselves on the wrong end of Trump’s lash and goad. One of the favorite objects of his ire lately has been Fox News. Guilty to his mind of that most heinous crime, lèse-majesté, “he wants to make them pay,” a Trump confidant told Axios’s Jonathan Swan. Rumors that Trump wants to create a media empire predate his presidency but were given new life in recent weeks as reports circulated that Trump and his circle were contemplating starting their own cable or streaming service, or buying a Trump-friendly organ such as Newsmax and turning it into an alternative to Fox News.

“Trump TV” isn’t likely to hit the airwaves anytime soon. But if it ever does, it could challenge Fox and the GOP as much as it does Biden and the Democrats, which is to say it could become the seat of opposition to all things anti-Trump.

Fellow Republicans have encouraged his efforts to remain at the forefront of the party. Potential rivals for the nomination, meanwhile, have embraced the possibility of a Trump 2024 campaign, declaring him the presumptive favorite even if it puts the party in a holding pattern for the next few years, unable to move forward with Trump or move past him.

Not that they have a choice.

Even in defeat, Trump remains popular among Republicans. He continues to be a fundraising machine, having raked in over $200 million since the election. He retains the enthusiastic, overwhelming support of the base, as witnessed by his Dec. 5 rally in Georgia and the nationwide protests on his behalf a week later. A majority of Republican voters would back him in 2024, according to recent polls. So if elected Republicans sound like party cadres trying to avoid a one-way ticket to the gulag, you can hardly blame them. They read the same polls, which show the party supports its leader, not them.

If Democrats win both Senate runoffs in Georgia and Republicans conclude Trump’s scurrilous, vituperative accusations of voting fraud and denunciations of Georgia’s Republican leaders cost them those seats and thus control of the Senate, perhaps their fealty to him might at last begin to wane. Loyalty is a two-way street, but it never has been for him. As is usually the case with Trump, however, it is not he whom his followers would charge with disloyalty.

What it really means to describe Trump as the leader of the opposition, then, is this: He is the leader of their opposition — the vast swathes of discontented GOP voters who felt taken for granted until he descended that escalator, and who suspect they will be treated just as dismissively without him. As long as that dynamic persists, so will he.

Trump in many respects has always been leading an opposition. He arguably built his presidency on it. Republicans, Democrats, the media, the Left, the “deep state,” elites, cities, judges, Mexico, the military, “them.” You name it, there’s a decent chance Trump at one time or another has been against it. For him to now elevate himself after he leaves the White House to a station that has never existed in American history, indeed one sanctioned by neither our institutions nor traditions, on the basis of these serial antipathies, is the natural, perhaps even the only logical, culmination of his political career.

Retired presidents are eminent figures, but not prominent ones. Defeated presidents are often neither. Yet Trump aspires to remain the preeminent figure in the Republican Party. That this is even conceivable is a stark reminder of how much politics has changed because of the media environment, polarization, and the weakening of institutional party structures. But it would also be merely the latest norm shattered by a politician who has prided himself on shattering them.

A senior campaign official told Politico that Trump should “boldly telegraph to the public … that he will lead the opposition for the next four years.” Thinking the idea is the first step to making it real.

There’s no guarantee it will be, of course. “Always in motion is the future,” to borrow Yoda’s adage. Many obstacles stand in the way. What’s unusual in our history is that it might come to pass at all.

Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) is a writer and historian. He lives in the Philadelphia area.