What Happens if the President Tries to Just "Hold Power?"

 This is from Christopher Hitchens's book The Trial of Henry Kissinger

At the close of [Nixon’s] reign, in an episode more typical of a banana republic or a “people’s democracy,” his own secretary of defense, James Schlesinger, had to instruct the Joint Chiefs of Staff to disregard any military order originating in the White House.

Schlesinger had excellent grounds for circumspection. Not only had he learned that Nixon had asked the Joint Chiefs “whether in a crunch there was enough support to keep him in power,” but he had also been told the following by Joseph Laitin…

Emphasis mine. What follows is a story about Nixon barreling down the steps, two steps at a time, knocking over Laitin and being followed by his Secret Service detail.

Obviously this was a very dangerous time for the republic. Nixon could have triggered a serious constitutional crisis by trying to stay in power after the official processes would remove him (impeachment in this case). 

I think of this whenever people try to paint Trump as this unique threat to our republic. I always wonder how far back people's political memories actually go when I hear alarmist claims about Trump seizing power. I remember talking about Bush 2 with my friends, including how he was going to use all the extra-constitutional powers he grabbed for himself after 9/11. Of course, he was going to use all those powers to imprison his political opponents and spirit away dissident voices. No doubt there were some serious abuses of power and some questionable foreign policy (to use a grotesque euphemism for killing lots of civilians and sparking civil wars). But as far as I can tell, there was a process in place. There were checks that would have stopped him from going full-on dictator. Bush knew it, and presumably so did Nixon. Nixon may have tested the waters for an unconstitutional power grab, but ultimately he must have surmised that American institutions would hold and would ultimately check a power-mad president's attempt to stay in office. The Nixon episode demonstrates a couple of things. One, that presidents often contemplate holding on to power, and two, they are likely to recognize that it's not really an option. If it's alarming to realize that a threat is ever-lurking, at the same time it should be comforting to recognize that it is always being held in check. Whatever forces Nixon recognized as checking the president's power are still in place. Even if we think of Trump as less intelligent and more brash version of Nixon, Nixon's calculus probably still applies. 

A recent Reason Roundtable podcast has an exchange that echoes my own conversations about the "Trump refuses to step down" scenario. Peter Sudermann makes some vague hints at the possibility, and Nick Gillespie (who is really speaking my language on this particular episode) has a "What the fuck?" reaction and pushes back. He suggests a useful exercise: spell out the actual scenario you're worried about. Is the problem that Trump will complain about the fairness of the election? Obviously he's been doing that, and he's filed some pretty baseless lawsuits challenging the election results. If that's the scenario, it's a pretty low bar for "the crumbling of the republic" or a "constitutional crisis." There is always grousing about the fairness of an election, and it often leads to lawsuits. Bush vs. Gore? (Seriously, how far back to people's political memories go?) I remember grumblings about the then new voting machines in the Bush vs. Kerry election. Some people were seriously alleging that Bush stole the election in 2004. (Remember the Diebold voting machines? The lack of a paper trail being a big deal? Wikipedia, as always, has a good page covering the controversy.) There are always problems and anomalies in any election, and sore losers will always latch on to these as being decisive and discrediting the process, especially considering the narrow margins by which elections are often won. By this standard, there is nothing too unusual about this election. (Or should I say, by this standard every election in the past 20 years has had its legitimacy undermined by major political actors.) Maybe Trump is a bit more impulsive about indulging conspiracy theories, and maybe his rhetoric is more corrosive to the process than what we're used to. I don't doubt that there's something uniquely destructive about Trump. But there is a process, and it will most likely adjudicate this mess and remove him from office. 

Or is the scenario that's being posited here a more sinister one? Does Trump simply physically refuse to leave? (As I recall, in the Reason podcast someone mentions the scenario where Trump literally barricades himself inside the White House with furniture.) I had discussed this exact scenario with someone a while ago. They suggested that the Secret Service would carry out their duty to protect "the president" by physically removing him. ("Sir? It's time to go, sir.") I think that's the most plausible way for that scenario to play out. Assuming Trump does throw such an epic tantrum, I find it just unbelievable that the rest of the power structure in Washington would go along with it. His supporters are by now suggesting that he concede the election, and his lawsuits are being laughed out of court by incredulous judges. Republicans, who surely would prefer to hold power in an all-else-equal sense, are recognizing the damage that Trump's tantrums are causing to their brand. In the existing process, the president doesn't actually have to "concede." That's kind of the point of the election, that the ousted former leader doesn't actually need to consent to giving up power. It's a process outside the president's control that determines who holds office next. Obviously this breaks down in some truly dysfunctional countries, but it's a bit over the top to claim that it will happen here. 

In the Reason podcast, I think Katherine Mangu-Ward defends "alarmism" by referring to "tail risk." As in, this is a remote scenario that would be very bad if it were to happen. Maybe the probability of a republic-crumbling power-grab increased from a background level of, say, 1% to 2%? Of course that's very bad, in an "expected value" sense, but still very remote. Some commentators are talking about this scenario as if it's likely to happen. Is their rhetoric just short-hand for "It's a very remote possibility, but given the expected costs it's very much worth worrying about and hedging against."? 

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Go back to the Nixon quote for a moment. I'm imagining Trump trying something similar. His presidency is pockmarked with leaks of embarrassing private moments. People in his administration weren't shy about exposing his buffoonish behavior. They were perfectly willing to embarrass and undermine him. If he had made a similar comment to Nixon's to his own military advisors, I'm pretty sure it would have been front-page news. 

I'm going to be slightly petty here and discuss an exchange I had on Facebook in late 2016. I'm using it to point out that there is nothing uniquely "right wing" or Trumpian about believing outlandish election conspiracy theories. In 2016, Trump was anticipating a defeat and, prior to the election, speculating about all the ways that it was going to be "stolen" from him. Trump's critics were mocking him, some saying that stealing an election was "impossible." I pushed back, recalling the 2004 shenanigans and the stupid conspiracy theories that were being floated at the time, in that case by Kerry supporters. Trump's critics were making an argument that they didn't actually believe, according to their own past behavior. Someone accused me of being silly and perhaps misremembering the prevalence of the 2004 griping, and he did it in a "Gee, I don't remember that." tone of voice. This person had written for the campus newspaper, and it turned out he had engaged in silly conspiracy mongering in print. I managed to find an archived copy of his opinion piece and scolded him for trying to gaslight me. Of course, when the 2016 election results came in, election meddling was suddenly possible again, and not only "possible" but determinative. People have very short memories, particularly when it's convenient to forget something. It's definitely a lot worse when the president himself (or the president's vanquished challenger) is questioning the validity of an election. But the behavior itself is part of out ecosystem. The republic survives. 

There is still time for me to be wrong here. Maybe Trump will try to declare martial law or do something else that's truly outlandish. Maybe he'll actually succeed in staying in power, despite official channels rebuking him (as in losing his lawsuits, often to the ruling of a Republican judge). I don't know what to say here. Betcha he won't? Propose an exact scenario and we can discuss 1) the likelihood and 2) whether it constitutes an existential threat to the system or run-of-the-mill post-election grousing. 

By the way, this is all coming from someone who is very worried about unconstitutional power grabs, generally speaking. I see a historical march of ever expanding executive power and an implicit conspiracy to jailbreak the plain-spoken meaning of the US Constitution. I see the U.S. government and the various state governments doing things they have no rightful authority to do. I just see this particular scenario as pretty implausible, and not for a lack of bad intentions.