PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: The DNC-MSM and “The Office Of The President-Elect,” Then and Now. As Paul Mirengoff writes with alteration ascendant at Power Line, “The President-Elect Need Not Be a Potted Plant:”
Ruth Marcus, the liberal Washington Post columnist, advises Donald Trump that “there can be only one president at a time.” This slogan raises, but does not answer, the question of what the president-elect should say or do when the lame duck takes highly controversial action with which his successor-to-be strongly disagrees. More on that in a moment.
But first, let’s share a laugh over Marcus’ invocation of Richard Nixon in defense of the idea that the president-elect should be seen but not heard. Marcus writes:
President Richard Nixon, at a news conference a week after being sworn in. . .noted that, in conversations as president-elect with Johnson administration officials, he had “scrupulously followed the line that we have one president at a time, and that he must continue to be president until he leaves office on January 20.”
It was Nixon, though, who as a candidate for president (not president-elect) worked to scuttle Vietnam peace talks. Fearing that the prospect of peace talks would harm his election campaign (his opponent Hubert Humphrey was cutting into Nixon’s once-large lead), Tricky Dick let the South Vietnamese government know it could get better terms if it obstructed peace talks.
Funny, I don’t recall the Washington Post losing much sleep over those infamous “Office of the President-Elect” placards that Obama began draping over his podium immediately after he won the election – several weeks before the Electoral College made his victory official – until he took office in mid-January of 2009. They were clearly designed to bigfoot George W. Bush in his last months in power, and blur the line between the authority each man held. I don’t believe Obama has any guilt over any of his decisions, no matter how poorly made. But in addition to his anger over Trump’s victory, I wouldn’t be surprised if much of Obama’s grandstanding in recent weeks was caused by flashbacks to his own playing the poseur while waiting to take office.
