America must now reckon with every scenario — even the death of a President
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The news that Donald and Melania Trump have tested positive for coronavirus will transform the US election campaign in ways that are entirely unpredictable. Indeed, this revelation may be only the first of several “October surprises”.
The first point that should be made — and shared right across the political spectrum — is that Covid-19 is a cruel disease that nobody “deserves” to have. Whatever one’s views about this President’s politics in general, and his handling of the pandemic in particular, he and his wife deserve sympathy at this time, just like anybody else. Americans should — and most will — be praying for their full recovery. Any sign of vindictiveness or Schadenfreude on the part of the Democrats would be severely punished at the polls.
A second consequence of Trump’s infection is likely to be a cooling of the political temperature in the United States, at least for the duration of his illness and perhaps even his convalescence. With only a month left until voters go to the polls, that means in effect that this campaign will now take a very different turn. From the two candidates, at any rate, we can expect much less of the mutual animosity and vitriolic insults on display earlier this week in the first — and now, perhaps, the only — television debate.
A third consideration is the question of what will happen if the President is rendered incapable of carrying out his duties. Under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, Vice President Mike Pence would, in that case, take charge, but it is hard to imagine even a Covid-stricken Trump voluntarily renouncing his authority. The President has the constitutional right to reclaim his authority whenever he, and nobody else, decides that he is fit. Quite likely, there could be a power struggle inside the White House. The risk that hostile powers might attempt to exploit the vacuum — a threat that has already increased with this morning’s news — would suddenly become imminent. The coming weeks could prove to be the most dangerous period for world peace in most of our lifetimes.
Fourthly, we must reflect on the most dramatic of all possibilities: that the President might not survive the virus. He falls into several risk categories: he is 74, he is overweight, his diet is unhealthy and he is not known to take regular exercise. The inevitable strain of four years in office will have taken its toll, exacerbated by the rigours of campaigning. Donald Trump is blessed with a strong constitution, but so is Boris Johnson, who is two decades younger — and the Prime Minister nearly died. Medical knowledge of how to treat Covid-19 has advanced by leaps and bounds since last April, but even the best treatment in the world — which we must assume the Trumps will receive — cannot always prevail against the virulence of this condition. The unthinkable must be thought: the President of the United States could die on the eve of an election.
If that were to happen, the Constitution dictates that Vice President Pence would immediately step into Trump’s shoes. In the two modern cases of a President dying in office — Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy — their respective Vice Presidents, Harry S. Truman and Lyndon Johnson, both had plenty of time to establish themselves in the White House before facing an election, which they both won. Less fortunate was Gerald Ford, who succeeded to the Presidency when the disgraced Richard Nixon resigned after Watergate.
Another possibility is that Trump could decide to throw in the towel. On present performance, he is more than likely to lose on November 3, possibly by a landslide. The sympathy that he will undoubtedly receive from many patriotic Americans, if only by virtue of his office, might not be enough to save a campaign that, to judge by the polls, is going in the wrong direction.
If Trump were to decide, even at this late stage, not to run, Pence would again take his place. But the millions of postal ballots already cast would, strictly speaking, no longer be valid. This might help the Republicans, so there would be a dispute that might even require the Supreme Court to adjudicate. Whatever happens, the election will go ahead.
Under the present circumstances, Mike Pence must be deemed more likely to follow the Ford precedent than that of Truman or LBJ. Indeed, Pence could achieve an unenviable record: the briefest occupancy of the White House in American history. Joe Biden has already demonstrated that he is barely satisfactory as a potential leader of the free world, but he is so familiar to American voters that it is hard to imagine him being defeated by such a grey figure as the present Vice President. So overshadowed and even shadowy has Pence been that the electorate could be forgiven for echoing the narrator of William Hughes Mearns’s ghost poem “Antiginosh”: “Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there! He wasn’t there again today. Oh how I wish he’d go away!”
One more possibility remains to be considered: that Trump will make a full recovery and, more popular than ever as a result of his ordeal, sweep to victory. This is, admittedly, an unlikely scenario. But it is not impossible. If such a situation were to arise, would Biden abide by the result? He has said that he would accept the verdict of the voters, no matter what it might be. Would the same apply to his supporters?
The United States was already facing a potential constitutional crisis even before its head of state contracted a virus that has already killed 212,000 of its citizens. (Nearly five million have, however, recovered.) The risk of a disputed election result, with either or both candidates refusing to concede and violence spilling onto the streets, remains. Nobody had reckoned with the consequences of the death of a President. Whatever happens, the next few weeks will be an unprecedented test of democracy in America.
