The American Regency.
With apologies to Mrs. Pence, consider this unlikely scenario. The vice president has been secretly watching Game of Thrones on his laptop. He sees himself as the character Littlefinger.
I know, this is a guy who is uncomfortable meeting female co-workers without his wife present. The idea of him watching Game of Thrones is a stretch. But the Internet is a serpent constantly dangling its temptations before the upright, so let’s go with it.
Mike Pence begins to think of himself as Littlefinger, at least in his role of Lord Protector and master behind-the-throne manipulator. Maybe not in his role as owner of the palace brothel. Then the vice president wakes up one morning with an idea to save the Republic.
Mike Pence’s big idea is this: turn the Trump presidency into a Regency. If you’re heading to Wikipedia to find out what the hell is a Regency, I’ll save you the trouble. It’s when the legitimate ruler happens to be an infant, so an advisor or group of advisors is appointed Regent to make sure there’s an actual adult running things.
The only country with an active Regency right now is Liechtenstein. Raise you hand if you even knew there still was a Liechtenstein.
So it’s an old concept, and maybe better suited to a monarchy than a democracy. But consider this. Every analysis we read about why the Trump administration has gone so haywire comes down to the same thing. We basically have a second grader trying to govern the most powerful nation on Earth. Throughout most of western political tradition the remedy for that very situation has been to set up a Regency.
I’m pretty sure there’s nothing authorizing this in the Constitution. But the real thing we need to wonder about here is the president’s constitution. Both its unfitness for the job of governing, and, even more, its inability to handle something like removal from office. We’re hear rumblings about Impeachment. Or even more intriguing, removal under the 25th Amendment. The latter is a process few have even heard about that allows the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to come together and decide the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” and vote to replace him. But can you imagine? Trump would leave the nation a smoldering cinder before he’d let some “so-called” constitutional process steal his power.
So Mike Pence sees how Littlefinger quietly manipulates the levers of power in Game of Thrones by naming himself Lord Protector of the boy ruler of the Vale, and comes up with his plan for The Regency. He sells it as a way to avoid the destructive fight any attempt at actually removing the president from office would bring down on the country.
Pence cuts a win-win deal with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. The three decide to put the big political fights on ice for four years and form The Regency to quietly keep the government functioning. Chuck Schumer gets to keep some semblance of American government intact. Mitch McConnell gets a way to keep his party from being sucked down a Trumpian black hole. Mike Pence gets to spend four years hatching plots just like Littlefinger. By mutual agreement Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi are left out of the arrangement. Fixing the dystopian House of Representatives can wait until after the 2020 Census.
You may ask why Donald Trump would go along with such a plan. But think about it. By all accounts he hates how hard the whole being president thing has turned out. The Regency off-loads the hard part onto people who actually have some interest in doing it. The role of the president becomes something more like the figurehead role Queen Elizabeth II plays in England’s parliamentary democracy. Trump might actually be good at this.
He still gets to parade around the White House and sign things he doesn’t understand, surrounded by big grinning crowds. He still gets two scoops of ice cream at state dinners while everyone else gets one. He’s no longer frustrated by constant White House leaks, since everyone involved has a vested interest in keeping The Regency on the QT. Most important, the president remains in charge of the remote control for the big 60” flat screen he had installed in the White House.
The president has mostly done a good job meeting one-on-one with other heads of state, and that continues under The Regency. It makes for some nice travel opportunities and weekends at Mar-a-Lago.
Plus the president will be able to continue the important work of documenting his inaugural crowd size and photocopying his electoral maps. This will keep him occupied while The Regency handles the more mundane chore of running the country.
Decades from now The American Regency will be remembered as a relatively stable period when people of reasonable intent were able to put aside their differences and come together to heal a divided nation. Like so many petulant second graders, the president will be gotten onto the right meds to help him be less disruptive. He’ll actually achieve some popularity as the harmless mascot of a sort of good-natured Americanism. The furniture we currently think of as Mid-Century Modern will come to be called Regency Period. It will be more popular than ever.
